(37). Letter From An African Psychiatrist: Narratives Drive Fundamentals.
Unlocking Brain Potential.
(37). Letter From An African Psychiatrist.
Dear friends,
Walk into any decent bookshop, strive over to the psychology section, bend a bit, tilt your head and spot the self-help range. For sure, you will focus on a couple of books triumphantly proclaiming: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life! (At the top of the page is usually a boast: New York Times bestseller, or 1 million copies sold. You get the point.) But how many purchasers read the book from cover to cover (?10%), or actually change their thinking (?1%), or change their lives (?0,1%). What is going on? Why are so many people stuck in negative thinking? What are the resistance factors? I think I stumbled on the fundamental solution.
Recently, I watched a short clip of a video by Adrian Gore, CEO of a major South African insurance company, with a material footprint in many countries. Their 30 year competitive advantage is driven by behavioural economics, keeping people healthy and saving lives. Many of the business decisions are based on deep and wide data patterns.
However, around midway, he pivoted his presentation and focussed on dilemmas facing current South Africa, and expressed eloquently a profound clue to my cognitive dissonance about resistance to changing sabotaging thinking.
He argued the following idea: Narratives drive fundamentals. Not the opposite - I.e. fundamentals driving narratives. In other words, it is the stories we tell ourselves, the words we hear and share that drive the quality of our lives, our health, our relationships, our dreams.
Declinism, everything is getting worse, is a common theme threading through depressives and ‘losers’. So too, nostalgia for the good, old times; core beliefs of learned helplessness and meaningless.
Listen to the stories of real winners and you will notice a healthy dose of realism, and a creative, innovative mindset to heal the fractures in the world around them. Gore continues: compare narratives to reality: if the quality of narratives are above reality, there is possibility in that spacial differential for change and progress. There is hope of a better future, for all.
If narratives are below the perceived reality, a vacuum forms attracting thoughts of hopelessness, reactivity, and anger and crippling fear fill in the gap, a self-fulfilling, confirming experiences
For example, think street potholes and damage to cars, besides the generation of corrosive emotional reactions to drivers. Discovery recognised this reality, compared to the narrative of shared values spotted the opportunity, and to date their company has paid for 133,000 pothole repairs. A brilliant win-win marketing plan! Their narrative is a different perception; an antidote to the psychological lens of declinism.
As a cognitive therapist, I listened to 20,000 painful personal stories; I have heard my colourful family narratives going back a couple of generations to its origins in Lithuania; and embedded the milestones of my marriage, my children, and grandchildren. I am mindful to the unfolding history of South Africa; and for 50 years years plugged into the 4000 year historical events and unfolding dramas of the tortuous journeys of the Jewish People. Therein, between the lines, lies the depth of my psyche, my core meaning to life. And so with all human beings. Homo ‘storicus’ sapiens - the species who seek, and think, about stories.
If we lose our well worn pages of experiences, our cherished memories embedded in a tapestry of interpretation, who then are we really? Indeed, it is the nuanced tone and lessons, the connections of words, and the valency of it’s associated emotions, that synergise the coded scripts into coherent meaning. Empowering ourselves in meaning, is the magisterial idea that we, mysterious human beings, all of us, can add a few letters, words, sentences or paragraphs to any of the unfolding books we identify with and believe. Meaning is the foundation of resilience.
Let me be clear: successful, thriving people are rich in, and are enriched by, multiple, purpose driven stories. They are responsible actors in the different parts of their life cycle. Depressives, negaholics, are reactive spectators, passive, unaware of the soul destroying nonsense they believe in. They associate with others who repeat the delusions and cognitive distortions and segue into a like minded, unstoppable herd; like iron filings drawn to a magnet. Beware of the toxic dust they generate as they gallop mindlessly and fall over the cliff of nihilism.
So, the life message of it all, is that our realistic stories (major part of internal thinking systems) we tell ourselves, drives the inner fundamentals (of joy, meaning, peace, mindfulness, quality of relationships…).
Remember well, don’t forget! Change your narrative, change your life.
All the very best,
Dr Jonathan D Moch,
Psychiatrist, Cognitive Therapist.
Helping people construct their meaningful stories.
Dear Reb Jonathan
Thank you so much for these uplifting and inspiring Letters.
Your depth of knowledge in your field is exemplary.
As they say in the classics “ Shehakoach”.
Thank you and Kol Hakavod
Enjoyed the article. Thanks for sending through. Makes me think about the narrative of the exodus of Egypt and how it is meant to inform our day to day growth.