Rewriting the Stories We Tell Ourselves

"I'm bad at math," she told me, and my heart sank. My daughter was upset and anxious about her performance in an upcoming math class. A few days ago, while completing a problem in class, a boy had said, "Why are you struggling with that? It was so easy for me!" This wasn't the first time. My daughter was ashamed, angry, and flustered.

Now, at age 9, like so many girls, my daughter tells herself the story that she is bad at math. I'm doing everything in my power to change this narrative because I know how pernicious it can be. I was diagnosed with math hysteria as a child. I couldn't complete a problem set without bursting into tears. The story that I was bad at math turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy for me. It didn't have to.

The stories we tell ourselves run deep, and they often skew towards the negative. When we're faced with something that makes us anxious and uncertain, or we fear shame, these stories turn on in live surround sound.

Dr. Diana Hill offers a simple toolkit that serves as a wonderful technique to become mindful of the stories we tell ourselves, interrupt them, and redirect them. Our interview centered around the discomfort and anxiety many of us feel about generative AI and our own livelihoods, so you will see these examples below.

Hill presents four questions that allow us to step back from the story a little bit and then determine: is this useful for me? Is it serving me?

Hill says, "For thousands of years, contemplative practice has worked with the human mind and storytelling. We can learn a lot about our minds from secular Buddhism or secular approaches to contemplative practice, because these are people that sit with their mind for hours on end."

Here's a simple practice around storytelling that has four parts, derived from the concept of wise speech, one of the components of the Eightfold Path. Hill notes that the first step is trying to notice when your stories pop up. Are there specific triggers? Certain people or situations? Do certain stories often pop up when you're anxious? When we notice that we're telling a story, we've already gotten somewhere by recognizing that this is a story and not just the truth!

Then, consider these four questions. They take the teeth out of a story, rendering narratives of negative self-talk into the jumble of words that they really are:

1. Is it true? This creates a pause in our anxious narrative. Is this story true? For example: Am I really bad at math? How do I know that it's true? Who says? Just because some boy says so? What's the evidence?

2. Is it helpful? Hill explains, "Sometimes we have true stories that we tell ourselves, but they are not actually helpful. If I'm fumbling over my words in an interview or I may have said too many 'ums', it may be true I could have done better. But if I start rehearsing that story during the interview, even though it may be true, it's not going to be helpful to me." Maybe I should take some elocution lessons at some point, but affirming this story at the moment doesn't serve me.

3. Is it kind? Hill stresses that many of the stories we tell ourselves have a self-critical negativity bias. Rarely do we tell ourselves stories about how amazing we are! We may worry, for example, that "AI is going to come take my job," and layer in: "I'm not good enough to keep up with it. Look, I can't even figure out how to use this app on my phone that uses AI." Asking ourselves "Is it kind?" brings an automatic, habitual negativity bias into consciousness.

4. Is it a good time? "I don't know about you, but my anxiety likes to show up at 2 AM. So I ask: Is this the right time to be having this conversation in my head? Maybe I'm in session with my client, and they're talking about AI in their job, and all of a sudden, I'm into my own story about AI in my job. That's not the right time," says Hill. There might be a good time to set aside and work through worries and concerns, but usually, anxiety doesn't have much courtesy.

"These four questions – is it true, is it helpful, is it kind, is it a good time – are a way to step back from our story a little bit and then actually ask us what's useful to us. We're doing what in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is called cognitive defusion, the capacity to defuse from our thoughts, get a little space from them, don't believe our thoughts as truth with a capital T, but rather be able to respond in the moment most effectively to what is at hand."

I had to ask Diana Hill: What if the story we're telling ourselves is anxiety showing itself at the right time? Hill responds: "Anxiety is not good or bad. This is what we call functional analysis in ACT: what is the utility of this energy of anxiety? What is the energy behind this anxiety, and how can I channel it effectively? My personal response to anxiety is to run through life as if I'm running across hot coals. So I just speed through everything, and I'm not as effective. If I want to channel that anxious energy in an effective way, and maybe to approach the very things that I'm anxious about, I'm going to go learn more about AI. For me, that has been working in the arena of research where AI is being used. I'm scared of it. I need to learn more about it. And it's anxiety-provoking as I do it. And the more that I do it, the more empowered I feel because I'm staying up on top of things."

"But you need to do it in a way where you stay in your most centered self, even with the storm of anxiety happening around you. And that is a skill, a practice that we can learn as well." Listen to our conversation:

Morra

P.S. Check out my just-released mini-courses on managing anxiety in the workplace from LinkedIn Learning. You can find the courses by searching Morra Aarons-Mele in the LinkedIn Learning search bar or go here: https://lnkd.in/d-v5XvvA

Courses include:

🌟 Harness Your Anxiety for Good

🔧 Managing Anxiety Triggers with Effective Techniques

🤝 Managing Anxiety During Negotiations

P.P.S: I'm a Featured Speaker at this year's SXSW conference- check out the announcement here.