Storytelling

Mind-Killer #2

Back in January of 2022, I wrote an article entitled Telling Stories. This was before I had codified the overall mind-killer concept. At the time, I simply wanted to share how spinning a destructive internal narrative for years had been a significant factor in the downfall of my mental health and highlight some tools that helped me no longer do it.

Since then, I’ve gained a more comprehensive understanding of storytelling as a mind-killer and its most effective countermeasures. However, I don’t want to rehash anything I’ve already written and make this article redundant, so I will build on that content. Therefore, I highly recommend reviewing my previous post on the subject before continuing here. Whereas then, I focused mainly on my personal history, now I will dive deeper into how we bring about this mind-killer in the first place.

As I already discussed, my struggle with storytelling started after I committed what I call a “tactical error” during my active duty career. This was because my memories of that event were particularly traumatic. “Trauma” is a term used in various ways relating to something that negatively impacts us. In my case, it was a thing I did. But it can also be something done to us, like an assault, or something we witness, such as being at ground zero on 9/11. In any of these cases, “trauma” can refer to the event itself, the resultant immediate injury, or the lasting impacts we feel moving forward. We can experience trauma mentally and physically and often endure both simultaneously.

For any situation that fits into this category, the crucial question becomes, will we experience enduring trauma after the fact? After all, it’s not the occurrence that’s the issue. Whatever happened is gone. Even in the most horrific circumstances, the incident no longer exists. Ongoing trauma is purely a question of how well we deal with it physically, emotionally, and intellectually so we can move on.

The successful execution of the first of these is usually a given, assuming you don’t have any permanent damage. If you are in a car accident and suffer numerous broken bones, your body will heal. It may take time, but any acute somatic effects will eventually subside.

Emotionally and intellectually can be a far different story, though. We often struggle with trauma in these ways, and it’s what leads to persistent problems. Amazingly, our inability to process an event emotionally can even lead to physical dysfunction, as brilliantly detailed in The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk. Unraveling and overcoming this scenario can be challenging but is an enormous part of healing. Accordingly, I will discuss it in forthcoming content. For now, I want to deal exclusively with our intellectual difficulties in coping with trauma.

On that level, all we are dealing with is a memory. However, unlike many others, we now label this one as “traumatic” because it sticks in our craw and bothers us incessantly. This only reinforces that our reaction is the issue, not the memory itself. We are simply interpreting it destructively. Ultimately, we inflict enduring intellectual trauma upon ourselves by perpetuating these occurrences in our minds. It’s the only place they live, and we keep them on life support.

The question is, why do we do this? Why do we fixate on specific memories and allow them to define us this way? Why do we sometimes let our past consistently overtake our present? It’s because of our desire to find meaning.

Human beings are storytellers by nature. We recount historical tales and create works of fiction to thrill and amuse. Used as such, they are fun and serve as entertainment. But we also use them to teach a lesson or moral. Stories help highlight greater truths above and beyond the narrative alone when we can extrapolate a why from them. By doing this, we can reconcile any twist or turn because all of it now makes sense in support of some more significant meaning. There’s a reason it happened that way.

We do the same thing with our memories and lives in general. We don’t see any of it as a series of and thens. We transform the entire thing into a chronicle with a purpose. Anything that transpires must then support it. Of course, meaning can inspire us to do great things. But it can also get us into trouble when we seek to find it in everything, especially when a specific event from our past doesn’t align with it properly. We start fixating on the details of this particular passage because it throws off the why. Things weren’t supposed to happen this way. We wish it had been different. Struggling to make sense of it all, we ruminate on this occurrence (or several) until the action consumes us.

That’s precisely what I did. Like most people, I always wanted to be the hero in my own story. Until my tactical error, I had no trouble fulfilling that desire. But my tale no longer made sense when a particular incident threw a wrench in the narrative. So I changed it. And as much as I hated the new story, I kept telling it and building upon its new direction because I felt like I had no other choice.

I was wrong. We can decide the story we tell about any memory. The event itself is objective. It’s purely what transpired. However, the meaning we apply to it and, therefore, the narrative we construct around it is subjective. It’s a spin we apply that isn’t inherent. To illustrate this, I often refer to my personal example as a "Bill Buckner Moment.”

