There is a difference between processing your story and continuing to live inside of it
Sometimes that difference is obvious. Other times, it is not.
You may have talked about what happened. You may have gone to therapy, journaled about it, worked on yourself, and told yourself that you have moved on. And yet, the moment the story comes up, your body tightens. Your breathing changes. The emotions come flooding back. You can tell the story in incredible detail, almost as if it happened yesterday.
That does not necessarily mean you have done anything wrong or that all the work you have done has failed.
It may simply mean there is still something in the story asking for your attention.
The question is: Are you processing what is coming up, or are you reliving it?
Processing Your Story Does Not Mean Erasing It
I don’t believe processing means getting rid of a story.
What happened, happened. It is part of your history.
Processing changes your relationship with that history.
You can remember what happened without becoming the person you were in that moment. You can acknowledge the pain without spending the rest of the day living in it. You can understand what an experience taught you without allowing it to continue defining you.
That is a very different experience from reliving it.
When we relive a story, we often aren’t just remembering the event. We are repeating the meaning we attached to it.
Maybe the meaning became:
I’m not good enough.
People leave me.
I can’t trust anyone.
There isn’t enough money.
Everything is my responsibility.
I should have known better.
It was my fault.
That meaning can eventually become an identity. And once it becomes part of how you see yourself, it starts influencing your choices, your relationships, your behavior, and what you expect from life.
The event may have ended years ago, but the meaning keeps traveling with you.
Your Body Often Knows Before Your Mind Does
When I work with someone, I don’t only listen to the words they are saying.
I watch their body.
I notice their face. Their shoulders. Their breathing. How tightly they are holding themselves. Whether their entire body seems to become more rigid as they begin telling me what happened.
Someone may tell me, “I’ve dealt with this. It doesn’t bother me anymore.”
But their body may be telling a very different story.
They begin talking, and suddenly they are back there. The details get sharper. The emotion rises. Their breath gets shallow. Their stress level changes.
They are not simply telling me about something from their past. For those few moments, they are experiencing it again.
That is one of the clues I look for.
Another clue is how quickly the story enters the conversation.
If something supposedly doesn’t affect you anymore, but it is one of the first things you need to tell people about yourself, I become curious.
Why is this story still so important?
What meaning is still attached to it?
And where is that meaning showing up in your life today?
I Had to Recognize This in My Own Story
I have experienced this myself.
When I closed my large business space, I knew it was the right decision. I had built a 4,200-square-foot center that helped a lot of people, but I was also burned out. I knew I couldn’t continue living with my business attached to me 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Closing it was the right choice.
What happened afterward was harder than I expected.
I suddenly had time and freedom, but I wasn’t completely sure who I was without the business I had built.
For years, I found myself living in an in-between story.
I had been the person who owned the large center. I had built something significant. At one point, I was the largest female, single owner/operator of that type of center in New England.
All of that was true.
But I began to recognize how often I was using what I had been to describe who I was.
That was the difference.
The business was part of my history. It had taught me an enormous amount about myself, leadership, service, burnout, and what I did and did not want my life to look like.
But it couldn’t continue to be my identity.
What began changing the story wasn’t sitting around thinking about it more.
It was taking action toward something new.
I began experimenting. Trying different things. Allowing my work to be smaller. Allowing myself to work online. Accepting that not everyone needed to follow me into whatever came next.
I had to allow myself to say, “It doesn’t have to look like what it used to look like.”
That helped me begin moving out of the old identity.
I’m still evolving into what comes next. Processing doesn’t always end with a neat little bow.
But I am no longer requiring my future to look like my past.
The Event Is Only Part of the Story
One of the most important questions I ask people is:
What meaning did you give what happened?
Years ago, something may have happened when you did not have the life experience, emotional maturity, or information you have today.
A child sees something happen and creates a meaning from it.
A teenager gets rejected and creates a meaning.
An adult goes through a divorce, a job loss, a betrayal, a financial problem, or a death and creates a meaning.
The meaning can become more powerful than the actual event.
For example, I have worked with people who are financially secure today but still experience a great deal of fear around money.
Through conversation, they may remember an early experience when they saw a parent struggle financially or feel embarrassed because there wasn’t enough money available in a particular moment.
That one experience may become:
Money is a struggle.
There may not be enough money.
I have to hold onto everything I have.
I can’t relax.
Years later, their current financial situation may look nothing like the circumstances they witnessed as a child, yet the old meaning is still influencing their behavior.
That is when I might ask:
What do you think was actually happening for your parent in that moment?
What did you believe it meant at the time?
What do you believe it means now?
That creates an opportunity to see the story from another perspective.
