As a therapist, one of the things I’ve come to believe most deeply is this: the stories we tell ourselves are incredibly powerful and shape almost every part of our lives.
Working with beliefs is an essential part of therapy. If you struggle with depression, you might have a voice in your head saying things are never going to get better. If you are dealing with anxiety, that voice might say people can’t be trusted or something bad is always about to happen. These stories usually come from real experiences — maybe you got hurt by someone you trusted, or things felt unpredictable growing up. But over time they take on a life of their own, shaping what we pay attention to, what we avoid, and what we think is possible. We usually don’t even realize we’re telling them.
Do you believe people are basically good? That you can change? That you deserve to be loved? Whatever your answers, they’re quietly running in the background of your life, influencing everything.
Our Stories and The World
This doesn’t just happen in our personal lives. The same pattern plays out across our whole society.
A dollar bill is just a piece of paper — it only has value because we all agree it does. Our governments, laws, and institutions work the same way. The bigger stories our culture tells — about who matters, who has power, what’s worth protecting — shape entire generations, for good or for harm. Often both at the same time.
Right now a lot of those bigger stories we’ve told each other are falling apart. Trust in government, the stability of the future, what events in the world mean. That’s scary. But here’s one way to look at it — think of it like a forest fire — devastating in the moment, but clearing the way for new growth that couldn’t take root before. The story that’s been driving our culture for a long time is basically: I’m on my own. The world is something to conquer or protect myself from. Other people are competition. You can see where that story has taken us — in our political division, our economy, even in artificial intelligence, which is really just a reflection of what happens when you follow that way of thinking all the way to the end.
But something else is starting.
Expanding the Definition of Self in Therapy
Traditionally therapy has focused on the individual — your thoughts, your relationships, your history. But there’s a growing awareness that we can’t fully separate how a person feels on the inside from what’s happening around them. We are far more affected by the world than we’ve often acknowledged.
When people come into my office feeling anxious, hopeless, or disconnected, those feelings aren’t always just about personal history. Sometimes they’re grieving what they see in the news, or worn down by a world that feels frightening and divided. That’s not a sign something is wrong with you — it’s a deeply human response.
My job isn’t to tell anyone what to believe or what causes to care about. It’s to help people explore their own values and find what feels true for them — to have hard conversations, take their pain about the world seriously, and help them find action that comes from who they actually are rather than from shame or fear.
I spent years working in addiction therapy and noticed that the people who struggled most were defined entirely by what they were fighting against. The ones who thrived found something worth living for — not just not drinking, but a life that genuinely excited them. The same applies here. We don’t build a better world by making our whole identity about what we’re against. We build it by falling in love with what we’re for.
The poet Mary Oliver wrote about letting the soft animal of your body love what it loves. When we get quiet enough to feel what we actually care about, the right action tends to become clear. For one person that might mean volunteering at a food bank. For another it might mean being a more present parent, starting a community garden, or playing music with neighbors. None of these are lesser or greater than the others. Every act taken from genuine love adds something real to the world. And the most lasting movements in history haven’t been built on anger alone — they’ve been built on community, joy, and people finding meaning together even in hard times.
Real change in therapy doesn’t happen until someone starts believing a different story about themselves. Maybe I’m not as broken as I thought. Maybe I can trust this one person. When that shifts, even a little, it opens doors. Someone who believed they’d never get out of bed starts going for a walk. Someone who thought they’d never connect with anyone calls an old friend. The new story doesn’t just feel different — it leads to different choices.
And this is the key point: changing our story is not passive. It’s not sitting around thinking positive thoughts while real harm is being done in the world. It’s actually what makes meaningful action possible. Acting from fear and anger, you can only go so far before you burn out. Acting from love and connection, you tap into something deeper and more lasting.
Telling a New Story
You can see signs of a new story everywhere if you know where to look. A random act of kindness from a stranger, people standing up for the rights of others, laughing and playing with the people you love – those moments of grace that make our lives worthwhile. A friend of mine drove down to help after a town in South Carolina was devastated by flooding. He stopped on a bridge to take in the damage, and a moment later another man pulled over — someone about as different from him as you can imagine. Without saying much, my friend put his arm around him. The man broke into tears. That’s what happens when the story falls away. We remember that underneath everything, we actually need each other.
We’ve been told for so long that we’re isolated, that we can’t trust each other, that everyone is out for themselves. But I don’t think that’s who we actually are. Trust, love, and connection are just as natural to us as fear and anger. We’ve just forgotten.
I believe we have the capacity to face our current challenges and find our way to a more beautiful world on the other side. But I’ve learned — in the therapy room and in my own life — that we can’t get there from fear. Something powerful happens when we stop trying to control everything and just show up for what’s in front of us. When we’ve run out of other options, we find each other. And choosing connection — over and over, in small ways and big — might be the new story we’re learning to live.
It’s not a guarantee. But it is a choice. One available to every single one of us, every day — in a therapy room, at a protest, in a hospital, around a kitchen table.
Maybe the best thing any of us can do right now is hold the people we love a little closer.
And start telling a different story.
