'If you wanted to drown, you could'

#023 Stepping beyond our limiting beliefs

Last week I wrote about the inner critic, and how it can hold us back from the things we want to do. This critic is great at amplifying our fears, our perceived failings, and weaknesses, so that we feel less confident in ourselves, and less committed to the brave leaps we are taking, or want to take. When these thoughts are repeated so often they become fixed, they can be understood as limiting beliefs. These can grow into elaborate stories that we tell ourselves, and over time they become true (even when there is no truth to them), simply because we do not challenge them.

I also shared Julia Cameron’s personification of the noisy critics as the ‘Shitty Committee’, and considered how we can create a different story, by taking up the invitation to ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway’ (Susan Jeffers). A couple of readers commented on how the article resonated with them, and a few days later I bumped into a friend who said she’d felt a similar way about the post. We acknowledged how easy it can be to feel we are alone in this kind of struggle, and even though we know it isn’t true, it can seem that everyone else is having an Instagram life, whilst we seem to be constantly paddling to avoid drowning. Each and every one of us has beliefs that can be or become limiting, and the act of writing, being vulnerable, following a creative path, trying something new, all allow us to step beyond boundaries that we, or the world, set for us. What if we could walk on water?!

There are many ways to narrate a story. Here is a picture of two swans that I took at the weekend.

We often see swans serenely swimming across a lake, whilst not seeing that beneath the surface they are frantically paddling their little feet. What story might you tell from this picture?

I took this picture because it told a story that made me smile. The swans looked like stubborn lovers in the midst of an argument, resolutely facing away from each other, waiting for the other to give in. The swan on the right moved when I took the photo, losing the symmetry that made the image seem so powerful.

The picture is quite blurry and it isn’t obvious how shallow the water is, so now, from a distance, it might tell a story that the swans were walking on the surface of the water.

What story you have been telling yourself lately?

It is not always easy to see the boundaries we set, and limiting beliefs we hold. The gift of writing is that we put our thoughts out onto the page, and this distance sometimes helps us to see things more clearly. Coming back to Substack today, I had a quick scan of my previous posts. I have a sense of the articles being like a collection of crochet squares, or patchwork pieces. I thought each one has been created in isolation, yet they swim in the sea of the current consciousness of myself, and the wider collective, so form part of a bigger quilt. Stepping back, I can see similar threads in the articles that I have written. Many of the quotes compliment each other, stitched together by the emerging themes of a bigger piece. What are the threads in the things you have been writing? What are the things we have not been writing about? These unwritten stories are important to note too, as they are often where different truths can be found.

I have found the story of the lifecycle of the caterpillar / butterfly a helpful one to hold onto recently. Change can be difficult at the best of times, and in the face of uncertainty, nature’s story of transformation has allowed me to relax into the unknown, trusting that I am readying for a new life in a different form. I have been cocooning, and am nearing the point of big changes. Lights turned from red to amber, and by the end of this week they may have turned to green, and everything will be ‘go go go!’

One of the most important words has been Trust.

I love stories and creativity, and the richness of narrative and image work offers powerful ways into challenging and adapting thoughts and feelings, scaffolding the development of more helpful behaviour and beliefs. One of my first experiences of this approach was as a Trainee Clinical Psychologist working in a paediatric psychology service, supporting a constipation clinic with a brilliant Advanced Nurse Practitioner. I don’t know how much things have moved on in the field of encopresis in the last 20 years, but back then one of the mainstays of the psychological intervention for children aged 5-10 was a booklet with a Narrative Therapy informed approach, ‘Beating Sneaky Poo’ (Terry Heins & Karen Ritchie, Not dated, 1988?).

The booklet had an age appropriate educative component, helping children (and parents) understand the physiological causes and consequences of constipation and faecal soiling, and the interventions that would help manage the constipation. Next the booklet told a story about a boy and a character called Sneaky Poo, who causes the boy all kinds of trouble. Over subsequent pages the boy in the story teaches the child to develop a personalised psychological intervention, and to identify a coach and supportive team who can help them beat Sneaky Poo. Each child used their imagination to create the type of coach and team they needed to feel supported and confident enough to take on Sneaky Poo.

What you’ll have noticed is that this approach locates the problem outside of the child. It is no longer the child with the soiling problem, Sneaky Poo is causing the difficulties. In Narrative Therapy this is referred to as externalisation. Now everybody can look at the problem without blame, allowing the story to shift to how the child and parent can defeat the villain together. The difficult feelings are not taken away, but they become more tolerable, and effort is focussed on solutions to the problem, rather than defending against stories of blame and shame.

Circling back to where I started with the inner critic and our limiting beliefs, referring to our critical voice as the ‘Shitty Committee’ achieves a similar thing to Sneaky Poo. We can be playful and creative with the the way we respond to our critical thoughts, instead of trapped in efforts to silence them. Our inner critic is probably not going away any time soon, and just like the annoying flatmate we had a long-term tenancy agreement with, it is preferable to learn to live together, to trying to constantly avoid each other, or exchanging increasingly sarcastic remarks every day. We don’t have to be best friends, but we might become more civil.

What stories do we want to tell?

I came across an online article by Maria Popova today, with a poem by David Whyte. This was taken from his collection about the strength that comes from daring to face our fears, and writing a different story, and it is writing that I am not yet familiar with. You can listen to the whole poem here, but I have selected a part that particularly captured me-

so that when
we finally step out of the boat
toward them, we find
everything holds
us, and everything confirms
our courage, and if you wanted
to drown you could,
but you don’t

Extract from The True Love, David Whyte

What if we had the courage to step outside of our limiting beliefs? What could happen if we said yes to a different story?

We might not have the gift of walking on water, but the swan does not drown when it stops frantically swimming. It has feet on which it can stand, and pause.

What anchors us in our courage?