Our brain is a storyteller. It continuously receives information about the world through our senses and puts them together to create a picture of the reality around us. These pictures are put together to create a story that we tell ourselves to make sense of the world and ourselves. These stories are personal. Our brain checks new information against the old one we already have and if there are similarities, it ends up in the same internal ‘box’ of meaning. Because humans have different life experiences, we might interpret the same information differently. That means that the stories we create about reality can also differ tremendously, even if we receive the same information from outside. We don’t perceive the world as it is, we perceive it through the filter of who we are and the stories we tell ourselves.
Missing information
The brain is also telling stories to overcome gaps in information. It takes whatever information it gets and then it creates a story that relies on this information, our own fears and wishes, old experiences etc. It fills the gaps in our information with other information that we generate from within ourselves. That is normal. Every human brain does that.
Problems
We cannot always trust the stories that our brain is creating. It might have missed some important information. And the internal sources that fill the gaps might mix all our worst fears and mistrust or our hidden desires into the way we see the world. When we are traumatized, the things that our brain mixes into the reality we perceive will create stories of danger, threat, survival, loss etc. For some people it will create a dream world dominated by what they want in life, not what is there, and they don’t see danger coming. Missing pieces of information create extremely difficult situations for us. If nobody explains the meaning of a situation, we come up with our own meaning and that will always be influenced by our past, and probably our worst fears. We create survival stories and then people are surprised when we seem to fight for our survival. A lot of the flight/fight/appeasement responses in relationships are based on internal stories about the reality that is currently happening. Our brain is producing a story where these survival strategies are needed and the appropriate response to something. It might just have very little to do with the shared reality of everyone else.
Hypoarousal
Something that is easily missed is that our brain is also sometimes creating stories of defeat, loneliness, alienation and helplessness. We respond with Shutdown and giving up. If there is a constant story inside that is hopeless, we stay in chronic Shutdown. We have sometimes learned to reality-check the stories that lead to outbursts, panic or relational issues because a reality check is actually a tool that is used for impulsive behavior and panic. Hypoarousal can be based on an old interpretation of reality as well. Doing a reality check just feels a lot harder. Sometimes it does help to remember that our brain is producing stories and not all of them are real.
Other people
Sometimes we don’t have enough information about people to create a good picture of who they are. We might not objectively need that info but we would like to have it to feel safe with them and the stories we create in our mind scare us. We don’t feel in control when we can’t access the information we would like but they also have a right for privacy. At other times we might just get to know someone and we simply didn’t have any time to collect any information about them. When we commit to the premature stories our mind is telling us we rob ourselves of the chance to get to know them without prejudice. Just because we don’t know if they are cool does not automatically mean that they will be horrible. They deserve a chance.
Projection
And sometimes people who dissociate become the victim of the projection of others. Chronic dissociation can show in a still face and no visible/tangible emotions. It regularly freaks other people out because they feel like they can’t read us, there is information missing and they make up their own story about us. I’ve had a person yell at me that I am about to kill them when really I was deeply scared because they yelled at me. They made up a story about how dangerous I must be based on their past experience of violence and the missing information about my feelings or impulses. I wanted to duck and vanish while their story told them I wanted to attack and kill. When people do that it is called projection. It helps to understand that it can happen when we share very little information about ourselves or others have a need for more information than we are willing to share. Being projected on regularly happens to people who don’t feel their own emotions deeply and therefore don’t show much emotion. People get insecure around us and start to make up stories about our intentions and feelings. That is not our responsibility. Those who project have to manage their own imagination. We don’t owe others more insight. But it is deeply uncomfortable and can be confusing to become an object of projection. I keep a post-it above my desk that simply says: ‘But is it true?’ It helps with re-orientation when others share their made-up stories about me. They have no clue. Their stories are based on a version of me that does not exist outside their head.
Know yourself
When we become aware of the stories our brain is producing for us based on missing information we can first practice to notice them when they are happening. Noticing it is the first sign that change is already happening. Then we find new ways to cope with it.
We could
- ask people to give us more information.
- openly share the story we made up in our mind with them and ask them what they think. They might give us more information or explain how they perceive the situation in their mind.
- Look for the missing information somewhere else or ask a third party who might know, although that is not as good at asking directly
- ask a third party how they would have interpreted the situation
- admit that we don’t have enough information to get a proper idea of what is happening and plan on being curious and open to find out more
- respect other people’s boundaries and focus on what is really important. We don’t need to know the life story of our therapist to be able to work with them on our own topics.
