Coaching practices for I've Told the Story Plenty of Times What I Thought What it Meant About Me but it Never Loosens Its Hold and I'm Starting to Suspect That's Because I Keep Skipping the Parts I Most Want to Avoid What I Actually Saw Heard and Felt in My Body When it Was Happening
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For I've Told the Story Plenty of Times What I Thought What it Meant About Me but it Never Loosens Its Hold and I'm Starting to Suspect That's Because I Keep Skipping the Parts I Most Want to Avoid What I Actually Saw Heard and Felt in My Body When it Was Happening, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- There’s a story I want to talk through but every time I start telling it I lead with the most intense part and my body floods before I get three sentences in
- I’m stuck endlessly in my head
- I keep going over what happened wanting to actually understand it, but every replay just drops me back into reliving the hurt blow by blow instead of figuring out why it went the way it did
- I’ve told the story plenty of times
- When I tell my own stories I breeze right past the parts that light me up because they feel ordinary to me
Practices that may help
- Titrate the story — tell only the edges of a difficult narrative
When a story feels too big to tell fully, tell only its outer layer — what you noticed before it escalated — rather than the most intense part.
Titration in Somatic Practice, Made Practical - Track body sensation (the felt sense)
Follow raw physical sensation with curiosity — tingling, warmth, pressure — rather than the storyline.
Somatic Experiencing, Honestly Explained - Take the fly-on-the-wall perspective
Replay a distressing event as a distant observer watching from afar, not from inside your own eyes.
Self-Distancing: Thinking Clearly About Your Own Problems - Work the four channels of traumatic memory: sense, emotion, cognition, meaning
NET explicitly addresses all four channels in which trauma is encoded — not just thought.
Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET): Weaving Trauma Into a Coherent Life Story - Do the discovery with a partner
Have someone listen for the themes you can’t hear in your own stories.
Find Your Why, Made Practical - Identify what the narrative leaves out
After hearing or constructing a causal story, deliberately list the facts it doesn’t explain.
The Narrative Fallacy: Why We Can’t Stop Making Stories - Use imagery to re-engage with avoided experiences
Revisit a distressing memory in concrete imagery rather than abstract analysis.
Rumination-Focused CBT, Made Practical - Share the messy version, not the edited highlight reel
The over-polished version of your story creates distance; the real version creates connection.
The Pratfall Effect, Made Practical - Name the story your mind is telling
Recognize the narrative your emotions run — the "I’m not good enough" or "no one cares" story — so it can’t run you.
Emotional Agility, Made Practical - Revise your life narrative when it limits you
Identify and reauthor the story you tell about your past that constrains what you believe is possible.
The Life Crafting Intervention: Scripting Your Future Self
Related concerns
- Sticky Stories Mind
When listeners become absorbed in a narrative, their counter-argument generation drops and attitudes shift toward the story’s perspective — a process called narrative transportation. Experimental research confirms that well-crafted stories can be more persuasive than equivalent statistical evidence, particularly for value-laden or identity-relevant topics.
- When Benefit Finding Adversity Distinguish Growth From Positive Illusions
Learn to tell the difference between real benefits that changed how you live and comfortable stories that protect you from fully processing the loss.
Distinguish genuine growth from positive illusions
- Authentic Storytelling Technique
The over-polished version of your story creates distance; the real version creates connection.
Share the messy version, not the edited highlight reel
- The Narrative Fallacy Why We Can T Stop Making Stories As A Caregiver
The narrative fallacy, named by Nassim Taleb in The Black Swan, is the tendency to construct coherent, causal stories from sequences of events — and then to mistake the story for the underlying reality. Narratives feel explanatory because they are causal and emotionally coherent, but they systematically underweight randomness, omit disconfirming details, and create false predictability. The bias is real and well-grounded theoretically; its practical importance is high wherever decisions depend on forecasting or learning from the past.
- Vulnerability In Storytelling
The over-polished version of your story creates distance; the real version creates connection.
- When After Action Review Peer Aar Facilitation
Self-conducted AARs have blind spots; a peer or coach who was not inside the event sees the causal story differently.
Include a trusted other in high-stakes AARs
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