Dr. Paul Conti

So I'm the girl and I went to a new school and I wasn't popular.

No one liked me and I didn't fit in.

And because of that, I didn't have any friends and things didn't go well.

It's a story.

It's a story.

But once the person attaches to that story, which often happens when the person is very young, then the story moves forward with them and the story starts to take on additional meaning.

I really shouldn't go new places because people don't really like me.

I have to stay with the people who I have friendships with because I'm not going to be able to find new friends.

That can come out of that story.

That's why I went somewhere new.

I wasn't good enough to have new friends, etc.

And now we start making a myth

And very often that story that was put together just from facts, not from the flow and what they mean, right, then becomes a myth of self.

And that is very, very problematic because we then don't go back necessarily further.

And check that and say, hey, is that really true, right?

And the idea of bringing compassionate curiosity to our life narratives is also of the highest level of importance.

So what if we go back and we look at that story and we say, well, okay, that girl went to a new school.

They arrived mid-year and they were really difficult circumstances and it was a small school and there were a lot of cliques and people weren't really behaving well and there wasn't a lot of supervision.

And then you could say, well, the story could be different as that girl went to a new school and it was a very difficult environment and she got through that year anyway.

She got through that year, and then the next year, things got a little better, and she made a couple of friends, and some of those friends are still with her in her life.