I believe that every one of us file away dozens of stories in our minds every day. We don’t do this intentionally. It just happens.
Whether the story is from a movie you just watched or an experience you just had, you place these stories in a mental filing cabinet. But the tabs on these folders aren’t topical. Rather, they’re emotional.
When we experience a story, we don’t necessarily file it away according to who was in the story. We tend to file these stories under how we might react in a similar situation: Anger, Attraction, Confusion, Frustration, Happiness, Sorrow, etc.
We do this so we have some past experience to help guide us during a present experience.
Some of us pull out Anger scripts faster than others in order to keep people at bay. Some are prone to reuse Happiness scripts to gloss over reality. We all have our particular go-tos.
Having a mental filing cabinet is not the problem. Pulling these stories out to help you get through life is also not (necessarily) the problem.
The problem is when you choose to constantly use the same script to guide your life.
And the worse problem is when you allow those fabricated stories to trump reality.
Read more about this in The Stories We Tell Ourselves.
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