Sometimes a PWS will say, “If I could only go back and start again … then I would not start blocking or stuttering.” “I want to go back and re-live my life so that I would not have to put up with what my parents did, and I could avoid having a speech pathologist saying there was something wrong with me.”
Your stories help you make sense of how you are right now. They are not about the “truth” of what “really” happened, but your current understanding of your model of the world. And because this is a story, it can be changed, edited, rewritten, or even abandoned.
The story that the PWS is telling you usually begins some time in their childhood. There may be a specific inciting event that makes sense in terms of the story: “It was when X happened that this feeling of being inadequate really struck home …”
One way of rewriting the story is to go back to that inciting incident – whatever starts the story – and change the conditions surrounding it so that it doesn’t happen in that way. This is not about actually changing “the past” – what happened, happened. It is about changing the PWS’s current interpretation of what happened. After all, they were a child at the time, and without the understanding, the coping mechanisms, the strategies for change that they now have as an adult. Treating the story as a fiction makes changing someone’s emotional response to “their past” much easier. You could, for example, imagine going back to the inciting incident and giving those significant others the resources they needed at the time. In your imagination, you are unlimited.
The following process provides a means of rewriting the story so that the PWS can go back and change the story of their life. I have revised Michael Hall’s original version (Hall, 2001–2002) to make it more appropriate for use with PWS. Several PWS have found the following pattern helpful. It makes for a great homework piece. You can also coach the person through the pattern.
Exercise 4.4: Creating a new self narrative Overview
Discover your story:
a. “Up until now the story of my life has comprised a story of …”
b. “If I described the plot or theme of my life it would be …”
c. Complete the statement: “Up until now … I thought, believed, felt, acted …”
Step back from the story.
Find counter-examples.
Make up a new story that is more empowering.
Explain to the PWS that we understand our lives as stories. Because these stories may no longer serve you, you can choose to update them, edit them or otherwise “re-story” your life. Stop telling yourself the old blocking story and tell yourself a new one instead.
1. Discover your story.
Ask the PWS some questions along the following lines:
What story have you been living up until now that contributes to your blocking?
Where did that story come from? Did someone give it to you? Did you make it up yourself?
Is the story part of your family story, your cultural story, your religious story, your racial story …?
How much of the story did you personally adapt or create?
Tell about the theme of your life. What do you detect as the underlying narrative or pattern?
Does your narrative tell a story of victimhood or survival, of failing or winning, of connecting or disconnecting, of being rejected or of being loved and accepted …?
“Up until now the story of my life has comprised the story of …”
(for example: a victim, a failure, bad luck, stress, rejection, ease, success, popularity, fame and so on)
“If I described the plot or theme of my life it would be …”
(for example: a tragedy, a drama, a soap-opera, horror, melodrama, education plot, and so on)
Complete the statement: “Up until now … I have thought, believed, felt, acted …”
And then describe fully how you have responded mentally, emotionally, physically to your old story, in terms of your verbal behavior, the decisions you have made, the expectations you had and so on.
2. Step back from the story.
Evaluate the usefulness, productivity, value and emotional enjoyment of your story.
Would you recommend living in that story to anyone else?
How well has this narrative served you? What doesn’t work very well or feel very good about that story?
Do you feel stuck simply because you do not know of anything else that you could possibly say about your experiences other than what you have already said?
Looking back at what happened, how else could you interpret those events in the light of what you know now?
3. Find counter-examples.
Most people have exceptions to their stories. For instance, most PWS have times when they are not living in fear and anxiety. Instead, they are relaxed and hence speak fluently. There are even occasions when they do not block in situations where they usually would. Indeed, one of the first things I do in working with PWS is to analyze those times when they are consistently fluent, because that proves that the PWS knows how to not block and stutter, and demonstrates to the PWS that they have the necessary resources and strategies for fluency. Then I elicit the structure of how they do that, how they operate from a state of calmness, courage, determination, comfort and focus – or even indifference!
Ask how questions. “How did you do that?”
How did you not fall into anxiety and fear, but just keep at it?
How did you resist losing your calmness, and communicate with your boss anyway?
How did you not discount yourself in that instance?
How did you prevent things from getting even worse with all of that happening?
4. Make up a new story that is more empowering.
Now think about how you would like your story to take you into the future:
“From this day on I will increasingly become
