narrative identity

I have too much time." Sometimes all of these statements reflect real experience, but I wonder how often they begin influencing the choices that we make in the current moment.

There is an established area of psychological research called narrative identity.

I came upon this when I was looking at this and, and trying to, um, figure out some of my own current habits or why some systems that worked for me twenty years ago are not working cr- right now.

In a 2013 review published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, psychologists described how people develop an evolving life story that connects their remembered past with their imagined future.

That is the event.

"I'm failing at everything." Again, that is the interpretation.

And to be clear, the narrative identity research doesn't prove that simply changing a sentence will change our lives, nor does it mean we should put a cheerful interpretation on a painful experience.

Some experiences are genuinely difficult and painful, some losses profound, and some situations require more than a change in perspective.

That's actually a consistent narrative to have these two kind of contradictory things a part of us.

You study or you do work with something called narrative identity.

What is that in like normal person language? What does that mean? How does that apply to our fantasies?

How I describe narrative identity is it's the internalized, evolving story we tell ourselves and others about who we are and how we came to be the person we are.

So basically, the way we tell our life story reflects something really critical about our identity, about our personality.

You're not just like telling the story of your divorce or getting your dream job.

That's the sort of simplistic mechanism.

But I use things like narrative identity to unpack theoretically that moment.

Empathy is a very difficult feeling or emotion, to be honest.

A lot of research in psychology or neuroscience show that to engage with someone's story empathetically, it involves two corresponding processes.

But in order to start that process, you have to be able to tell the story.

After Me Too, now we have to tell each other's story, how we experienced sexual assault, things like that.

So I think narrative identity is important because it allows people to understand that identity is not just about... you know, using the constructionist or positivist approach that, you know, they are determined by material forces, historical forces, but they're also determined by how you tell your own story.

You know, the telling part is how you construct your story.