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Facts vs. Stories - Seven Health: Eating Disorder Recovery and Anti Diet Nutritionist

TRIGGER WARNING: This post mentions an incident of assault which may be triggering for some people. 


May 23.2016


May 23.2016

So much of our experience in life is created by what is going on in our head. What we tell ourselves, the stories we create and the meaning we attach to certain events.

Something I always tell clients is to decipher between what is a fact and what is a story. Let me give a couple of examples.

Let’s say you put on weight. You stand on a set of scales and you are 5 pounds heavier than when you last weighed yourself. Your weight has increased, this is a fact.

But after this event your mind starts racing. You tell yourself that you now have to go on a diet. That this summer you won’t be able to go on a beach holiday unless you lose the weight. That no one will want to date you because of the extra weight. That you are less likely to get the upcoming promotion because of how you now look.

None of these are facts, but are instead stories. It is how you’ve chosen to interpret something totally innocuous likely gaining weight.

There will be plenty of people at your new current weight who don’t diet, do go on beach holidays, enjoy plenty of dates and get promoted. While your story may feel true to you, it’s not backed up by reality.

The same is true if you step on the scale and your weight has gone down. You may tell yourself a set of positive stories about what this new weight means. But again, these aren’t inherently true and the only fact you can take from this situation is that you are now lighter.

This idea of differentiating between fact and story isn’t just about your current or future situations, but can be linked to your past. What meanings are you attaching to past events? And how is this meaning affecting your current and future situation?

For most clients when I talk to them about their past, there are moments that really stick out for them and have had a big impact on their lives.

For lots of these incidents on the surface they seem pretty minor – someone said something hurtful to them, something happened at work or school, they weren’t picked for a team or role or invited to some event.

They are things that have probably happened to them in many different guises throughout their life that they have totally forgotten about. But for some reason these particular incidents have been held onto. They’ve attached a strong meaning to these incidents about what it says about them or their life or their body. Again, none of these are facts, but to them it feels like it.

Often there are significant events that have happened but their significance has been amplified because of the meaning they have choose to attach to the event.

Let me give you an example of how this can play out. Say you have a young woman who is a victim of assault on her way home from work. It’s a horrible event. She internalises it and creates a meaning that this event shows she is weak, ruined, and powerless.

Maybe she starts drinking or taking drugs to numb the pain. Eventually she loses her job. For the rest of her life this event defines her and is a painful memory that she continues to try and suppress through various substances.

You then have another woman who is also assaulted in a similar scenario. It also affects her but in a different way. She is angry at first but then decides that some good is going to come out of it. To her the incident sparks a desire to help those who have less of a voice and she strives for equality in this world.

She decides to study social work and begins working with woman who’ve suffered like she did, supporting a lawyer to get convictions for these women. She sets up a support group to further help them and gets involved in feminism and the women’s rights movement. Over the years she becomes a world-renowned author and speaker, travelling the globe and inspiring women.

In her later life she reflects on what happened to her as a young lady. As horrible and as painful as it was, it helped her create a life that she otherwise wouldn’t have had. She has helped thousands of women who wouldn’t have got the support they so badly needed.

These two women went through the same event and while neither can go back and change what happened, they both get to choose how they are going to act because of it. And this action is going to be largely based on the story they tell themselves about what this event means.

(And let me just add that I’m not saying something like this is easy, it’s definitely not. It can take time to work through and get over severe trauma like this. But a big part of this recovery is how this event is framed in someone’s mind).

I always encourage clients to see the silver lining in things. However horrible or tragic or upsetting something was or is, what benefits have come from it? Could this event be used to make you a better mother or father or partner? Could it be something you could reflect on to show how strong you are? Has it taught you to be more compassionate?

Some times people’s problem isn’t necessarily the stories they create, but more on the facts they choose to focus on.

Let’s say someone has a chronic illness and there is no way they will ever get over it. Maybe it means they have less energy or they are in pain. Maybe it means that there are things that they can’t do. This list could even be quite long.

