Who Tells Your Story? Cognitive Behavior Theory and the Power of Choice

Humans are effective and efficient storytellers. We’ve understood our mysterious world through stories for millennia. We use stories to teach and entertain, to hold history and culture, and to relate to each other. Neuroscientists have studied the impact of stories’ ability to release oxytocin on the brain which plays into building relationships, a critical component of our nature as social creatures.

Based on their constructive power, it should be no surprise that stories persist in plain sight as well as whispering quietly in the background of our consciousness. Our brains rely on storytelling to take shortcuts which helps efficient learning but can also create cognitive bias and a propensity to exclude new data. When running quietly in the background, old stories can quickly turn into limiting beliefs without awareness.

Cognitive Behavior Theory took root in the field of psychology in the 1950s and is first attributed to Albert Ellis’ Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT). Ellis posited an ABC model of A- Activating Event, B- Belief, C-Consequences. The breakthrough concept here was that it is not the activating event that necessarily causes the emotional consequences but there is a step in between, the belief one holds about the event, which then causes either a positive, negative or neutral emotion.

I imagine I’m not alone in that if I look back at my life I’ve spent the majority of it careening from stimulus to response without much awareness of that potential for space in between. As I have slowly built up a meditation practice over the years, I now understand that the space between stimulus and response is the seat of much power.

Let’s pretend that you, like me, still often miss that golden opportunity between stimulus and response, and you find yourself landed squarely in the consequence zone. There is still a way to work backward in this technique. It’s easy to know where to start because all you must do is wait until you feel emotionally triggered and then do a little digging. The strong emotion is your cue to ask with genuine curiosity, what stories am I telling myself here? There may be one or several that you might identify. Once you have them clear in your mind the next step is to ask yourself, is this true? Some stories will collapse right there like a house of cards but if not, you can take it further by pursuing one of two directions.

1. You might ask yourself what evidence to I have for and against this belief and write it down. Sometimes one can find that what feels true emotionally doesn’t hold up against observed evidence. This can be the difference between understanding a situation with the limbic brain vs. the prefrontal cortex.

2. The other strategy is effective even in the absence of evidence and involves asking ourselves what else could be true? Perhaps there’s no way of discerning one universal truth and there are simply possibilities. Can you think of some possibilities that might be at least as true as the original belief? Can you play around and think of one or two that is positive?

Once you are in a place of either observed evidence, alternate possibilities, or both, is when you shift into the driver’s seat. Not only do you get to choose whether or not you bring your old beliefs into your new life, but you also get to decide which story to live out. You get to tell your own story.