One of the topics that is arising more and more frequently during my client sessions is the importance of recognising your own personal story and how it is affecting your day to day perception and interactions with others. Our stories are formed deep in childhood and during the subsequent years that follow we spend our time looking for evidence that collaborates and affirms our narrative on life. This happens on such a subconscious level we don’t even realise that we are doing it.

The following fictitious example demonstrates how this can play out.

Claire’s Story (Fiction)

The Cast

Claire came from a loving family background. She was supported and nurtured by both parents and on reflection can’t really pin point any major distresses in her life. She is however battling with a lot of conflict in her life, especially in the workplace. She wants to understand why she keeps finding herself at the centre of these situations and what she can do to move forward.

The Beginning

Upon speaking further it transpired that Claire’s mum was quite a fearful woman who had a distrust of people in general. Whilst safe and secure in her own family environment she often relayed tales to her children of examples of how you can’t trust people and that the majority of people aren’t actually particularly pleasant and can in fact be downright rude.

During Claire’s childhood these interactions from her mother didn’t seem to have too much significance or impact but, as she started to venture further into the world, she inevitably began to encounter more experiences and situations that started to affirm her mothers cautionary tales.

As time went on, with her childhood message ringing in her ears, Claire began to build up a defence mechanism against the “unpleasant people” of the world. Instead of running the risk of letting people treat her badly she began a behaviour that she felt protected her from this. It transpired that the majority of the interactions that Claire had were approached by herself with caution. This presented itself to others as Claire bordering on being quite rude. By nature Claire wasn’t a rude person, in fact once you’d got past the initial front she could be warm and caring. The problem was that to get past that front trust had to be built and trust takes time.

The Middle

Over the years Claire’s story of people not being particularly nice had grown and developed nicely and by the time she sought help she was quite convinced that most people were looking for some form of argument with her. The logic of this was that this simply couldn’t be the case. It just wasn’t possible that she was working in the only organisation in the world where everyone is rude and unpleasant.

What Claire had in fact created was a defence mechanism that she thought was serving her well, she was so efficient at it that she wasn’t even aware that she was doing it. From her childhood onward, starting from the tales of her mother, she had subconsciously looked for evidence that what she was taught and believed was true. The irony is that during this process and at the hands of her own behaviour Claire was actually bringing this narrative to life.

The Script

This is how it plays out …..

Claire approaches an interaction cautiously and feeling guarded, why wouldn’t she? People are rude after all. Claire’s approach feels hostile and lacking in warmth to the person that she is approaching, this puts them on the back foot and they proceed with caution. Claire senses this stand off from them, she is after all very good at reading this in people by now. As a form of self preservation she ups her defence. The normally perfectly reasonable colleague now sensing definite hostility puts up their own rarely used defence mechanism. To Claire this is a sure fire sign that yet again she is encountering yet another rude, and unpleasant person.

Yet again her story is confirmed.

People are rude and as such you must approach them with caution and defensiveness.

And so the cycle continues ….

The End

In the safety of a number of coaching sessions exploring this with Claire gave her the opportunity to consider that maybe there was a slim possibility that she could be creating these situations herself. With this in mind experiments were set for Claire to go away and try some different approaches with her colleagues to see what responses she received. None of this was about criticism of her current behaviour, it was merely about getting curious to see whether changing things a bit could get her a different result.

The outcome was, as expected, a positive one and whilst it took a bit of time to regain some relationships Claire quickly noticed that by dialling down her defence the quality of her interactions gradually begin to improve significantly.

The Moral of the Story ….

To a degree we all carry our own story and we will look in any direction that we can to have it confirmed, often ignoring strong evidence to the contrary in order to fulfil our script. Whether it’s low self esteem or a story about others, if we can find a way to confirm it we will. Most of the time we won’t have a clue that we are doing it.

If you have patterns of behaviour that you are struggling to understand working with a Coach or Therapist is a very powerful way to begin to understand and rewrite your story.

Hannah Ciepiela is a Psychological Life and Executive Coach and Author.

Based in Hitchin, Hertfordshire she provides Transformational Coaching to help and guide clients through transitional and challenging periods in their life. For more information and testimonials visit www.ehccoaching.com. Facebook. Instagram. Linked IN or call 07940 525792 for an informal chat about whether coaching is the right path for you.