One of the tragedies of adulthood is that you start to see, over time, that some of the people around you will never change. Because most people do change. Personality traits may be fixed, but they’re not stagnant. They’re like water – they drift in a certain direction over time, carrying you through your life, maybe getting deeper or more shallow, but never stopping.
Or, as I think of it – we’re all walking through the fog, but some of us keep walking. Some of us don’t.
Psychology isn’t an exact science, but it can tell us a lot about who we are and why we are and how it is that we do what we do. Typically, people become more emotionally stable and more conscientious as they age. For some people, this movement is substantial. For others, it’s barely a few steps.
But what I’m thinking about is narrative identity and the people who build a narrative around themselves that they are so committed to that they are incapable of revisions. And I think we’ve all heard this narrative –
- I’m misunderstood.
- Nobody appreciates my talents.
- I’m the victim.
- I’m exceptional.
Etc. The narrative becomes the core identity, and anything that requires it to change is an existential identity threat. The goal becomes preserving the story rather than updating the story.
I’m an updater. I realized that years ago when someone from my past heard me say something and challenged it – “But you used to think this!” I also used to compulsively draw Hs on the wall with crayons. I grew up. I changed. Now I compulsively cover notebooks and computer screens with words. Same basic behavior, but evolved.
Yet some people become so invested in a particular identity or narrative that meaningful change becomes increasingly unlikely. They’ve spent years gathering evidence and that support that narrative, and the evidence doesn’t have to be objectively correct or valid. It just has to be true to them in a way that they need.
The Martyr, for example. I’ve experienced this up close; I spent years treading water inside it. Now, when I look back across my experiences and all the ways I’ve drifted and revised, I see it for what it is: A self-sealing narrative that absorbs everything. If someone treats her well, it’s because they want something from her. If someone treats her poorly, it’s evidence that she’s a victim. If someone challenges that narrative, well, that’s just one more example of people misunderstanding and mistreating her.
It’s a narrative that becomes a closed system. It’s not an ocean – it’s a swimming pool, and the only thing you’re able to do is circle around and around and around endlessly.
And the thing with closed system stories is that they require supporting characters. If reality doesn’t cooperate, reality gets rewritten – not even entirely consciously. A person who is deeply invested in a narrative will assign roles and ignore or reinterpret contradictory evidence.
Ever been assigned a role in someone else’s narrative, and no matter what you do, you can’t break free of it? That’s a closed system narrative. You either play the role, or get written out.
It’s interesting to look at these things now as a writer in my 40s and see how the stories operate. Humans are storytellers by nature, and watching how people’s stories change – or don’t – is one of the more fascinating and infuriating parts of aging.
I heard the author Eleanor Brown give a talk once and she said that we write about the things that bother us. I’m bothered by people successfully creating narrative loops for self-protection that allow them to never have to grapple with self-accountability and their own faults and weaknesses.
The older I get, the more I see how powerful stories are – self-protective loops, propaganda, reinforcement mechanisms. Sometimes we listen to stories more than we listen to evidence – we seek out the ideas and experiences that validate us. I get it, I really.
I just don’t want to write that story.
