Let go of the labels that limit your potential.
I am a story listener by day and a storyteller at night. I am a story-lover. I love rethinking about the story of a movie for many days afterwards, like I did with the French Canadian one based on a true story I saw recently. It was a beautiful story of the shared passion for the natural world and epistolary love between the founder of the Botanical Garden in Montreal, Frère Marie-Victorin, and his young assistant, Mademoiselle Gauvreau.
But there is another kind of story that we make up about our own selves, the labels we carry on us that become storylines and that we get so attached to and so fiercely protective of. These stories must not be overly emphasized or often even believed because the words, the adjectives, the labels that we use tend to prevent us from really seeing, hearing or perceiving the world around us.
These narratives and beliefs about who we are and the identities we present to others were either imposed upon us by the environment we grew up in and later internalized, or they may have been constructed to compensate for, neutralize or deal with the pain associated with those forced labels (counter-stories). As I wrote in another column, growing up — as is often the case in families —my sister and I were polarized and other people's feedback only amplified that. I was the intellectual, responsible, studious one, while she was the athlete with a sense of humor. As a result, it took me a very long time to realize I could also be physically active (and crack jokes). For years, this story, this label prevented me from trying (I really sucked at PE).
Even a statement as innocuous as “I am a doctor,” although factually correct, can be a problem. Clinging onto the persona, the title, creates limits which prevents the person identifying as “doctor” from seeing the full range of possibilities of their essence. Would I be less me if I had chosen to become a librarian, a mixed-media artist or a theme-party organizer (all of which I could very well see myself do)? Of course not. Hopefully, the truth of me would still transpire regardless of the path chosen.
The other problem associated with being caught in our self-created storyline is potentially more serious. It is when there is a value judgment associated with it, often made by ourselves and not just others, that is either excessively positive or excessively negative. The first case puts the believer in a position of superiority because it generates a hierarchy. “I am intelligent,” when over-identified with and dysregulated, can lead to the aberrant thinking, “All of the others are idiots.” Having a distorted perception of one’s level of knowledge can be an obstacle in recognizing ignorance, with some potentially very catastrophic consequences. Simply think of overly confident politicians... if they learned to let go of their own storylines of success — real or imagined — they would more easily detect their flaws, remediate them and they would be more attentive to their constituents’ concerns.
With “I am wealthy” could come some entitlement or sense of being better than others, especially when one’s own worth is equated with material possessions. A striking statement I have heard, “I am humble.” is almost comical because saying it basically cancels or disproves this affirmation. True humility is not bragged about! And this person was, in fact, terribly arrogant.
Binary labels are at the root of totalitarianism: you have the “good nation” supposedly needing to protect itself by attacking the “bad people.” But if our minds were completely silent, there would not be such polarized judgments. Absolutes are not helpful nor representative of reality. The world would be more peaceful as we would realize that our separateness is just an illusion. At our core, we are the same. A nonagenarian friend of mine, Bill, who also facilitates a luminous group that helps the participants examine such stories and let go of them, often says that “Life lives itself through us,’’ meaning we are only witnesses or vehicles to phenomena such as experiencing sensations, offering compassion and love, or expressing unique gifts.
Excessively negative storylines are also quite damaging for the person for obvious reasons. “I am worthless,” “I am incapable,” “I am lazy” are limiting, untrue and risk creating or perpetuating an existing depressive state. Similarly, equating our identity with emotional states (“I am scared’’) risks granting permanent residency to what should only be a visitor in our mental space.
Brainwashing oneself into thinking that we are only virtuous (“I am truthful, I am thoughtful”) prevents us from having a realistic self-representation and therefore creates distortions and lack of ownership and projection of blame when mistakes occur (and they inevitably will).
Recently, I saw a woman in her 70s for intake. She admitted having had to take a Xanax before the appointment, something she had been able to do less and less. But the appointment had made her so anxious because she didn’t know what to expect, something I have heard regularly from patients (sadly, many people forget that psychiatrists are healers and human yet continue to feel intimidated by our field). After a very fruitful assessment, she thanked me and admitted she had worried for no reason, saying, “You were sweet and kind.”
