Imagine you are walking in the woods and you see a small dog sitting by a tree. As you approach it, it suddenly lunges at you, teeth bared. You are frightened and angry. But then you notice that one of it’s legs is caught in a trap. Immediately your mood shifts from anger to concern: You see that the dog’s aggression is coming from a place of vulnerability and pain. This applies to all of us. When we behave in hurtful ways, it is because we are caught in some kind of trap. The more we look through the eyes of wisdom at ourselves and one another, the more we cultivate a compassionate heart.
Tara Brach
So much of the time we are acting from our own pain in response to someone else’s pain. What if we could remember this better in the moment? What if we had better control of our emotional state in the moment? What if we could really see and hear where someone else is coming from?
I think this could change the world. It would start first by changing the story we tell ourselves. It’s a powerful thing, those stories. They shape us. They take the same set of circumstances and shine them in totally different lights.
In this quote, Tara Brach is illustrating this principle for us. One story is that this animal is ready to bring intentional harm to us. The alternate story is this animal is very hurt and therefore very vulnerable and ready to defend itself. So interesting that something that “looks” the same can have such a different meaning based on the story we tell ourselves about it.
There is another aspect to this as well. The stories we tell ourselves over and over, become ingrained in us at a level in which we are unaware. We have automatic responses to people, places and things, because somewhere in our history we created a story about the meaning of these things and now we accept it as fact…without question.
But what if the story is wrong? And yet we are still going about unaware that we have this unquestioned idea in our mind and think it is a fact. Thoughts and feelings are not facts. They are messages. They are information telling us about what is happening in that moment. And if we accept them as fact without question…well, we may find ourselves a far distance from the truth without ever intending it.
These are the very concepts that are manipulated in marketing. We are told over and over what beautiful is and is not. What successful is and is not. What we “need” and what we do not “need”. Over time we start to distrust our own guts on these things, and fall into the trap of the status quo telling us what our lives should be. And furthermore, feeling disappointed when we are not able to attain these things. Believing our very human existence, as it is, has somehow missed the mark.
I can’t tell you the number of times I have run into this with folks I work with. People come in looking to treat their anxiety and depression and don’t even realize that the stories that they are telling themselves are having a negative impact on them. Many times they don’t even notice that they tell themselves these stories, or that they accept them as facts without question. They have learned not to trust their own judgment on things. They have been taught that the definitions of how to live their lives are somehow outside them, generated by outside forces, and they feel they have no ability to change these circumstances.
What stories are we telling ourselves that may be harmful? What can we do to change these stories? So much of what I do with people in these situations is to help them unlearn things. To help them discover what they stories are underneath the surface, how those stories got there, and how they can help themselves re-author those stories. I would love to help you with this too. Click below for a few gifts to get started on this.