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The stories we tell ourselves are comprised of a wide variety of scripts we’ve picked up along the pathways of our lives, from what we learn from our parents to what we see on TV and in the movies. For Steve and Lauren, part of the stories they’d been telling themselves involved what they had […]

In The Stories We Tell Ourselves, I share fictional stories throughout the book based on a made-up couple, Steve and Lauren. However, these stories are based on reality and the hundreds of clients I’ve seen and counseled over the last decade. In Chapter 7, “Stories in the Dark,” I describe how Steve grew up watching […]

When screenwriters compose a script, they also have to formulate what’s known as a logline, a one-sentence description of the entire movie. In The Stories We Tell Ourselves, I presented this list of loglines from the Internet Movie Database. See if you can guess each film: “Two imprisoned men bond over a number of years, […]

Netflix’s company profile begins by touting its impressive numbers: “Netflix is the world’s leading Internet television network with over 69 million members in over 60 countries enjoying more than 100 million hours of TV shows and movies per day ….” Let me put that last number into perspective for you. 100 million hours equals almost […]

Throughout the last month, I focused on the stories we tell ourselves based on who raised us and the scripts we picked up from their words and actions (or non-actions, as the case may be). Let’s shift gears now and discuss another source for the scripts we use to navigate the world: actual scripts. What […]

Over the last few weeks on my blog, I’ve focused on the stories we tell ourselves based on the scripts we hear and pick up as children from the people who raised us. For the most part, the posts have been somewhat negative, as if every person’s childhood was fraught with some major issue caused […]

Not everyone wrestles with problems in their present because of what their parents did (or didn’t do) in their past—but many of us do. And that’s not something to feel ashamed about or discouraged by. Carrying wounds from our respective childhoods is part of the human experience. But whether we choose to allow those wounds […]

Throughout my last few posts, I’ve discussed the stories we tell ourselves (also the title of my first book) about particular issues in our lives. For instance, we tell ourselves certain stories about work, money, politics, spirituality—largely based on the way our parents (or primary caregivers) modeled these topics for us. The most challenging stories […]

In my previous post, I discussed how your mind tends to travel down the path of least resistance when you encounter a troubling problem or difficult person. More often than not, this path leads directly back to your childhood and how your primary caregivers (i.e. the people who raised you) modeled life for you. But […]

“Why can’t we eat dinner at the table more often?” “Are we going to your parents’ or mine for Christmas this year?” “I don’t think the way we’re discipling the kids is really working that well. Do you?” In Chapter 6 of The Stories We Tell Ourselves, I wrote, “As you age, the path of least […]