Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Narratives and Self-Identity
202 Plays2 years ago
In this episode, Fara and Grant talk about the way narratives shape self-identity. They discuss the constraints of certain personal narratives, the effects of trauma on narrative construction, and how altering our perspective on these narratives might offer us more mental and emotional clarity.
We hope you enjoy.
Recommended
Transcript
Motivation to Save the World
00:00:02
Speaker
I think the first thing is we have to figure out what saving the world is doing for him. What is it? Why is it so important that he sees himself? No, I'm serious. I'm going to go with this. You put it out there. No, it's great. This is the rest of the podcast. No, I think it's great on so many levels.
Introduction of Hosts
00:00:21
Speaker
But I mean, the visual is awesome like Batman on your couch. Hello, I'm Dr. Farah White. And I'm Dr. Grant Brenner.
00:00:29
Speaker
We're psychiatrists and therapists in private practice in New York.
Doorknob Comments in Therapy
00:00:33
Speaker
We started this podcast in 2019 to draw attention to a phenomenon called the doorknob comment. Doorknob comments are important things we all say from time to time just as we're leaving the office, sometimes literally hand on the doorknob.
00:00:46
Speaker
Doorknob comments happen not only during therapy, but also in everyday life. The point is that sometimes we aren't sure how to express the deeply meaningful things we're feeling, thinking, and experiencing. Maybe we're afraid to bring certain things out into the open or are on the fence about wanting to discuss them.
Narratives and Identity
00:01:03
Speaker
Sometimes we know we've got something we're unsure about sharing and are keeping it to ourselves. And sometimes we surprise ourselves by what comes out.
00:01:16
Speaker
Hi Farrah. Hi. Today we're going to talk about the stories that we tell ourselves about who we are, who other people are, what the world is, what we want, who we want to be. This is a free ranging podcast, but we make a few key points about the importance of narrative to sense of self and function in the world. So Farrah, how do you think about narratives?
00:01:46
Speaker
Yeah, I think these days people have access to lots of different narratives, I think through being more connected with others and just being more sort of psychologically minded. Sometimes people either through social media or whatever, it's not always the right idea, but most people know themselves and tell themselves a specific story of how certain things came to be.
00:02:16
Speaker
think a narrative is different from these more colloquial, like a trope or something like
Batman vs Joker: Trauma and Morality
00:02:22
Speaker
that. It's more personal and individualized and more meaningful. It comes up a lot around trauma. My association to what you were saying was, number one, been researching authenticity. Okay.
00:02:36
Speaker
Apparently there's a lot more in the sociology and philosophy literature than there is in the psychology literature on authenticity, though there are psychological models that have been researched more recently. And the other association I had was to one of the Batman movies. I don't remember whether it was the recent Joker film or whether it was one of the earlier movies.
00:02:54
Speaker
But there's one scene where the I think it's the Joker is using his trauma history to explain why he is bad. But he tells everyone like a different story, all of them kind of plausible explanations for why his childhood trauma has led him down the path he's taken.
00:03:13
Speaker
And of course, it implicitly stands in contrast with that man, who also a troubled soul experienced a horribly traumatic loss of both of his parents. They were killed in front of him. And that led him, though, to become sort of like a crusader for good.
00:03:34
Speaker
But nowadays, unlike in older comics, and more recently comics have these kind of ambiguously, ambiguous morals, like heroes that are not so clearly heroes, as they used to be.
00:03:49
Speaker
decades ago where sort of good and bad seemed very either or. So I think about the way we use our developmental narratives to either further our goals or how they can get in the way as well.
Self-Talk and Personal History
00:04:02
Speaker
And I'm curious what you think about that sort of as a clinician.
00:04:06
Speaker
Well, what stands out to me about what you said is that two people who have experienced trauma can react to it in very different ways and give themselves very different narratives and very different directions in life. And you're right that I think we're seeing, you know,
00:04:23
Speaker
characters that are multilayered. And I think life is more complicated than it is in the superhero movies. But I do think that what we tell ourselves is frequently more important and more defining than people give it credit for.
