We all have ideas, don’t we, about what kind of person we are, what our upbringing was like, how good a friend/partner/parent we are.
We may tell ourselves all sorts of things about ourselves:
“My parents treated me badly”
“I’m the only one who does the washing up”
“I do all the work in this relationship”
“This symptom will be with me forever”
These stories can be very similar to beliefs.
In the Lightning Process we start to examine our beliefs, and instead of asking ‘is this belief/story TRUE? We ask ‘is this belief/story USEFUL?
In other words…is it helping me be well and enjoy my life?
If the answer is no then we might want to consider ditching this belief/story and playing with the idea adopting a new one.
Then they might look more like this:
“My parents treated me badly” becomes
“My parents did their best; they weren’t great at lots of things but I love the way they introduced me to music/helped me appreciate my brother/allowed me to change schools when I needed to. In this way we’re starting to edit our past differently, and to notice that although there were issues, there were also helpful bits
“I’m the only one who does the washing up” and “I do all the work in this relationship” becomes
“although it’s mostly me doing the washing up, I love the way my partner sorts out the dead rats the cats bring in/drives me home in the evening/makes me laugh
“This symptom will be with me forever” becomes
“I’m working on shifting this symptom and at some point I’ll work out how to do it, because others have done it, so it must be possible”
I’d love to hear your stories of shifting your stories, with or without the Lightning Process