“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” - C.S. Lewis
What will you remember about 2021?
I recently attended an in-person training workshop, which was a welcome opportunity to reunite with fellow yoga teachers I had not seen since before March of 2020. Like most reunions these days, our conversations centered around the pandemic as we shared experiences of teaching virtually and the challenges of social distancing in a profession that thrives on physical touch. We also shared somber stories of what was lost to COVID: loved ones, businesses, bank accounts, and lives completely rearranged overnight. Although the details differed, our pandemic stories had the same plot line: One day life was normal and the next day everything changed.
The stories we share about our individual experiences are not important for their accuracy, as most of our memories exist as vague generalities and fragments tinged with emotions. It is the way in which we organize our memories and craft them into a story that makes them compelling. We tend to formulate memories much like short stories or screen plays, with a plot that opens with a crisis that creates a struggle which eventually leads to either a happy or unfortunate ending. Those who study memory say these stories are the way in which we catalog the vast amount of information we are exposed to every day. Anecdotes are a way of making sense of our world, infusing meaning into our past experiences which becomes a guide for future behavior. Importantly, these anecdotes become part of our personal narrative and have a powerful impact on our health. How we write our stories plays an important role in how we respond to hardships and our ability to bounce back to well-being.
We all store memories differently. What makes individual recollection so rich is which moments out of our many daily experiences are selected to be tucked away into the deep folds of our brain. Memory specialists tell us that we are more likely to remember the high moments and low moments, which we craft into distinct episodes or chapters of a larger narrative that we hold as the Story of Me. These episodes organize and make sense of our highs and lows and help us form a continuous sense of self. They are also a way in which memories get “pinned” so that they are easily retrievable. You may not remember what you ate for lunch the day before the pandemic closed the world down, but you most likely can recall the story of where you were, what you did, and how you reacted.
Facts are best remembered when they are interwoven in a story. Everyone’s Story of Me is filled with several different scenes; how these scenes are shaped into our narrative will influence our resilience and ability to cope. The neurobiology of memory suggests that memories are held in the brain as dynamic and fluid pieces, not solid stories. It is when we recall memories that our stories take shape. We think of memories as concrete and immutable, an actual representation of reality. But the fluid nature of how memories are stored points to the role of choice when recalling our experiences. Researchers describe two basic story arcs that we tend to use when organizing our memories. One is redemptive in which a bad thing happens, causing us to struggle, but we grow and come out better in the end. The other arc follows a contamination sequence in which we were doing great until a bad thing happened; we struggled and, unable to recover, eventually declined.
Not surprisingly, the arc we choose has a profound influence on our health. People who recall memories using redemptive arcs report higher levels of well-being, while those who favor contamination sequences are more likely to be depressed and in poorer health. Of course, it is easy to find meaning in positive experiences or in those that are only mildly adverse, especially when our lives are going smoothly. But we are all vulnerable to severe hardships as well as periods in which we face a number of uncontrollable setbacks. It is during hard times that finding the silver linings and crafting redemptive stories becomes challenging. Doing so, however, helps us heal, as the way we frame our memories and our ability to cope are deeply interwoven. The softer we land after a difficult experience, the more positive meaning we’ll assign to that experience; the more positive meaning assigned to hardship, the softer we’ll land.
How do we take an incredibly painful experience and shape it into a story with a redemptive arc? Hardship comes with strong emotions such as grief, fear, and anger, all of which reside in memories of life’s low points. What growth can one construct from a loss of a loved one, severe illness, a business shuttered, or financial ruin? Healing doesn’t happen when we ignore or minimize the gravity of what has happened. We need courage to face the reality of what has transpired. Healing begins when we recall our memories with an attitude of self-compassion. Approaching past hardships with tenderness--a nonjudgmental sense of acceptance--is the first step in rewriting painful stories. The tenderness of self-compassion can lead to clarity as it helps us to remain aware of the facts while we remain open to our experience of pain, holding all these memories with an appreciation of the context and resources available at that moment in time.
Kristin Neff, a psychologist who has extensively researched self-compassion and started the Mindful Self-Compassion movement, created a formula for self-compassion. It includes mindfulness, kindness, and an understanding of our interconnection with all humanity. These three components distinguish self-compassion from self-esteem and are the essential ingredients that help us overcome and heal from adversity.
Some are suspicious of self-compassion, seeing it as a way of justifying bad behavior or being passive and too “nice”. Self-compassion is quite the contrary as it requires the tenacity to examine the truth and the courage to change our behavior to eliminate harm. Mindfulness requires that we drop our expectations and be present, whereas kindness cultivates an environment in which we feel safe from judgment and able to remain open. Since compassion is the heartfelt desire to alleviate suffering, we are stirred to change when we see how our own actions or those of others cause harm. Viewing our past with self-compassion helps us not only to accept what happened, but to reduce the suffering our memories may be creating. Self-compassion provides the clarity to accept what can and cannot be changed in our past, while taking steps to heal in ways that honor our connection with humanity.
Keep in mind that not all stories can be given happy endings. Some experiences are too painful, too raw, or too new to be given a redemptive arc. In those circumstances, the best we can do is use self-compassion to stay present and bear witness to what is happening, accepting events as they are rather than agonizing over how we wish they would be. Sometimes the best we can do is accept that our narratives are unfinished and may even remain that way.
What will you remember about 2021? How will you organize the highs and lows of the past year? I invite you to revisit past experiences with self-compassion. Are your stories creating harm or are they healing? If they are extending your suffering, see if there are ways you might rewrite a chapter or an episode. As we approach the calendar year, take some time to immerse yourself in your ever-evolving Story of Me. What stories can you take from 2021 that will help you move forward and grow in the upcoming year?
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