00:04:42
Speaker
So how we talk to ourselves, what we tell ourselves about our lives and our history really shapes us, our behaviors.
Developmental Trauma's Impact
00:04:50
Speaker
Just keep repeating the same idea over and over again and sort of whether or not it's true, you will come to believe it. Right. And then it sort of becomes true.
00:04:59
Speaker
uh, at least subjectively, but other people may not, um, buy in the same way. Like other people may hear someone say, Oh, I'm no good. I'm no good. I'm no good. And they may go, yeah, that's ridiculous. Like you're, you know, you're, you're good at what you do. Like, you know, imposter syndrome.
00:05:15
Speaker
But going back to this idea about trauma narratives, do you think that people put too much emphasis on developmental trauma? You know, on one hand, I can easily make a case that it's kind of under-recognized. Do you think that's sort of overdone ever? I think when people have unprocessed trauma, it can be hard to get distance from it and to see the world in any other way.
00:05:40
Speaker
So when we believe that people aren't safe and it's not safe to get close to someone and that belief hasn't been sort of explored in therapy or in other modalities, I think there are definitely lots of different ways to process trauma, but
00:06:01
Speaker
If we're sort of unaware that we're walking around thinking that, and then we keep meeting people and deciding for whatever reason, we can't get close to them because that doesn't feel safe, then yeah, maybe it becomes bigger than it really needs to be. Uh, but I think it's very hard for people who have gone through something at a young age when the world is very black and white to then grow up and say, well, yeah, maybe
00:06:29
Speaker
He took a
Building Positive Memories
00:06:30
Speaker
little bit too long to get back to me, but he still seems interested in getting to know me or being there. I think it's really easy to just cut that off. Yeah. There's other things that happen then trauma growing up, obviously, you know, and people will often try to focus on positive memories or build better memories. Like that's something that I hear a fair amount, you know, particularly when people turn a certain corner,
00:06:56
Speaker
They'll be seeking experiences because they have learned that, you know, looking back, that's what they'll have to look back on. So they want to create positive memories. One of the thoughts I had, I wanted to ask you is so if things are difficult that happen at a young age, though, do you think it influences the way we create narratives in adulthood?
Children's Narrative Development
00:07:15
Speaker
there's what the narrative does, but there's also the way narratives are constructed, right? And some narratives can be much simpler and possibly less accurate. On the other hand, maybe it can be too complicated and overly confusing. Right, but I think kids in particular have trouble seeing the world as in the way it really is. Right, because kids aren't fully cognitively developed. Exactly. And so you can look it up.
00:07:43
Speaker
Well, I think we all agree on that. If listeners want to know more, they can look up. There's different sort of concrete operationals like EJ, yada, yada, yada. And there's an idea in psychology that people get stuck like in a certain way of viewing the world where you can get kind of stuck. So like what if you're a grown up with like a kid's logic for creating narratives and understanding reality? That's what I'm asking about.
00:08:09
Speaker
Yeah, I think that that is, we have a lot of grownups walking around who cognitively are maybe not in the place that they need to be when it comes to certain traumatic things. For example, maybe their parents got divorced when they were eight years old.
00:08:27
Speaker
And they thought, well, if only I had cleaned my room, like they'd asked me to, then mom wouldn't have been so mad, then maybe dad...
Societal Changes on Divorce
00:08:36
Speaker
But there's a sense of cause and effect. Like I caused it, right? And any psychologist will kind of say, make sure you tell your kids that it's not because of them. Right, but it doesn't matter that you tell them. Well, parents will sometimes say stuff like, you know, like until you came along, things were great, you know.
