Self-Stories: Fabrications of the Mind
“Beware of the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.” - Ben Okri
Your mind is a story-making machine. It concocts elaborate narratives in order to make sense of the unimaginably large amount of information you consume each day.
How does this process work?
First, sensory data enters your brain in the form of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touch, and possibly other outlets not yet known to science. Next, your brain takes that information and pulls from stored memories (Program B) and evolved tendencies (Program A), forming perceptions and then concepts.
The end result is a tapestry knitted together from various memories, ideas, and assumptions. Yet those stories fundamentally determine your entire experience of reality.
The brain (1) takes in information from the 5 senses, (2) creates perceptions based on evolved psychological tendencies and conditioning, (3) forms concepts and labels based on conditioning, and finally, (4) manufactures stories based on your attitudes and worldview.
The Story-Making Process in Action
Here’s an example of how this process works:
Stage 1: Info—You hear someone say, "Please give me some more space."
Stage 2: Perceptions—Within milliseconds, your brain draws upon stored knowledge and converts those soundwaves into coherent English words that form a sentence.
Stage 3: Concepts & Labels—Your brain draws meaning from the sentence, registering a request for more physical distance.
Stage 4: Stories—From here, your interpretation will depend on your social context and worldview. That's how your brain assigns meaning to the world.
Maybe, in this case, the story your brain lands on is that the person who said, "Please give me some more space" has made a reasonable request given the polite tone of their voice, the social distancing measures put in place, and the proximity of your shopping cart to theirs.
Under different circumstances, your brain might've quickly made up a story about how that person is rude and inconsiderate. It would then release a chemical cocktail of adrenaline and elicit an angry response.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and certain Stoic techniques attempt to alter this very story-making process by getting you to question the core beliefs that create these stories. [To learn such methods, check out the FitMind app.]
This is a very small example of how your brain uses limited information to interpret the world in each moment. But, more broadly, the mind begins to form larger self-stories over time based on the news you read, the people you interact with, the song lyrics you listen to, and everything else that enters your awareness.
Why It Matters
This story-making process can get you into trouble when the story you land on is negative or doesn’t map onto reality well.
For example, anorexia is a self-story about one’s body image. It’s formed over time in the same process laid out above. Similarly, depression comes in part from a self-story. Both are complicated mental disorders that go beyond this explanation alone, but they also highlight how damaging a story can become.
Furthermore, stories about oneself, another person, or something broader (like politics), can lead to entrenched beliefs.
Think about all the times throughout human history when people were so certain about their stories, causing themselves and others great harm.
To name a few:
Phrenology, a pseudoscientific claim about the relationship between personality traits and the shape of someone's skull.
Slavery and the belief that humans could be property.
The Catholic Church’s Earth-centric view, which led them to imprison Galileo.
Even today, many people seem to distrust basic facts, as thousands adamantly believe that the Earth is flat, for example. Conspiracy theories are rampant in our Internet age when it’s easy to find supporting evidence for nearly any story you could devise.
How Meditation Helps
Meditation can help deconstruct your stories back into sensory data.
It allows you to see the whole process unfold in real-time, noticing how your story got constructed and where it might’ve gone wrong.
Of course, much of the process will remain hidden in your subconscious, but you’re bringing more of it into your conscious awareness. The process looks like this:
Stories (Discursive Thinking) → Concepts (Mental Images, etc.) → Perceptions (Positive + Negative Reactions) → Information (Sensory)
In meditation, you learn to break narratives back down into the sensory information that gave rise to them. Observing this process gives you great insights into your mind and how it does this all the time, mostly unconsciously.
A fit mind holds flexible stories, willing to adapt them as new information comes in. Moreover, a fit mind recognizes that these stories are in fact just stories.
The Greek philosopher Socrates was dubbed the wisest man in the world because he “knew that he knew nothing.” In other words, Socrates recognized that everything he believed was just a story based on very limited information.
So next time you find yourself angry at someone who holds a conflicting story or anxious over some concocted self-story about where you're at in life, see it for what it is: a fabrication of the mind.
P.S. — To learn meditation techniques for deconstructing your self-stories, check out the FitMind app.