Bill Bucker was the first baseman for the Boston Red Sox in the 1986 World Series. With two outs in the bottom of the tenth inning of Game 6, Mookie Wilson of the New York Mets hit a routine grounder down the first base line. All Buckner had to do was scoop it up and step on the bag to give his team another chance at bat. But the ball went through his legs into right field, allowing Ray Knight to score the winning run from second. The Mets would also prevail in Game 7 and take home the championship.

Because of Buckner’s mistake, some people laid the loss for the Series at his feet. He even received death threats. They saw him as personifying the Curse of the Bambino. The Sox hadn’t won it all since trading Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1920, and many believed they were doomed never to do so again. These fans were proved wrong in 2004 when Boston finally secured a title. In time, most of them changed their tune about Buckner, too. But if you ask anyone what they remember him for, it’s still that single error.

I grew up outside Boston and vividly remember watching that moment on TV as an eleven-year-old kid. As an adult, the personal situation I faced was similar. It wasn’t on such a grand public stage, but within my professional sphere of influence, it felt like an equally enormous letdown to my teammates. I was humiliated and embarrassed by it. That basic reaction is ubiquitous. Almost everyone has something from their past they wish hadn’t happened the way it did, if at all.

Although there wasn’t just one side to Buckner’s story. Boston fans created a tale of failure about that moment and leveraged an imagined hex to make sense of it. But New York fans told one of triumph, even proclaiming the fulfillment of destiny. However, in either case, the event was identical. The fact that it can be the worst moment in sports history for half the people watching and the best moment for the other half proves that the interpretation is purely a matter of perspective. “Bill Buckner Moment” can make you feel completely different depending on who you are.

To take it further, anyone watching that game could have theoretically decided to root for the other team wholeheartedly and derived the opposite meaning from the outcome. That may seem outlandish, but it’s certainly possible. Even without going that far, a fan of the losing side could have made that loss into a positive account with an appropriate lesson of, “We just have to close games better.” Conversely, a winning fan could have turned the victory into a negative story like, “We should have had them in five games, not seven.” No one changes the events, just the narrative and resulting lesson or moral.

The bottom line is that you can freely decide the story and resultant meaning to shape from your memories, even the traumatic ones. You can even tell no story and elicit no meaning from them. This can seem unsettling to some, but we should consider it liberating. Nobody is forcing us to interpret what we’ve seen, done, or had done to us in any specific way. We don’t have to be tied down by a narrative we’ve constructed about our past if it isn’t serving us. And we certainly don’t have to let it define us. Unfortunately, too many people do the opposite, as I did. The result is often what we refer to as Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, “PTSD is a disorder that develops in some people who have experienced a shocking, scary, or dangerous event… People may experience a range of reactions after trauma, and most people recover from initial symptoms over time. Those who continue to experience problems may be diagnosed with PTSD...”

Other sources define the condition similarly. In my estimation, storytelling separates those who recover from trauma from those who succumb to PTSD on an intellectual level. It’s the result of the worst narrative possible, at least in part. As stated before, there can be other mitigating factors, and the emotional processing component is also enormously important (more on that later). But a massive element of PTSD is simply the story one insists on telling themselves. It’s exactly what I was doing. Note that I use the word “doing” deliberately. I was engaged in self-destructive behavior, not the sufferer of some disease.

Unfortunately, many with this condition, including veterans like me, often fail to realize this. Instead, we believe PTSD is something we are powerless against or even a permanent state of affairs. I know conditions like this are complicated and can hinder people’s day-to-day functionality. I do not deny the horrific things people go through, nor am I belittling their ongoing plight. But I can unequivocally state that a considerable portion of that struggle rests firmly on storytelling. Even if you have endured the most egregious injustice or abuse, you can tell yourself a story of survival instead of victimhood. And if you are sitting there thinking, “No, I can’t,” that’s just another story. Altering it for the better is 100% your responsibility. In the following article, I’ll detail exactly how you do it.

DISCLAIMER: RARE SENSE® content is not medical advice. Nor does it represent the official position or opinions of any other organization or person. If you require diagnosis or treatment for a mental or physical issue or illness, please seek it from a licensed professional.