00:08:52
Speaker
Oh, your father and I would still be together. Um, if it weren't for the strain of parenting, when really usually the opposite is true. Usually, you know, having a family, I think makes people try really hard, but marriage is complicated and difficult and it's not always going to work out. Right. And it's what's great about the time we live in right now is that I think divorce is more accepted. And it's also accepted that this is something where people can still have loving
00:09:22
Speaker
co-parenting arrangements and kids can still have both of their parents present in their lives, right? Well, it's true that having kids is a major stressor and, you know, puts marriages to the test, right? But that doesn't mean that it's the kid's fault, right? Because the parents, you know, had kids, right? It's not a kid's fault for being born. And it definitely helps, you know, so some people might believe that. You know, last time we talked about intrusive thoughts. You could have an irrational intrusive thought that's like,
00:09:50
Speaker
like it's sort of my fault for being born. That kind of thing is not necessarily rational. But to your point, when the divorce rate is like 50, 50, 50, it's sort of like a coin flip, then it's really hard for an individual to say, hey, it must be my fault.
00:10:06
Speaker
Right, but I also think the same way that kids happen, life happens and there are plenty of things that are more stressful in a marriage and there may be so much that goes into it that a kid is just not able to understand.
Focus on Trauma in Adult Narratives
00:10:21
Speaker
I want to come over to adult narratives. I didn't mean to derail us into childhood trauma. And I'm thinking not all of childhood is traumatic for people too. My sort of question was, do we focus too much on trauma? And is that a distortion in the narrative? Let's say like a billionaire kind of playboy philanthropist comes in to consult with you about early parental loss. And over a period of time, you start to become suspicious that maybe he has a superhero alter ego.
00:10:51
Speaker
very different from who he says, who he presents as a patient. And, you know, eventually after a few years of working together, the therapeutic alliance is strong enough that he discloses to you that he actually is the Batman. Okay. How would you address that therapeutically? Well, I want to talk about how his early experiences and how everything that has sort of
00:11:16
Speaker
reaffirmed right in a sense like superheroes are really self-sacrificing. There's a lot of times they don't have very fulfilling lives. That would be my main concern. Notoriously bad for their personal lives. Exactly. I can't think of one superhero that has sort of healthy personal relationships. Right. And I think that healthy personal relationship and having love and being loved and that's
00:11:42
Speaker
I guess, a goal that I would have. It looks different, I think, for everyone, but I think Batman is kind of lonely. And that would be my main thing. So is the narrative that in order to save the world and achieve victory over the Joker, that he has to
00:12:02
Speaker
sacrifice himself and put himself in danger. Right. They never seem to actually definitively take care of those villains. Okay. Right. They always lock them up in Arkham and they always escape somehow. And it's almost like it's almost like the superhero has an unhealthy attachment to the villain. And so I'm wondering how we can bring that back around to this question about sort of these narratives, because I think narratives that people often have
00:12:30
Speaker
You know, and people relate to superheroes and villains. There's a reason why those shows are so popular. And a lot of us are very, very self-sacrificing and we get a sense of identity out of that. So yeah, I wanted to ask.
00:12:44
Speaker
Ask you about that. Right. I think the first thing is we have to figure out what saving the world is doing for him. What is it? Why is it so important that he sees himself? I'm serious. I'm going to go with this. You put it out there. No, it's great. This is the rest of the podcast. I think it's great on so many levels. But I mean, the visual is awesome, like Batman on your couch.
00:13:08
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I like that.
Superhero-Villain Attachment
00:13:11
Speaker
So what did you say first? We have to figure out what is this narrative? What is it serving? Right? What is it defending him against? This is quintessentially psychoanalytic. This is where you really shine as a psychoanalyst. Thank you. So if you got the upper east side thing down. So you see how you take a compliment and then you
00:13:35
Speaker
No, it's true. I admire that. I'm not good at that. But we have to see, he's so preoccupied with the Joker, right? And he's using all of his session time to talk about the Joker. And it's like, hey, what about you? I hear a lot about this Joker character. Do you think they're all really part of the same person? Maybe, but what would it be like if we just put the Joker aside for a second?
