22. Stuck – Lori Gottlieb

People worry about boring their therapists, just as writers worry about boring their readers, but what makes for a boring story is that the storyteller isn’t taking responsibility for her role in the conflict.

When I became a therapist after years of writing books and magazine and newspaper features, I realized how similar these seemingly different professions were. In both writing and therapy, the storyteller (the patient or writer) may believe that she’s telling the story accurately—Here’s what happened—but most of us are unreliable narrators. In other words, we tell a story in a way that we think serves us (makes us likable, makes us interesting), even though this version of the story actually limits us. That’s why when I hear a patient’s story, I'm listening not so much to the content of the story, but to how the story is told—what gets emphasized or minimized, who the heroes and villains are, whether the supporting characters are important or just a distraction—and also what’s not being said. 

People worry about boring their therapists, just as writers worry about boring their readers, but what makes for a boring story is that the storyteller isn’t taking responsibility for her role in the conflict. Instead, the story becomes about trying to get someone else or something else to change, which, of course, keeps the storyteller stuck with nowhere to go (and causes the listener/reader to tune out). With my patients, I consider the story they come in with as the first draft, and our work together is about editing the story by broadening their perspective. Here’s how you can do that as a writer.

– Lori Gottlieb

Prompt:

Think of a story that’s keeping you stuck—it might be a story about a friend or family member, a co-worker, or even yourself (some version of “I’m not loveable” or “I can’t trust people” or ‘Nothing ever works out for me,” etc.). Now imagine the story from the point of view of every other “character” in the story. How would they tell it? How would their version of the same event differ from yours? What can you see now that you weren’t willing or able to before? How does including their points of view add complexity and nuance to the storytelling? How does taking responsibility for your role in the story make the story far more interesting and compelling to the reader?

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Emily-Rose Klema

Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
About: These prompts freed up space inside of me; gave me permission to make peace, unravel old patterns, outlive the past, and deserve the new. I have been changed by this 100 day process I committed to. Now I am ready for what lies ahead.
Age: 30

Any story that has ever hooked me was owing to the fact that I had given most of 

my power away and relented from forgiving myself or the people involved. Though 

my power was never outright demanded, I gave it away as a bargaining tool. “Here, 

you hold my power and everything I hold dear and I’ll just be too-sweet, too-good, 

too-perfect, you’ll love me and never want to leave and everything will be just fine. 

Your dreams are probably more important than my own anyway.” 

My bargain never made peace. It made war. War between myself and the person 

I’d made the bargain with. By sacrificing everything that I was meant for; purpose, 

ideals, bringing beauty to the world, healing, I victimized myself and it brought out the 

worst not only in myself, but in the people who didn’t know what to do with my power 

once they had it. 

Power is... intoxicating, is it not? 

I allowed people to manipulate their way across the receding state lines of my 

soul and psyche. They took one step over, I took two steps back, drawing another line 

through the sand with my stick. 

I wasn’t advocating for myself in those days. I had to sneak “soul bread” to keep 

the faintest hint of purpose alive in me. As I enslaved myself to the desires and beliefs 

of other people, II became more and more stagnant. 

Once the first blush of our transient “romances” wore off, what was left was just 

two insecure people trying to get to know each other through sex, living together and 

hyper focusing on all of their dreams. There was a severe lack of balance. At first I 

think I seemed like the perfect friend, the perfect girlfriend. I was all about them! They 

couldn’t have had a more adamant cheerleader. But then I became the “mom”; the 

house-cleaner, the driver, the financier. I was the eternal matriarch. Whatever they 

needed, whether it was good for them or not, I made it happen. 

In this way, I see now that I wasn’t truly serving them. I was enabling them, sharing 

a delusion with them, and I was forsaking my own inner life which always ended up in 

bitter ends. Horrible finales of hurt hearts, and wounded egos. 

To be honest, as I think over the people I learned these lessons with, I don’t have a 

solid idea of what they were thinking of me. I don’t know how they’d tell the story. And 

I don’t want to, actually. It’s none of my business. Especially since I’ve been able to do 

the soul-work and see past the illusion of victimization, past survivor-ship and on into 

the journey of living as one who is healed. 

Now that all of those stories have passed, now that I have been a single mom for 

six years (including the pregnancy), much has been released and many wounds are 

now covered in glorious scar tissue that reminds me of the lessons I have learned. I’ve 

taken my power back through the greatest challenges of my life and I see that now, I 

am flourishing! Ready for the next chapter because I’ve been unhooked from the 

snags. In fact, picture this, instead of grappling to save the garments I was wearing 

when I got “snagged” I’ve disengaged from the garments entirely; running free naked 

as can be, into the Unknown where I could be clothes in the new. 

Part of my great emancipation has been from recognizing that I never really was a 

victim even when I felt that I was. I always had a choice to stay or go. People are free to 

behave however they want to. And we are free to change our minds and our choices 

and start advocating for ourselves at the drop of a hat, no questions asked. 

In the blink of an eye my soul-life came screeching back to me in such a way that I 

couldn’t un-hear it’s voice. I couldn’t ignore the call any longer. 

In short, I have been unhooked from every story of my past by forgiving myself 

first and then, sending that forgiveness out to the ones I shared the pain with. The 

great Maya Angelou sang it to our souls best: “When you know better, you do better.”