When you’re caught up in the stories in your head, especially when you’re triggered over something deep, old and painful,… then it’s easy to confuse your stories with reality.

Here’s the difference between reality and story:

First there’s an observation.  It’s the cold, hard facts.  These are things you can see, hear, touch, smell… and others can, too.   That IS reality.

When you give meaning to what you see, hear, smell or touch… then you’re getting into a story.  That’s NOT reality.

Example: 

Observation:  Paul just came in here and gave me a kiss on the forehead.

Meaning 1:  he loves me and wanted me to know that.

Meaning 2:  he thought what I had just said was stupid and he was kissing away the thought.

Either one of the meanings above could be real for Paul.  Or not.  The only way to know is to communicate with him… to ask him what he was thinking when he kissed me on the head.

But without asking him, then I’m falling into Mistake Number 2 of the 5 Relationship-Wrecking Communication Mistakes.  I’m Story Telling.  And what’s dangerous about that is not so much the fact that I was making up meanings.  In fact, the human brain does that automatically.  You’ll never get away from it unless you reach enlightenment. 

The ineffective part about this is NOT communicating.  If I don’t ask Paul what he meant by that kiss, I may go the rest of the evening cussing him out under my breath for being such a patronizing jerk!  I could conceivably ruin my evening and his if I don’t check it out.

Well, if I do check it out and it turns out that he WAS being patronizing… at least I’ll know that I am for sure dealing with a jerk! 😉

Recently I gave a client an assignment to tell me one of the unspoken agreements in her relationship that she thought had been broken.  Here’s what she wrote:

In the beginning of our relationship, I thought you promised to love, honor and cherish me…for better or

worse…etc.  You’ve broken this agreement with me by not sharing your thoughts and feelings with me, which caused

you to internalize your fears, etc.  This, in turn, has  caused you to become angry, which has caused you to stop

giving me love and affection and you’ve stopped being respectful to me.

Readers:  Which parts of this do you believe are ‘story’?  Copy and paste the sentences you believe are story and put them in the comments box below.  I’ll look forward to seeing your thoughts on this!