The Power of Narrative and Reframing
We often craft narratives or stories in our head about events, experiences, people, places, etc., which, given what the brain is programmed to do, makes sense. In the process, we may adjust, add, or omit facts or aspects to make the story fit. When we craft narratives or stories our brain accesses the parts that are involved in emotional, processing, memory, and social cognition (Martinez-Conde et al., 2019). While there is plenty of neuroscience research that talks about the specifics, we will not dive into that here and now. If you would like to, the research is interesting and Google Scholar is a great tool for investigating this topic. Our focus takes us down a different path.
The Narrative
In the past, the human ability to craft a story or narrative served to help keep us alive. Even in our lives today stories and narratives help us. For example, when we create a story about something it helps us remember. So we may want to say thank you to our brains for all that they do for us. On the flip side, the narratives or stories that we create can also cause problems. At this point you may be either shaking your head in agreement or thinking that this blog post is nuts. Either reaction is fine, as well as any reaction in between. Like many things in life, there are two sides to a coin and that is what we will be exploring.
Let’s say the brain creates a narrative or story about a person’s self-worth. The brain will pull from different experiences to craft that narrative. It may pull from experiences across the lifespan that contain a variety of information. The extra interesting piece is that the brain may only pull certain aspects of an experience that confirm the story we want to create. How does this then play out? Coming back to the self-worth example. Let’s say the person has a narrative that reinforces a low self-worth. Let’s also say that this narrative has been crafted over a period of years pulling from times when this person has made mistakes, things that people have said about them related to their self-worth, and even experiences that could help build self-worth. This person has a recent experience where their car breaks down, despite diligent car care, on the way to take their parent to the doctors office to have a very important medical test done. Because of the car breaking down, their parent missed the appointment. When this happens, the person falls into thinking about how worthless they are because they couldn’t even get their loved one to the doctor’s office for this important medical test. In this scenario the brain only looked at some of the aspects of the experience, the missed doctor’s appointment and how they let their parent down, and then used it to add to the low self-worth narrative. Instead of pulling from the whole experience and accounting for the car breaking down, the brain used confirmation bias to continue to add to the low self-worth narrative. Confirmation bias is when we only see what we want to as it relates to what we are trying to prove (Peters, 2022). Quick note about confirmation bias. It isn't all bad. One theory about why confirmation bias evolved is about how it allows us to influence people and social structures with the idea that they will eventually match what we believe about them so that we stay connected with social reality (Peters, 2022). Again, we have a situation where there are two sides to the story of confirmation bias.
The above example is a bit of an over simplification. Hopefully, though it still conveys the general idea about how we need to be mindful when crafting our narratives. We need to be able to look at the whole picture rather than just aspects of the picture.
Cognitive Reframing
One great way to work with narratives that may need a little tweaking is to use cognitive reframing. Cognitive reframing is a technique used to shift your mindset so you're able to look at a situation, person, or relationship from a slightly different perspective (Clark, 2013). This technique is something that you can do at home or anytime you experience distorted thinking. When this work is done with a therapist cognitive restructuring. A therapist can be helpful when learning about cognitive reframing.
For now, let’s come back to our above example. What if the person in the example, instead of jumping right into the I am worthless story, slowed down and mindfully asked the question, "Is there another way to look at this situation?" They might just see other bits of information such as accounting for the car breaking down, which is not necessarily their fault and is out of their control especially since they are diligent about car maintenance. Now there is space to begin to provide new information to the narrative. Again, potentially an over simplification, but hopefully helpful.
Cognitive reframing also asks you to think about self-compassion and mindfulness. We need to invite self-compassion into the picture so that we are not allowing ourselves to be caught in our self-critic. And, we need mindfulness to help us catch the moments when we need to slow down and take another look.
Black titles spelling out “Your Story” on white titles.
take action today moment:
Consider what you read about narratives, cognitive reframing, and confirmation bias. What roles do these concepts play in your life? Are there narratives that you want to explore to see if you have been using confirmation bias to sustain a narrative that is no longer serving you? If you find yourself thinking that there are some narratives in your life that could benefit from cognitive reframing, give it a try and, if needed, reach out to a therapist for support.
Learn More About Narratives, Cognitive Reframing, and Confirmation Bias:
Positive Reframing and Examining the Evidence
Why do we favor our existing beliefs?
References
Clark, D. A. (2013). Cognitive restructuring. In S. G. Hofmann & D. Dozois (Eds.), The Wiley Handbook for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (1st edition) (1-22). John Wiley & Sons Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118528563.wbcbt02
Martinez-Conde, S., Alexander, R. G., Blum, D., Britton, N., Lipska, B. K., Quirk, G. J., ... & Macknik, S. L. (2019). The storytelling brain: how neuroscience stories help bridge the gap between research and society. Journal of Neuroscience, 39(42), 8285-8290. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6794920/
Peters, U. (2022). What is the function of confirmation bias?. Erkenntnis, 87(3), 1351-1376. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10670-020-00252-1?trk=public_post_comment-text