Ep #52: Rewriting Your Divorce Story | Becoming You Again Podcast
Often we tell stories from our past in a way where we continue to be the victim and feel victimized. When we do this we feel powerless to make changes in our life now and moving forward. One of the most effective ways to stop feeling like a victim of your past and of your life is to rewrite the stories of your past, and specifically your divorce story. This exercise isn't so that you can gaslight yourself into believing that things in your past didn't happen that actually did. Instead it's to help you refocus on your past in a way that serves you and makes you the hero of your story, instead of the victim. You get to use your past any way you like. So I want you to make it good for YOU. I'll teach you how in today's episode. What you'll learn in this episode:
How rewriting your past stories will help you feel more confident now and moving forward into the future life you want.
What the stories of our past actually are.
Why our memories aren't as reliable as we think.
How to choose a useful divorce story headline.
How to write out the story of your past, separate out the facts, and then rewrite the story so you're the hero.
Why this work will be the most powerful thing you can do for you in creating the future that you want.
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List to the full episode:
What would your life look like if you felt empowered about your past and confident about where you were headed moving forward? If you felt more confident on a daily basis, how would your life look different with this new found confidence? I'm here to help you create that life - the one where you feel confident after divorce and live a life that you always wanted but just weren't sure how to make a reality. Your first step is the easiest one. Schedule your complimentary consult with me and we will come up with your plan to get you started on living the life of your dreams today. Click here to schedule your complimentary discovery session with me.
Featured on this episode:
Interested in the Divorce Betrayal Transformation? Learn more here.
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Full Episode Transcript:
Welcome back to Becoming You Again. I’m your host Karin Nelson. I’m a certified divorce confidence coach and this is the podcast where I teach you how to reconnect with yourself, create emotional resiliency and live a truly independent life, so you can have an even better life than when you were married.
Hello my beautiful friends. I’m so happy to be here recording this podcast today. I have to say it has been so hot in Utah this past week and a half – I mean we’ve actually had a very hot summer overall. It’s very hot here. It’s very dry. But for it being September now, we usually kind of will see a drop in the temperature maybe to like the mid 80s, you know 50s in the mornings, but oh my god that is not the case this past week and a half. It has literally been like 100+. 100+. Maybe you’re having a heatwave where you live as well, but I am so done with hot weather days. And I’m going to tell, I am almost 45 years old and within the past I would say probably month-ish I am I guess I’m perimenopausal now because I am having hot flashes, like if you have gone through this or if you are going through this you know exactly what I am talking about. When I used to hear people talk about having hot flashes I did not understand the literal change that overcomes your entire body where you are just like drenched in sweat within 10 seconds of this hot flash and your entire body temperature rises. It is the most insane thing I have ever experienced. So we have 100+ degree temperatures and then I have this change, this hormonal insane change going on inside my body and I am like what is even happening? I am so done with the heat. I love fall. I love the change of the colors. It’s so beautiful here in Utah in the fall. I put my fall wreath out on my door because I am trying to channel with the universe like please just bring cooler autumn whether this direction. Please, please, please. So that is what basically is happening in my life. Right. It’s too hot. My body is completely changing in a way that I have never experienced in my entire life and I am so ready for fall to be here. That is where I’m at. How are you all doing? Comment tell me. DM me @karinnelsoncoaching on Instagram and tell me. I love connecting so much with you ladies. If you’re not in my Facebook group 100% come to my face the group but if you want to just talk with me one-on-one back and forth, Instagram is the place to do it. Come DM me and will have a little chat. I would love to hear from you directly.
Alright, so now onto the topic of today which is rewriting your divorce story. I have had the pleasure several times over the last year to be a guest on many different podcasts telling my divorce story and I like to do this for a couple of reasons, but the main reason that I like to share my story of my divorce is to give other women an example of how they can tell their divorce story that is empowering and leaves them feeling confident and in charge of their life. Because very often we tell stories from our past, especially when we’ve gone through really hard, something really difficult, we tell those stories in a way where we continue to be the victim and feel victimized which in no way feels empowering and it makes it really difficult for you to feel confident about your life and the direction that you’re headed in. And I want you to feel confident. I want you to believe that you can create and live any kind of life that you want after your divorce. I truly believe this. You truly can. I 100% believe that that is the truth for you and I want you to believe that as well and it really starts with rewriting your divorce story or rewriting stories from your past.
So let’s talk about that. First of all, what does it even mean to rewrite the story? Because you might be thinking well yeah but everything that I’m telling is the truth. Everything that I’m remembering about my past story actually happened to me, so what, you just want me to lie about my past or pretend that I wasn’t abused or pretend he didn’t cheated on or I wasn’t rejected? And the answer of course is no. Of course I don’t want you to do that. I will never ask you to pretend that something didn’t happen to you when it did. I will never ask you to gaslight yourself into thinking that something didn’t actually happen when it did actually happen. That’s not at all what I am talking about when I am sitting rewriting your story. What I am teaching you to do with this concept of rewriting your past is to tell the story in a way that makes you the hero, that makes you the focus of the story. Because being the hero of the story is always, always, always going to feel so much better than you continuing to be the victim in your story.
So when we think about the past what comes up for you? One of my mentors talks about the past in this way. She says, “You might be under the impression that your past is just a collection of factual memories that make up your history and identity, but really your past is your story about your past. It’s much more about the optional thoughts you have than about the “reality” that happened.” And this whole idea of our memories being completely factual and 100% reliable has totally been debunked through many psychological studies over the years. And it’s so fascinating to me.
So one example of this is there’s a psychological study where the days after 9/11 researchers asked thousands of people how they learned of the terrorist attacks, how they reacted to the news and they asked them some other questions having to do with specifics of the event itself, like how many airplanes and what was hit and different things like that, like actual facts of the experience. So these same researchers then went back and asked the same people a year later and then three years later and then 10 years later. The researcher’s goal was to track the consistency of those memories of this day over time. Their findings are so fascinating. Can I just tell you. Within the time span of the 10 years, and this even happened at like the one year mark which is even more fascinating, but of course over 10 years our memories change. They really do. And most people in this study had significant inconsistencies in their memories and the details of how they learned of the attacks. Some people were telling very different stories of where they were and how they heard about it, only to be told what they had originally said and then they were like, no, no, no, you must be mistaken, I definitely remember being in this place and finding out this way when they had originally told the people days after it happened a different story. It’s very fascinating to me learning about these studies on our memory and how our memory shifts and changes over time.
And I’m pointing this out to you because I want you to understand that your past exists in your mind and it is influenced directly by how you choose to think about it. And how you choose to think about your past and the story you tell yourself about it is going to directly influence your feelings and your actions right now. Right now in the present which is what you’re creating your future life and your future experience with. We don’t create our future from how we felt in the past, because we don’t feel things from the past. We create our future experience and our future life from where we are right now and what we’re feeling right now and how we’re acting right now.
And I want to tell you a secret about your past. You get to use your past any way you like. So I want you to make it good for YOU. And of course you can and should do this with all the stories of your past where every time you think of them you feel an emotional response that doesn’t feel good, but today I’m going to be talking specifically about your divorce story and how rewriting that story will change how you feel and act today which of course as I just said influences what your life is going to look like moving forward.