A sticky time of year

By Ruth Field.

Every year around about now, my husband accuses me of being shit at Christmas.  He doesn’t mean to be unkind, he says it to try and jog me out of the funk I always find myself in.  What happens is that I get stuck inside a longstanding story of doom and gloom about a close family member and around which the series of distorted unhelpful and disempowering assumptions I invariably make—They might not turn up; I’ve got to grit it out; Why is this happening? This is so unfair; I hate myself—cause me a great deal of distress.

In narrative therapy, this is known as a ‘problem-saturated story.’ And we all get caught up in them; you know you’re in one when you feel completely disempowered and yet highly vexed, upset, sad, frustrated and, well, stuck inside the same looping negative narrative. Women on our retreats often report that families and friends have grown tired of hearing their stories, and this is another good indicator it’s problem-saturated—when family and friends have called time on listening.

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Problem-saturated stories leave precious little room for anything other than the problem. They have a sense of happening to you, of all the component parts being outside your control.  Often stories of injustice or of a social context blown apart, such as a romantic betrayal—when the future as you imagined it has been obliterated—such stories can be distressing to hear, even when we are only hearing them from ourselves.

When we tell the story of an experience in a way that puts the problem centre stage, it confers all the power to the problem, relegating our values, skills, choices and responses to the shadows. But finding a way to shine a light on the strengths and responses that we do have reveals where our agency lies and creates the possibility for a shift in perspective. This practice is at the heart of narrative therapy; in some respects, it’s at the heart of all therapy. When we listen with great care and compassion—to ourselves and to one another—and ask questions that invite a shift in the narrative focus, we create a new context for our meaning-making. After all, we listen to each other tell the stories of our lives—and the stories of our problems—all the time. So why not listen with this new intention at the forefront of our hearts and minds?

Here’s how…

First, we honour that what happened was not okay. If you’re reading this with a particular friend in mind who seems stuck inside a problem-saturated story, the first thing to note is to avoid trying to fix the problem or the person: Resist that righting reflex. Instead, invite your friend to tell the story in ways that make visible the skills and values and responses that already exist within their story—and by extension, within themselves, through asking questions that bring their particular qualities into the conversation…I remember that evening when you found the text messages, and I’m wondering how you managed to get into work the next day/show up for your kids? Instead of nodding, colluding and commiserating, get curious about different facets of their story and listen closely for who they are underneath what they are saying and in this way explore the narrative in a new light. In locating your friend as the expert in their own experience, fully believing that they have all the skills, values, and responses they need, you will enable them to rediscover strengths within themselves.

If it’s you who is stuck in a problem-saturated story, first imagine it’s your best friend who is in this situation and adopt the same compassionate curious stance you would towards them. What questions might you ask that invite a focus on your own particular qualities and resources? If you feel stuck thinking of any, or find yourself getting drawn back down into the rabbit hole of doom—as I often do—my failsafe strategy is to get out my journal and pen and write about it, reminding myself that, despite what happened, I’m still very much here, a fully operational human. You too survived your difficult experience and lived to tell the story of it which means you absolutely have skills and qualities that made this possible. For example, if your story is one of a relationship that has ended, and you’re stuck in the pain of it, what qualities allow you to carry on despite that enormous pain? Drill into the detail of your coping strategies, find a way to articulate them. Write it all down. Sketch it out. Create a mind map—whatever works. How did you get through the days, manage your workload and other relationships and responsibilities while all this was going on? Wow, look how resourceful you’ve been!

Finding the thread of ourselves and our power that already exists—even within the most sticky, muddy, problem-saturated stories of all can help us rediscover where our agency lies—and in so doing diminish the power of the problem and situate some of that power back within us: we did respond to that injustice, even if that response was to rail at the moon or go and moan to a friend, or ruminate our hearts out. We did something in response; it may not have been dignified or hopeful, but it was, nevertheless, something.

We all have values too­­—things that we consider precious and worth holding onto, even in the face of great obstacles. Looking for evidence of these in our problem-saturated stories can help us see where we stayed true to ourselves and our ideals, where we kept a quiet dignity in the face of enormous challenges. And if we didn’t, we felt that too somewhere; an echo of dissonance between how we wanted to behave and how we actually did: a gentle reminder of who we really are and a reorientation back in the direction of ourselves.