Stories, Layers & Consciousness...

I believe in the healing power of story… When you’re experiencing discomfort, distress and/or dis-ease I can’t emphasise enough how insight-full and important it is to see that there is a story that we hold about this discomfort.
Our stories are made up of our beliefs and life experiences.
We tell our stories everyday to our friends, our colleagues, our partners. It is less often that we take the time to tell them to ourselves and to see what drives these stories; where did they come from?
Stories have different layers that are often connected to our different levels of awareness or consciousness. Your story may appear to be as simple as "I'm unhappy at work". However, there will generally be more stories layered beneath the surface that have compounded over time to bring you to this conclusion.
Here's an example:
At the surface level a story may be: “My boss never gives me any time to listen to my new ideas. I’m unhappy at work and I don’t know what to do about it.”
When we look closer we may find: “I notice some nervousness at the thought of sharing my new ideas with my boss and I realise that I don’t create enough time to share them with her. When there is time I notice my voice goes soft and starts to break when I speak.”
This looking closer means starting to unpack the story and looking at the key symbols and possible associations; the boss (perhaps authority figure), being given time (feeling important, worthy), being heard (feeling valued via verbal expression), ideas (personal worth, value) etc.. Often this process leads to memories, feelings of other similar experiences that still hold some sort of pain or trauma which leads us to the next level…
Digging even deeper we may find a story such as: “When I was a kid and I got excited about creating and had new ideas I was told to shut up and get out of the room; to stop being annoying. It was painful and after some time I stopped making these suggestions to avoid the pain. Now I can see a direct association that I hold between pain and new ideas/being creative.”
Once you get to this point, to the source of the discomfort, you can then a) have the opportunity to actually really feel an express the pain that has remained locked in your body and b) make a conscious choice to change this story and create a new pathway for your new ideas to unravel on.
Our stories are made up of our beliefs and life experiences.
We tell our stories everyday to our friends, our colleagues, our partners. It is less often that we take the time to tell them to ourselves and to see what drives these stories; where did they come from?
Stories have different layers that are often connected to our different levels of awareness or consciousness. Your story may appear to be as simple as "I'm unhappy at work". However, there will generally be more stories layered beneath the surface that have compounded over time to bring you to this conclusion.
Here's an example:
At the surface level a story may be: “My boss never gives me any time to listen to my new ideas. I’m unhappy at work and I don’t know what to do about it.”
When we look closer we may find: “I notice some nervousness at the thought of sharing my new ideas with my boss and I realise that I don’t create enough time to share them with her. When there is time I notice my voice goes soft and starts to break when I speak.”
This looking closer means starting to unpack the story and looking at the key symbols and possible associations; the boss (perhaps authority figure), being given time (feeling important, worthy), being heard (feeling valued via verbal expression), ideas (personal worth, value) etc.. Often this process leads to memories, feelings of other similar experiences that still hold some sort of pain or trauma which leads us to the next level…
Digging even deeper we may find a story such as: “When I was a kid and I got excited about creating and had new ideas I was told to shut up and get out of the room; to stop being annoying. It was painful and after some time I stopped making these suggestions to avoid the pain. Now I can see a direct association that I hold between pain and new ideas/being creative.”
Once you get to this point, to the source of the discomfort, you can then a) have the opportunity to actually really feel an express the pain that has remained locked in your body and b) make a conscious choice to change this story and create a new pathway for your new ideas to unravel on.