Dr. Linda Nielsen

Excerpts

STORIES YOU CREATE – DECEIVING YOURSELF

Now you might be saying to yourself: "When it comes to remembering things about me and my dad, I know I can trust my memory and my feelings – and I know what did and didn’t happen in our family." Well actually, no you can’t trust your memory or your feelings – at least not all of them. Your memories and your present day feelings can be based on some pretty faulty reasoning. When your brain is processing information about what’s happening, you are creating a story as you go along. But your story isn’t based on objective or complete information. It’s based on your existing beliefs, your present mood, and your need to make everything in the present "fit together" neatly with what you think happened in the past.

Only after you’ve created your story, do you experience a "feeling". For instance, "I’m mad at dad because what he just did means he doesn’t like me as much as he likes my brother – or I’m feel sorry for Dad because he’s tired and didn’t realize it would hurt my feelings when he did that. " Or "I’m sad because what my daughter just did means that she doesn’t respect me or I’m feeling worried for my daughter because the way she just treated me means that she’s really stressed by her job." So before you put too much trust in your feelings, remember: feelings aren’t necessarily based on "the truth" because your brain’s natural inclination is to create stories that:

•	make you feel good about yourself
•	make the other person look like the jerk or the villain
•	caste the people you like most as good guys and those you like least as bad guys
•	interpret things the way you have in the past - even when you are wrong
•	make it seem as if what’s going on in the present is consistent with the past - even in situations where this is not true
•	create a unifying theme so you can organize and predict events in your life – even when the events were, in fact, not related and not predictable
•	try to convince yourself that there was a cause and effect relationship - even in situations where the events were actually random and unrelated

So now what?
If you have unpleasant memories that are still limiting or hurting your relationship, what can you do? First, talk together about those memories. Compare notes. Re-visit the past. See if you can modify or soften some of those hurtful memories in order to see each other in a better light. Second, take the troublesome memory and ask yourself: How can I get more information about that particular situation? What information might be missing from my version of the story? Is there a more positive way I could interpret that situation now that I’m older? Is there anyone who might have encouraged me to remember that event in such a negative way? Anyone who might have benefited from it?