By Luke Dalfiume, PhD, Licensed Clinical Psychologist, Christian Psychological Associates
The stories we are told and the stories we tell ourselves shape how we navigate our lives. If our story is one of discouragement and failure, then we are likely to proceed assuming that will be our story. If it is of resilience and success, then we are likely to assume the future will lead to success. We see this frequently in sport. The confident team frequently defeats the more-skilled, ess-confident team.
Tolstoy speaks in his novel War and Peace of the defeat of Napoleon’s army as occurring largely because of the loss of narrative. Once the French army reached a largely abandoned Moscow and began to loot it, the army lost its narrative, cohesion, and became little more than a band of marauders. It is estimated that 400,000 to 600,000 soldiers were lost by Napoleon in Russia in 1812, many of them during his ill-conceived retreat during the Fall and Winter of 1812. His army’s narrative had changed from “Victor” to “Marauder,” and the Russians had what Tolstoy referred to as a “greater spirit” than the French, leading to the ultimate Russian victory. The old Russian general Kutuzov, whom Tolstoy presents as aged but wise and experienced, understood narrative very well and knew it would lead to Russia’s ultimate victory over the French.
What is the power in narrative? Can it make an incapable person capable? No. I believe what positive narrative does is it opens a person up to more positive possibilities. When we expect things to be good we look for the good, and our personal horizons expand. If we encounter hardship we then more easily pivot and look for other possibilities.
We see this in negative ways, too. When a person has encountered defeat and is discouraged, then they may develop a negative mindset and close themselves off from positive possibilities. This can clearly be seen in sport, when a poor team makes one error, then the whole team seems to become deflated and give up.
Positive narrative, then, serves to open us up to a world of possibilities. It does not mean that the tangible elements of life are necessarily easier for the person with a positive narrative than they are for the person with a negative narrative. However, the person with a positive narrative is scanning their world looking for elements to create positives in their life, while the person with a negative narrative has closed off from this, looking for elements, instead, to affirm their negative narrative.
Our backgrounds clearly impact our narrative-creation abilities. When we experience significant trauma, lack of care or support, or negative narratives in our youth, we enter adulthood at a distinct disadvantage in our ability to create positive narratives. One of Tolstoy’s main characters in War and Peace, Pierre, was the illegitimate son of a wealthy man. While he was well- educated, he was raised away from his father. He has entered adulthood underparented, naïve, and with little personal narrative-making ability. He sincerely struggles through much of the novel to discover his own, positive narrative.
When we have not had the ideal childhood environment for creating positive narratives, it is not ideal, but we can “reparent” ourselves and develop the capacity for positive narrative. This requires a two-fold process of becoming more attuned to ourselves—identifying what we are “hungry” for emotionally and what gives us the greatest sense of purpose—as well as opening ourselves to identifying possibilities in the world around us. This can occur through exposure to literature, music, and movies, as well as more careful observation of the world around us. There is a lot of “magic” in the world, and, to become better positive narrative-makers, we need to become more attuned to it.
For more information or to set up an appointment, you may contact Christian Psychological Associates at 309-692-7755 or visit them online at www.christianpsychological.org. Their Bloomington office is located at 102. N. Main St. They also have offices in Peoria, Canton, Eureka, and Palatine.