Frame your narrative

Our brains always need to make sense of what’s happening to us – this forms a foundation of our “narrative identity”. The way you mentally explain your life to yourself has a dramatic effect on your health and well-being. Amy Caddy in her book Presence talks about a recent study where researchers interviewed people in their 50s and 60s about their family, work and health, and then tracked their psychological and physical health over the next four years.

Amy Cuddy writes: “In these interviews, four narrative themes emerged from the way people told their life stories: agency (people felt they were in control of their lives), communion (people described their lives as being about relationships), redemption (people felt that challenges had improved their attitudes or conferred wisdom in some way), and contamination (people felt that positive beginnings had turned toward negative endings). Those whose narratives fell into the three positive categories—agency, communion, and redemption—experienced significant positive mental health trajectories in the following years. But people who described their lives in terms of contamination experienced poorer mental health. And the relationships between the narratives and the health outcomes were even stronger for people who were facing significant challenges, such as major illness, divorce, or losing a loved one.”

This shows that we are much better equipped to deal with adversity that inevitably comes our way if we assert some sort of control over parts of it, nurture our relationships and choose to learn from our experiences. It’s important to remember that as we deal with current global health challenges. So this week let’s focus on framing our narrative.

HOW TO:

Answer the following three questions:
1. What can I control in the current situation? (Ex. You don’t have control over your child’s school closure, but you do have control over her home schooling schedule) Exercise that control mindfully.
2. Which relationships do I want to nurture? Pick a handful of people that you want to check in with regularly and keep it up.
3. What can I learn from this? There already might be some lessons that you have learned about yourself from this whole experience, and you can choose to approach any new development with this attitude.

Try to keep those question in mind as we collectively move forward to help you keep your sanity during this challenging time.