Once upon a time there was a girl who loved to think in stories. She walked through her day with a running narative, noting the scenary, the themes and the thoughts of the characters around her. To her, the stories were true. They were her stories that described her experience. Sometimes the stories were sad and penetrated to the heart. Sometimes they were daring mysteries or sleeper novels. The stories determined her mood. Or was it the other way around?
Without even trying, humans are constantly telling themselves a story. It's how we think and make sense of the world around us. We are weaving every bit of data we absorb into a tapestry that includes the past and our potential future. We love to make sense and meaning out of every moment.
One of the most important elements of healing from trauma is to recognize the story you have told yourself about your life--the story that feels true, which is different from what you might consider "objectively true." (Is there any such thing as objectively true though? Quantum physics would say no). Western culture tends to value mathematical numbers and dates and measurements of a scientific nature more than the subjective experience of those involved, but history and most eastern cultures would argue that the meaning made has the higher impact.
At this point I agree with the collectivist culture. No matter how much we want to believe that the facts are true, our bodies and hearts respond much more intensely to our emotional perception. Which is why in trauma healing work we bring those perceptions to the surface and support the processing of them. It doesn't do you any good to keep them stuffed in a closet. If you don't care for them directly, they rule with a manipulative hand. They can do a lot of damage from the closet, most certainly wrecking the desired outcome of our responses.
What feels true also significantly impacts how you treat others. If you are believing that people are unsafe, cruel, rejecting, or stingy, you will respond to them as if they are such. It takes an act of courage and some very intentional work to overcome your fear that comes easily in such a hard world to treat them with grace and kindness.
Ready to heal? Ask yourself, "What is the story I am telling myself?" Be honest about what feels true. And what would you like to be able to believe instead?
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