00:14:03
Speaker
Like you noticed that Batman and the Joker are never in the same room together. Maybe. Yeah. Well, that's kind of like Fight Club. Well, that's a whole different, that's a whole different question. But really what I want to know is why this preoccupation, what would it be like? Could we imagine it coming and going? If the Joker were gone, you know, would it really be the peace and satisfaction that the world is safe or
00:14:31
Speaker
is there going to be some other thing that comes along in place of the Joker to make the world unsafe? And why does he go it alone, right? I would wonder. You know, so in a certain sense, a narrative is like a context that you create and you keep revising, right? Yeah. Part of self-identity and our sense of other people and our community is
00:14:56
Speaker
the stories that we tell ourselves right and as you mentioned earlier parts of those stories are repetitive right we repeat some of the same stories and sometimes those repetitive elements are useful and sometimes they could be problematic but they're always let's say structural so if i always think of myself as a good person
00:15:18
Speaker
then I want to behave in accord with that self identity. And I may pay less attention to the things that don't fit that narrative, but it becomes a part of the structure of each day. Right. And I think that then people can sort of get into these dynamics where this kind of stuff plays out. So I'll give you a sort of less healthy thing.
Narratives in Relationships
00:15:43
Speaker
Let's say people,
00:15:45
Speaker
see themselves as undervalued and underappreciated. And then they're working for a really perfectionistic and demanding boss, right? And it's like the boss becomes as this outsized role in their lives because they're trying to please someone who's impossible or they're
00:16:06
Speaker
dating someone who doesn't really want to commit. These narratives are not just narratives, right? They are sort of instructions in a way. It can be self-sabotaging, self-defeating. What do you think are useful narratives then? If you could download a patch, like your computer gets an update. And I know that's not the typical psychoanalytic model
00:16:31
Speaker
to kind of be instructive, right? You're more asking questions like what function, what is this doing for you? Bruce, Batman, what do I call you? But what would be a helpful narrative for someone who has this type of kind of fawning or overly solicitous quality? What's the antidote? I think the antidote is because that person may never be able to say, you can't treat me like this.
00:16:57
Speaker
you know, I'm doing my best. And in fact, I've been doing a really great job. I've been working with you for seven years and no other secretary lasted, uh, you know, more than six months, right? They're never going to say that because it's too much of a leap, but, but is, is the boss, the one to be confronted? Um,
00:17:17
Speaker
Because it seems to me there's sort of an internal element. Maybe. I think it's the narrative in general, which may include the boss or the joker or various stand-ins, right?
Self-Confrontation and Accountability
00:17:29
Speaker
But do you address it in yourself? Is there an element of kind of empathic or empathetic or compassionate self-confrontation, but without kind of blaming? Or if there is blaming, you kind of roll with it.
00:17:44
Speaker
Maybe, or just not to blame ourselves. Not to blame ourselves, but maybe to blame all the circumstances that led this narrative to be. But is that a disavowal of personal accountability?
00:17:57
Speaker
Well, I think we need to understand it first and then we can disavow it, right? But what is an individual's accountability? Once, say, they recognize that they keep getting in these recurring relationships, then the narrative shifts, right? Just to break it down a bit. Because then part of the narrative is, oh, I'm participating.
00:18:17
Speaker
Hey, I tend to blame myself. My therapist said I shouldn't blame myself, but then I feel bad because I'm still blaming myself and now I'm a bad patient because I'm not supposed to blame myself. Maybe, but if we just go to that first point, right, that I'm participating, I have a role in this, I have some control on this, then we can start to interrogate why that might be, right? And that, I think, is the first step to change.
00:18:46
Speaker
But what do you do with the you shouldn't blame yourself idea?
Blame in Personal Narratives
00:18:50
Speaker
Well, we're not going to get people to stop blaming themselves. I think we have to redirect them to all the other things. What do you mean we're not going to be able to get we're not going to get people to stop blaming themselves? You can't say stop it. You can say but look at all these other things and we can help them make the connections that they need to make.
