Actor Harvey Fierstein once said: “Accept no one’s definition of your life, but define yourself.”
Often, we move through life as if we had no agency. When bad things happen, it’s easy to become victims of those circumstances and feel like we have no control. When we do that, we let shame, fear, or anger become the authors of our own story.
It becomes even more challenging if you struggle with mental illness, like depression or anxiety, or have experienced trauma in your life. Those things can feel so binding and make you feel so small. It’s like you’re just being thrown around life without any control at all. And if you’ve gone through something traumatic, that experience can easily sabotage your happiness.
When bad things happen, we are faced with a choice. Do we let those moments define us? Or do we rewrite our story?
Friends, we have much more agency than we realize, and it all has to do with our mindset. We can’t always keep bad things from happening — COVID-19, the death of a friend, mental illness — but we can control how we respond to those things.
“If we don’t rewrite our story, we relive our story.” – Lori Gottlieb
My guest today is Lori Gottlieb — one of the wisest women I have ever met. She’s someone who truly understands the value of writing your own story in life and writing it well.
Who Is Lori Gottlieb?
Lori Gottlieb is a renowned psychotherapist who writes the weekly “Dear Therapist” column in the Atlantic. And now, she’s out with a New York Times best-selling book called Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, which weaves Lori’s experience doling out advice with her decision to seek counseling herself. This book is also being adapted as television series, so stay tuned for that in the coming months!
In addition to her clinical practice, she writes The Atlantic’s weekly “Dear Therapist” advice column and regularly contributes to The New York Times and many other publications. Her recent TED Talk, “How Changing Your Story Can Change Your Life,” is one of the top ten most-watched TED talks of the year. I highly suggest that you check it out after listening to this episode. In it, Lori explains how we can break free from negative, repetitive stories and rewrite our narrative from a better, different perspective.
As a member of the Advisory Council for Bring Change to Mind and advisor to the Aspen Institute, Lori is a sought-after expert in shows such as The Today Show, Good Morning America, The CBS This Morning, CNN, and NPR’s “Fresh Air.”
She is also the co-host of the new iHeart Radio podcast, Dear Therapists, produced by Katie Couric. With fellow therapist Guy Winch, Lori invites you to be a fly on the wall and listen to raw, transformation sessions with real people and learn about yourself through the lens of others’ experiences.
I’ve wanted to have Lori on this podcast for a long time now, and we had an amazing, wide-ranging discussion on how her decades of wisdom can translate to a better life. In this interview, we talk about how anybody can rewrite their story, let go of shame, and have better, healthier relationships. You’re not gonna want to miss this one!
How to Rewrite Your Story
When someone’s struggling with trauma, mental illness, or loss, they usually seek therapy for one universal reason:
How can I be in less pain?
And that makes sense, right? Why else would we go to therapy other than to feel relief from suffering and find healing? In her counseling sessions, Lori is asked this question 24/7, and she’s provided so much counsel and wisdom to hundreds of people. But when it comes down to it, Lori explained that transformation only happens when it comes from within the person.
“They come to realize that they’re going to have to make changes, and I think that people don’t realize how much agency they have. They don’t really know that they can choose their response to their circumstances. … And I’m not saying that there aren’t incredibly daunting circumstances right now in the world … but then, how do you respond? What are you going to do about it? And I think that’s where people get stuck.” – Lori Gottlieb
When you’re deeply hurting, it’s easy to feel like you have no power, and you’re just a victim of your circumstances. But according to Lori, you actually choose to be a victim. This choice is usually supported by things in your past, traumas you’ve experienced, or a mental illness that you struggle with. The pain keeps us trapped in a negative narrative, and over time, we begin to believe the story is true.
“Whatever that version of the story is, we carry [it] with us, and we never revise it. And so you create a story when you’re younger, for example, about something that happened in your life. And then as an adult, you’ve never looked at that story through the adult lens. … And so that’s why I say that when people come in, that we’re all unreliable narrators … and the thing is, these are usually faulty narratives.” – Lori Gottlieb
What story are you telling yourself? Are you the hero or the villain in your own story? Are you a victim or a survivor? When bad things happen, I try to interpret them as “neutral events” that can teach me something. My response to those events dictates their effect on me, so if I can work on controlling my response, I end up being the author of my story.
When someone doesn’t rewrite their story, they’re stuck in a time-loop, which just creates more and more pain.
“If we don’t rewrite our story, we relive our story, over and over, over and over … We are stuck. … And you see it in everything.” – Lori Gottlieb
For example, maybe someone cheated on you during a serious relationship. That heartbreak and anger have stayed with you for years, and instead of working through that pain, you decided to treat yourself as the victim. Years later, you notice that you are sabotaging all your relationships because you never feel like you can trust anyone. You can trace that issue right back to that story you tell about yourself: “I’m not worthy of love, and I can’t trust anyone.”
Are you in one of these negative thought loops? I think it’s safe to say that all of us have some false narratives swirling around in our heads. Lori recommended that we ask ourselves “the miracle question” to get back on track:
“There’s this thing called ‘the miracle question,’ [and] it’s used in therapy. And the ‘miracle question’ is, ‘If you could have the kind of life that you want to have, what would that look like? And what is keeping you from having it? What is in the way right now that you can do?’ Write down … [that] scenario and what steps [you] need to take to get there. … We always like to say that the [biggest] transformations come about from the tiny, almost imperceptible steps that we take along the way.” – Lori Gottlieb
After you ask yourself the miracle question, don’t feel the pressure to get all those steps completed in one day. In most cases, it’s going to take time to finish that process. But, if you can choose just one small step and work on that, you’ll be amazed by the power it has. Slowly but surely, you’ll begin rewriting that narrative in your brain and reclaiming agency over your life.
And if you need help doing this, don’t hesitate to reach out to someone. This is where therapy is extremely helpful. When these stories are engrained deep within us, we often have an emotional block that keeps us from rewiring, and therapists can help with this. Remember: There is nothing braver than asking someone for help.