- Do the Facts-Feelings-Fantasies exercise to separate facts from fiction. Ask someone else to check if we found all the interpretations.
- ask ourselves what kind of story is playing in our mind, compare it to stories we already know from the past and recognize that this story is probably more based on the past then the present reality
- learn what type of story our mind tends to tell most often so we can recognize it more easily. Do you go for mind-reading or catastrophic thinking first? Generalizations? Other cognitive errors? Is there a pattern of idealization and devaluation taking turns? None of these reflect reality.
- Consider that what we think about the other person is actually something we thing about ourselves
- develop a habit of collecting the hard facts early on and notice the missing pieces of information. Being aware of the danger of story telling can help prevent it.
The inner Storyteller
Our need for control cannot always be met. Other people have a right to refuse giving us information. Sometimes the situation does not allow us to get more information. While it is often helpful to approach others with our needs to resolve the inner stories we cannot rely on that alone. We need to find a way to manage our inner storyteller and our need for control over a situation by ourselves. It can sometimes help to personify and externalize it and create the character of a Storyteller and a meta-story about the Storyteller telling us stories. Then we try to create new meaning from this new story where someone in our head constantly tells us stories while we go through our day. Then our first intervention in situations that stress us out could be asking the Storyteller what kind of story they are telling. Is it really about someone else or is it really about us and a past situation? Our Storyteller might be able to tell us what old story this current one is based on. Who was the original person in the old story? That usually explains a lot.
[Some systems actually have parts who do this. They are usually very young Observers and their coping during childhood might have been based on soothing stories. They learn to distance themselves from the fears of life by treating it all like a story that they are telling, so they must have control over it. These parts are not usually ones that tell us horrific stories. They narrate our life in a neutral tone and include whatever inner and outer realities they notice. Don’t get these confused if you have a part like that.]
It can help to imagine the Storyteller standing next to a stage where the scene is performed. Who is taking up which role in this drama? Maybe we can reenact it with sand tray figures. Seeing the scene before us can lead to more creative ideas on how to resolve the situation and tell a different story.
Therapists
Therapists usually learn how to cope with projection during their training. They might not be prepared for the gasps in information that we give them because we don’t find the trust, courage, safety or even the concept of sharing something with a living being inside ourselves. We probably learned that sharing is not safe and that everything we put out there will lead to suffering. It can leave therapists with barely anything to work with. But that is our boundary at that time. Not respecting it will not lead to a better felt sense of safety. Even therapists have to be diligent that they are not making up stories about us in their mind. The most dangerous story they can fall for is that everything is fine, we are fine, there are no problems, otherwise they would be visible. That is a dangerous trap when working with a disorder of hiddenness that is deeply rooted in hiding problems, suffering, active abuse, needs, emotions and our true thoughts from other people. Gaps of missing information must not be filled with an idealized story. Where we as patients often make up terrible stories about reality, some therapists tend to make up stories of everything being ok without becoming aware of it. They just react extremely surprised when they learn some missing piece and it looks really bad. They always ever see a front performance and not what is happening in the whole system. Even bodywork therapists can misread relaxed muscles as signs of social engagement and be surprised when we talk about crisis at the same time. In DID treatment, we always have to keep in mind that most of the person is invisible at the moment. It needs conversations to figure out what else is going on. Fantasies about us being ok are not enough.
Another quite toxic story that therapists can tell themselves is that we function like every other person they treat. Sometimes showing symptoms can be progress for a system that has almost killed themselves hiding them. When the story about our behavior automatically shifts into ‘symptoms need to be removed’ that is not a helpful story for our therapy process. Sometimes things need to be allowed to just be present first to avoid pushing them back into dissociation. Because the inner reality of DID looks different from other people there will be a multitude of similar situations where it is not enough to judge our behavior or outside appearance. The set path inside the mind is not telling the right story. The simple answer is rarely the right one when it ignores the interactions of dissociative parts.
We all create stories in our minds, patients as well as therapists. And our brain won’t stop doing that any time soon. We all need to stay aware that it is happening and check our version of reality against that of other people. Not everyone has a strong tendency to mix inside and outside reality but it happens to people with trauma a lot more often because that can be, objectively, hard to differentiate when we re-experience old emotions a lot. If we don’t compare our inner stories with the reality that others perceive regularly we might create deep fantasy worlds that share little with the reality others experience and people will call that out as looking borderline psychotic. Therapists will have to be wary of apparently normal stories they tell themselves about our life. ‘Apparently normal’ is a hallmark of dissociation, specifically, the element of dissociation that is called ‘ignorance’.