00:19:13
Speaker
So I wonder if, in a sense, I wonder if that could be viewed as a disempowering narrative. Like we're not going to get people to stop blaming themselves. You know, on one hand, I agree with you in the sense of you can't like make someone do something sort of, actually you can, but we don't want to, right? It wouldn't serve a purpose. Well, I don't agree with that. But what I think is
00:19:37
Speaker
And I don't mean that in a negative way, but I think within a psychoanalytic model, there's a very high premium on patient autonomy. And therapists tend to not be as directive. On the other hand, there's a technique called thought stopping, right? Where, you know, you try imagining a stop sign when you start to have thoughts that aren't useful. That's, you know, sort of relates to cognitive behavioral therapy. And sometimes that works, like you imagine it and you interrupt that cycle right before it gets going.
00:20:06
Speaker
Okay, so you imagine the stop sign, and then what?
00:20:10
Speaker
Well, so you were saying earlier that people can get into recurring thought patterns that aren't helpful for them. Correct. And so why not try, and maybe it won't work, maybe it will, but why not try just kind of interrupting that? It's a little bit like interrupting someone before they get going. Why not include
Mindfulness in Managing Narratives
00:20:30
Speaker
that? And is that part of an empowering self-narrative? Right. Well, I think there are lots of visualizations that
00:20:38
Speaker
that could be helpful. But I guess the one that I think is the most useful and the most plausible really is maybe not just having the stop sign. Cause then you have the stop sign, you sort of know what thought you're stopping. Oh, then what next? Yeah. Yeah. Then what next? So I sort of, the visualizations that I like are imagined,
00:21:02
Speaker
you know, it's passing like a cloud or imagine that you're an umbrella and the rain is just washing off you to the side. That's mindfulness based. Okay. Right. That's quintessentially, as I understand it, mindfulness meditation is you pay a light attention to your thoughts, feelings, experiences, let them pass. And then you bring your focus back. You bring your focus back, I think to the real issue at hand.
00:21:28
Speaker
That can be elusive.
Societal Narratives and Responsibility
00:21:30
Speaker
The real issue at hand being am I to blame? Or the real issue is why do I always find a way to blame myself? Right. So sort of what's actually happening.
00:21:44
Speaker
Right, what happens if I'm not blaming myself? If I'm not saying, oh, well, I almost got hit by a city bike because I stepped out even though I had a walk sign. If I say I had a walk sign so I didn't, you know, this is all my fault and it's always my fault versus the walk signs don't mean anything and this is total chaos here.
00:22:07
Speaker
Well, that becomes like a question about justice. Like, you know, well, I shouldn't have gotten hit because I had the light. And the walk sign says you don't need to look and see if there's a bike coming if the light is green. Well, I think I guess why I wanted to give an example of something is because the walk sign is reassuring to people and the stop sign is reassuring to people. So if there's a deviation from that, we don't want to be on guard all the time. Right. Reassuring in what sense?
00:22:36
Speaker
reassuring because it denotes safety. Well, let's think of it as a narrative. So that's a collective narrative. It's a societal narrative. And it's not an individual narrative. It's a law, right? It's an expression of law. And it's a codification of
00:22:55
Speaker
of sort of right of way, like, you know, the most vulnerable should be protected. The pedestrian is more vulnerable than a bike in some ways, though that's arguable, certainly more vulnerable than a car and cars versus bikes. So signs like that are a form of language, right? Right. And so they're part of a narrative. But the underlying narrative is don't get hit by stuff. Right. Unless, you know, if you don't want to be hurt, right? Yeah.
00:23:24
Speaker
but people can kind of disavow responsibility, but then they may end up blaming themselves. But I guess the point is that we look to those rules, I guess, to sort of scaffold ourselves in this world.
00:23:42
Speaker
Oh, yeah, that's that's what I was thinking. Well, this is a good example of how a narrative can kind of work both ways. On one hand, if you take it mindlessly, you may blithely walk into oncoming traffic. If you hold it as part of your own narrative, then you know, you can make a determination. Maybe it depends where you are, you know, in some countries.