You aren’t pretending the experience didn’t happen.
You are widening the lens.
Processing Allows You to Become the Observer
One of the biggest shifts I see during a session happens when someone can step out of the story and become the observer of it.
Instead of only seeing the event through the emotional lens they have carried for years, they begin looking at what was actually happening.
What did I know then?
What didn’t I know?
What was the other person going through?
What did I decide about myself because of this?
Is that decision still true?
Sometimes you can physically see the shift happen.
The shoulders drop.
The breath becomes deeper.
The body softens.
There may even be a little laughter followed by, “I never thought about it that way.”
The story didn’t disappear.
But its energy changed.
That, to me, is processing.
You can tell the story without completely becoming it again.
If It Comes Back, There May Be Another Layer
People sometimes become frustrated when an old story resurfaces.
“I thought I dealt with this.”
“I already worked on this.”
“I’ve been in therapy for years. Why is this still coming up?”
But that reaction can create another layer of judgment.
If something keeps coming back into your awareness, I believe there may still be something there for you to process.
That doesn’t mean you need to give it your entire day.
There is a big difference between giving something attention and allowing it to take up permanent real estate in your head.
Processing is intentional.
Reliving becomes repetitive.
The question becomes: How much of my attention is going to this issue?
Is it coming up, asking me to notice something, and then allowing me to continue living my life?
Or has it become the background noise running from the moment I wake up until I go to bed?
If the story distracts you from your present life, affecting your decisions, controlling your mood, or repeatedly pulling you away from what is happening now, you may have moved from processing into reliving.
Sometimes You Need a Pattern Interrupt
This is where I like the old computer analogy.
Remember when computers would freeze and we would hit Control-Alt-Delete-Reboot?
Sometimes our minds need their own version of Control-Alt-Delete-Reboot.
A pattern interrupt.
You catch yourself going down the same mental path again and say:
Stop.
There is that story again.
I don’t need to spend my entire day here.
This is not about pretending the thought isn’t there.
You noticed it.
You acknowledged it.
Now you get to decide what happens next.
Maybe you choose to journal about it later or give yourself 15 minutes to sit with it.
Take a walk or move your body.
Shift your attention to the work, conversation, experience, or person in front of you.
Your mind may want to keep running the same program because repetition feels familiar. Familiar often feels safe.
But familiar does not necessarily mean useful.
Sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is interrupt the pattern and return to your current life.
Ask Yourself Whether the Story Is Still True
When you notice yourself falling into an old story, pause before automatically believing everything your mind is telling you.
Ask:
- Is this actually true today?
- Do I have all the information to know that it is true?
- Am I reacting to what is happening now, or am I reacting to something that happened years ago?
- What meaning am I giving this?
- What am I learning about myself because this is coming up again?
- And perhaps one of the most important questions:
- What is the cost of continuing to carry this story?
Because there can also be a payoff.
A story may protect you from taking another risk or gives you a reason to not trust again.
It may keep you from having to change or allows you to stay inside an identity that is uncomfortable but very familiar.
That doesn’t mean you consciously chose it.
It means there may be a reason your mind keeps returning there.
Understanding that reason gives you more choice.
How Do You Know When You Need Help Processing It?
There are many things you can work with on your own.
- Pause.
- Notice.
- Question the story.
- Journal.
- Become the observer.
- Interrupt the pattern.
- Give the thought defined attention rather than allowing it to control the day.
But sometimes the story is too close.
You may understand intellectually that you are caught in a pattern and still be unable to see your way out of it.
That is when support can help.
If a story is occupying a large amount of your day, repeatedly affecting your relationships or decisions, creating intense emotional reactions, or continuing to pull you back into the same behavior despite your efforts to change it, it may be time to process it with someone who can help you see what you cannot currently see for yourself. A Spiritual Counseling session can give you the space to step outside the story, look at it from another perspective, and begin understanding what is still keeping it active in your life.
There is nothing unusual about needing another perspective.
Sometimes we have lived with a story for so long that we don’t even recognize it as a story anymore.
We simply think, “This is who I am.”
And that may be the most important thing to question.
Your Story Happened to You. It Is Not All of You.
You don’t have to erase your past to move forward or stop talking about what happened.
You don’t have to pretend it didn’t hurt.
But you can begin noticing whether you are telling the story from the perspective of the person you are today or repeatedly becoming the version of yourself who originally lived through it.
Processing gives you perspective.
Reliving keeps you inside the experience.
Sometimes the shift begins with something as simple as catching yourself and saying:
There is the old story again.
What is it trying to show me?
And when you have received the message, you can choose to return to the life that is happening now.
Your memory can remain part of your history without continuing to become your present.