We live the stories we tell ourselves

The following is an excerpt from an email from Juliet Bruce, PhD, a author and member of our community. She has graciously agreed, at my request, to allow it to be re-posted here to that everyone can access it. I think the topic is powerful and would love to hear your feedback. (BB)

From Juliet: "I believe we don’t tell the stories we live; we live the stories we tell ourselves. To a large extent, our outer lives reflect these stories, and to a large extent, we have the power to shape our lives through re-imagining them.

As infants, we begin to spin stories out of our own early experiences, while at the same time absorbing stories from our families and culture. These stories become “templates of expectation” about who we are and how our life will be, and they become deeply embedded in our unconscious. Unfortunately, for too many of us, these stories may have nothing to do with our gifts and everything to do with shutdown and fear. For the rest of our lives, or until we begin to intentionally reframe them, they replay over and over again -- creating pain in our outer lives that matches the inner pain from which we’re hiding. Often it takes outer crisis to drive us inward to acknowledge these shadow stories and to give them voice.

From a story perspective, crisis is the call to life-changing adventure. Just as we have limited ourselves through story, we can use story to become free.

My practice uses storymaking, amplified by visual arts, music, and dance. The archetypal nature of myth/folk tale taps into the roots of life. My clients learn to view their life as a story with many twists and turns and to view themselves as both character and storyteller, hero and villain, ally and adversary. They find in themselves their own curative story.

Working with me requires no previous artistic experience, but I do ask that my clients have therapy or 12-Step program experience. This is not a substitute for deep analytic therapy; it is creative process applied to life. As Michelangelo wrote: "I saw an angel in the stone and I carved until I set him free."

One such story process can be found at http://livingstory-ny.blogspot.com."

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