00:24:04
Speaker
Bikes are incredibly respectful. And if you want to get into an argument on Twitter, you know, defend pedestrians against bikes. I tried that once and never again, because pedestrians behave irrationally as well and bikers can get hurt, right? Right. But I guess what I'm saying is that sometimes when people hold too tightly or they blame themselves or they completely avoid that blame,
00:24:34
Speaker
We're not looking at things accurately. So that's another sort of quality of the narrative is is whether it's held rigidly or whether it's discarded too loosely. And of course, it depends a lot on what we're talking about. We're focusing on kind of blame today.
00:24:50
Speaker
But now I'm going to give you an example, right?
Personal Narratives in Dating
00:24:53
Speaker
Um, one of your patients, lovely girl comes in and she, um, has started seeing this guy that she met online. He said he was looking for something serious, you know, and something meaningful. They've been spending a lot of time together, but they haven't moved it forward in any way. They haven't had any conversations.
00:25:18
Speaker
He's still, you know, relegating her to like dates on off hours. But she's, let's say, in her mind, like this guy is serious, but he's not acting serious. So what are you going to tell her? Well, so from the point of view of narrative, she has conflicting stories of him. Right. Right. Let alone maybe conflicting stories about herself. Mm hmm.
00:25:46
Speaker
I would want to know more history. I would want to know, for example, if there's a tendency to get into relationships with people who present one way and end up being another way.
00:25:59
Speaker
we would want to look at the way she evaluates people. And again, I'd be concerned or I would want to evaluate the level of self-blame because I think the level of self-blame is something we have to look at first in order to assess how to work with someone. So if someone has that negative sense of self and they do tend to blame themselves,
00:26:22
Speaker
then I think that needs to be addressed at least in parallel with looking at any contemporary behaviors.
00:26:29
Speaker
And I think that is a very important piece of context is attribution of one's own role. And it does relate to things like how much control do I have over what happens to me? And if part of the narrative is in psychology, now I'm remembering they call it internal versus external locus of control. If people have an external locus of control, we feel like stuff happens to us and we have not much say over it.
00:26:54
Speaker
And that can be a narrative that we keep repeating to ourselves. And then interpret events as confirming it, right? There's a confirmation bias. So let's say that she is like, well... Every time I try to cross the street, I get hit by a bike. Damn street signs.
00:27:14
Speaker
Or, you know, would you, you would want to know, right? How tightly your patient is holding onto this narrative. So. Yeah. And you'd want to know the developmental history. Right. You, let's say you, you know, and understand all that. And she's still working on figuring out what it means for her. I might suggest taking a break from dating for a while. Okay.
00:27:38
Speaker
sort of like a sobriety model or dating differently kind of a harm reduction model. Right. So I think sometimes it's very hard for people to make sense of what's going on when they keep going after something. And then I would want to know, like, what are you really going after here? Is it kind of like, are you looking for a missing piece of yourself so that you can feel complete? If so, you know, maybe some level of personal work is going to be required. What are realistic expectations from a relationship? You know, it quickly becomes
00:28:07
Speaker
a sort of a very multi-layered inquiry. But fundamentally, I want to know what are the main drivers of this behavior. And there's usually only a couple of them. Exactly. What if she says, well, he's never, you know, he does want something serious, but I know he's dating other people and he's never going to choose me because nobody ever chooses me.
00:28:31
Speaker
you might say, it seems like you keep dating guys where you can guarantee that they won't.
00:28:39
Speaker
I don't think I would make that comment at that juncture personally, at least in the context of the narrative. It could. What I was thinking is really just sitting with the feeling it evoked in me, which is kind of a feeling of kind of deep sadness and loneliness and yearning. And if I were to ask a question, you know, I'm thinking of empathizing, if I were to ask a question, I might say, what are you experiencing right now after having said that?