But even though these may all be facts, there is also a set of facts that they aren’t focusing on. What are all the ways that their life isn’t impacted because of their chronic illness? What are all the things that they can still do? What are practices they can follow to reduce their pain or increase their energy or improve whatever other symptoms they are dealing with?

It’s easy to get trapped in focusing on all the things we don’t have or what we are missing out on because of our situation, and these may be true. But if people can instead become grateful for all they do have and all the experiences and things they can do, it changes the quality of our experience.

Become a realist. You don’t have to kid yourself and make out that things are so much better than they really are. But equally don’t make out that the situation is way worse than it really is.

And one of the best ways to do this is to differentiate between what are the facts and what are the stories. And what are all the facts, not just the ones I’m choosing to justify staying stuck or small or helpless. You get to choose.

Getting Help On Your Recovery Journey

I’m a leading expert and advocate for full recovery. I’ve been working with clients for over 15 years and understand what needs to happen to recover.

I truly believe that you can reach a place where the eating disorder is a thing of the past and I want to help you get there. If you want to fully recover and drastically increase the quality of your life, I’d love to help.

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Comments

8 responses to “Facts vs. Stories”

  1. Fab says:

    Wow, Chris, thank you so much for this article. I really need a reminder of this.
    As a suggestion, I’d like you to put a content note or a trigger warning. The example you wrote about is good, but it can trigger someone.
    Thank you!

  2. Irene V says:

    I really like your posts and I respect the work you do but I personally find this example to be in extremely poor taste. I get the point you are trying to make but there are plenty of other examples you could have used to illustrate this point without an implication that a woman should see the silver lining in her own rape. As a man you could not possibly understand what this is like for a woman and what we experience every day as a result of rape culture. I hope that you will choose your examples more carefully in the future.

    • Chris Sandel says:

      Hi Vanessa,

      I’m sorry that the example that I used in the article caused upset. When writing the piece I had recently listened to Alexis Panos podcast with Maddy Moon (http://maddymoon.com/alexi-panos/) in which she talks about the scenario I mentioned and how she learned to overcome it. But I get that this is different connotation when being spoke by a woman who has been through this experience versus a man (myself) who is commenting on it.

      With this in mind I have amended the article and changed the scenario to one of assault. I know that these could be viewed as equally horrible, but (I’m hoping) the word assault doesn’t have the same visceral reaction for someone as the word rape.

      I know it is a sensitive topic but it was one I wanted to include to demonstrate that regardless of what someone goes through, they can find a way to get through it. It wasn’t to belittle those who had been through this or to say that this behaviour by the perpetrator is ok or condoning rape culture in anyway. But given your reaction, and that my intention wasn’t to upset the reader(s), I will be more careful in my choices in the future.

      My sincere apologies,

      Chris

  3. Lisa V in BC says:

    Thank you for this post. Lots to consider and and I appreciate your encouragement to not dwell on the past, but to move on and become stronger as a result of our experiences. Easy to say, sometimes near impossible to do, but always worth keeping in mind.

    May I suggest you include a note to indicate that it is victims of assault who may find the article triggering? You usually write about food issues, but I don’t think there is anything triggering for sufferers of food related issues.

  4. Shane says:

    You hit a homerun with this one. Ironically, a few days ago I was thinking about how I tend to exaggerate reality. Most the events in my life that I fear are much more calm in the moment than they are in my head. My imagination seems to have a predisposition toward focusing on the negative. I stress, and stress, and stress about some particular event, then when it finally happens, it was like, “How in the world did I think it would be that bad?” Great article Chris. Thank you for all that you do.

    -Shane

    • Chris Sandel says:

      Hey Shane,

      Thanks for your comment and glad you enjoyed the article. And you are right, the anticipation is nearly always worse than the actual outcome. The more we remember this, the better.

      Chris

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