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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 […]

In my last post, “Stories that Aren’t Stories,” I discussed how our earliest stories—those we mostly passively receive from our parents when we’re children—often don’t even seem like stories we tell ourselves when we’re adults because the relative truth of them is so ingrained in us. But as Rick Carson said, “Beliefs are opinions that […]

“The most powerful stories we tell ourselves are the ones we don’t realize are stories.” In Chapter 6 of The Stories We Tell Ourselves, I discuss this idea at length, but the gist is this: sometimes the scripts we use to live our lives don’t seem like false beliefs because they’re all we’ve ever known. In […]

In my last post I said that we all need to become better fact-checkers because the stories we tend to use to fill in the blanks of our relationships all too often increase our anxiety and bring unnecessary stress to our relationships. Now, think back to a recent event where what you assumed was going to happen […]

When it comes to your relationships, the fact is you don’t have all the facts.  In fact, you rarely have enough facts to really know the facts. And to put it as matter-of-factly as I can, your lack of facts makes you a better fiction author than friend or spouse. When you lack knowledge—especially about […]

When something bad happens in your life, what’s your first inclination? Do you want to eat something?  Or do you want to call your mom or dad? Do you want to go into your room, shut the door, and pretend the unfortunate circumstance didn’t happen? Or does your anger burn against the entity responsible for […]

“The stories we tell ourselves about other people can be like wrapping a warm blanket around our scarred, scared heart.” That particular line from the fifth chapter of my book, The Stories We Tell Ourselves, encapsulates so much of why I believe we use imaginary stories to pacify ourselves. Our made-up stories about others help us […]

Many of our relationships rely on the stories we tell ourselves about the one percent of factual information we actually know about the other person. For instance, you might really know only four facts about your boss: she’s my boss, a single mother, and only takes fifteen minutes for lunch every day. From that scant information—likely even less […]