00:29:08
Speaker
rather than necessarily going into kind of like a fix it question mode. Okay, but that's, I think, you know, I do like the way you work, but I'm just for the purpose. No, I can easily have said what you said on some other occasion. Maybe on some other occasion, what you want is for that sort of loneliness, sadness, desperation,
00:29:33
Speaker
that that person is reinforcing that narrative by continuing to date people that mistreat her, right? Yeah, sure. It's quote unquote self-fulfilling prophecy, but it's not prophetic. There's clear relationships between the choice and the outcome. What's not as clear as what's behind the choice. So what was it that you said you might say? So I might point out that on one hand,
00:29:57
Speaker
that there's a conflict there,
Patient Autonomy in Therapy
00:29:59
Speaker
right? And this is also analytic, right? The conflict is there's a part of her that really wants to be chosen. And then there's a part of her that is so scared to be chosen that she continues to date guys that are emotionally unavailable.
00:30:13
Speaker
that makes it more about an internal conflict. My sense is the first way that I heard you put it would stand a higher chance of being taken as sort of by the patient as blaming, even if you didn't intend to blame, like why do you keep making these bad choices? Which is a little bit closer to just stop making bad choices. And then it goes back to your question about the stop sign as well, what should I do instead though? Right. Right. And so instead, why don't we
00:30:41
Speaker
for the record, I don't work like this. This is just for the purpose of the example. Yeah. We're talking about narratives, right? How do we start? This is not an accurate narrative of how you work.
Purpose and Change of Narratives
00:30:52
Speaker
How do we start to disentangle this? Right. And it's not a small thing, but first we have to look at, you know, not just how that narrative came to be, but what purpose is it serving? It is protecting that person against
00:31:11
Speaker
real, true intimacy, having something new and different, and the feelings that are so familiar to them of rejection, despair, those are the feelings that come back around and there's a lot of research about it, the repetition compulsion, but... Compulsion. Yeah, that... There's a compulsive quality. Yeah, it is. And it's something that's hard to change. It really is, but it's meaningful to change it.
00:31:42
Speaker
Well, it may be necessary or important or people can feel conflicted like I need to change that, but I can't. But it strikes me there's another element of narratives that comes up, which is how fast or how slow they are. You know, Freud had the conscious and the unconscious, this Hanuman had thinking fast and slow. I think a lot of times narratives are rushed.
00:32:03
Speaker
And when they're rushed, it's very hard to loosen them up. And one thing sort of any kind of psychotherapy can do, though a lot of it is dependent on the therapist's behavior,
00:32:15
Speaker
is to slow things down and when you slow a narrative down and sometimes i'll literally say like imagine that you're watching a movie and you slow it down like you know watching like a sports replay to see where the ball landed you know or repeat what you just told me and say it much slower and pause and let me know what else comes to mind sort of in in the cracks you know in the spaces
00:32:40
Speaker
When people tell something really fast you know like there's no room for inquiry and in the psychoanalytic tradition in which i was trained what one of the. Concepts is destabilizing narratives destabilizing isn't always a positive sounding word but a narrative which is counterproductive and to stable isn't.
00:32:59
Speaker
isn't useful. Right. Because it doesn't leave room. I mean, some narratives might be, you know, if they're really sort of bolstering people, people give themselves affirmations. I think that's different. I think our job is to look for the inconsistencies, you know, start to have people question themselves. That's really what we can give. So where can people find us?
Podcast Conclusion
00:33:26
Speaker
On Instagram, at doornoffcomments, we have a website who would love a review if you like what we're doing and get in touch with us. And work. What? And we're working. Go ahead. Sorry. I was just saying to get in touch with any ideas, thoughts, questions. I do feel like maybe we should do a Q&A podcast at some point so maybe we can start gathering some of that.
00:33:54
Speaker
like a real-time Q&A or a asynchronous. Let us know if you're interested in calling in or submitting questions. You can certainly send questions to us at hello at doorknobcomments.com and we will read them and potentially respond on air. Thanks for listening. Hope you have found it useful.
00:34:19
Speaker
Remember, the Doorknob Comments podcast is not medical advice. If you may be in need of professional assistance, please seek consultation without delay.