The younger version of me would have jumped on the compliments and kept them as a precious treasure, just like I once did as a physical therapy student doing a rotation at a hospital when my supervisor commented on my politeness. I saw myself as politeness! It became ingrained in my identity, to the point that it blocked other important, bolder aspects of me from emerging. Politeness taken to an extreme led me to be over-accommodating and it took me some time to learn to respect and assert my own boundaries. I learned the difference between authenticity and niceness, and I strive for the former.
I saw these woman’s words as the beginning of a story she made about me. I am not saying it is not a worthy or valid story, but I see this for what it is, and instead of accumulating new labels I thanked her and expressed how glad I was she felt I put her at ease. I focused on the fact that she had a positive experience, and it doesn’t mean it had anything to do with me, anyway.
Letting go completely of all the storylines might be utopic, like the asymptote on a graph never reaching the curve. But instead of having fixed beliefs about oneself (“I am creative,” “I am calm”), since there are no absolutes, it might be less limiting to say, “I strive to express my creativity more” or “I work at becoming more regulated in stressful situations.” Instead of saying “I am social” or “I am famous,” why not say simply “I am”? That is a good step towards freedom, a gradual taper of the story. And it anchors us in our beingness. We are human beings, not human doings or human havings!
Imagine a gathering when most guests don’t know each other. What if instead of asking “What do you do for living?’’ we asked, “What is your current perception of this moment?’’ or “What are you passionate about?’’ This is the type of exchange I crave.
I started experimenting with not jumping on my usual internal dialogue or narratives while watching two of my sons at the pool, one being a very cheerful instructor and lifeguard, the other being an avid swimmer (OK, right there, I have storylines about my boys, ha!). Anyway, I would typically be there and be visited by difficult stories, motherly preoccupations while observing their practice. But when giving space to storylines (about me, them, us), I am no longer in the moment. The storylines are in response to fear. We somehow create identities as walls or shields because of perceived attacks to our egos, but again, we are not those labels. We are not our fears, our desires, our accomplishments, our wounds. We have to remain open to the possibility that the ways others view us and how we view ourselves are limited and limiting. If we finally lower our guard because we refuse to succumb to fear, since the opposite of fear is love, there is more room for love.
Clinging to anything (money, relationships, status, stories) paralyses us, prevents us from moving forward and expanding. It is actually dishonest (and potentially dangerous) to assert, “I am objective.” Who is never subjective or biased? Opening up our palms, letting go, allows us to receive the true abundance of life in the form of insights, gratitude, inspiration and love. Paradoxically, giving up the idea that we are this or that (humble, honest, unbiased, compassionate, etc.) is more likely to lead to the embodiment of those very attributes!
At the pool, I was able to silence at least a few of my usual storylines for a couple of seconds. I felt like it freed up a vastness for love to show up even more in my heart as I was noticing more things about my sons, for example, the way Youri lifts his mouth or Kristof’s expression of joy as he walked around with a friend. I was seeing my boys as works of art. I was attentive to the moment as it was unfolding rather than looking at it with old, scratched glasses that are my stories. There was also less of a sense of “me,” or of “me-ness,” that tends to be encumbered with so many attributes I feel I must defend. But not this time. There was only the moment and the delight of seeing my sons in an environment that is soothing.
If I had not been able to move past my water-phobic identity of my early childhood, it would have crystallized in a storyline, in an identity. Fortunately, I didn’t have time to repeat that story too long to prevent me from opening up to the experience of learning how to swim. The refusal to believe in my complete ineptness happened naturally for swimming and other sports.
What are the stories about yourself that you have a hard time shedding? What are they preventing you from expressing? And what is the worst that could happen if you decided to stop believing everything you think about yourself?
The storylines of the ego can be addictive. But like any drug, they prevent us from being more conscious. And to me, expanding consciousness through various experiences is the whole point of living, not polishing or protecting the labels on our material selves. In order to be everything we can be, we have to be nothing or nobody. An adorable question from my middle son Andreas when we watched The Neverending Story years ago comes to mind: “Maman, why did the néant...’’ (nothingness) “... come? Is there the néant in our world?”
So, the running commentary of who you think you are in your mind is not all there is. For once, this is an exciting unknown, or “néant”: to face and connect with each other with bare naked identities. We are not old refrains. The music of our souls has an infinite number of orchestras. There is more to our truth than we can imagine. But to get there, we need complete silence within.
Read Caroline's blog, Âme Sweet Âme here.
Email Dr. Giroux
