BBR #155: From Past Narratives to Present Decisions

Ever wondered how the narratives from your past influence your present actions? Get ready to challenge your beliefs and unravel the complex connection between blame and responsibility in our lives. 

This episode dives into my own experiences and learnings with some honest, transparent conversations about inherited narratives, personal growth, and the tricky terrain of untying ourselves from a 'blame mentality' towards self-accountability.

Join me as we touch on the significance of understanding our genes and environment as influencing factors, the stories we've been handed down, and the habits we've picked up along the way. It's essential to evaluate these patterns and habits and decide whether they serve us well. 

We are responsible for our present and future actions, regardless of our upbringing and past experiences. Get ready to explore alternative living examples, acquire new skills, and make conscious choices about what we learn - physically and emotionally. 

Get in there and give it a listen! 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

What is up? Hello there. My name is Jessica Paching Bunch, you can call me JPB, and this is Brain Body Resilience. This is a podcast dedicated to growth, human development and stressing a little bit less so you can go ahead and live a little bit more.

Speaker 2: 0:27

Hello and good day to you. We are back here with episode number 155, which is wild. That means that we are coming up on three years here with a podcast, which blows me away a little bit. And for today I want to talk about something that I heard someone say recently that sparked some thoughts that I want to share here with you and I think that it might resonate. Maybe not in a great way, it might struffle some feathers because we're talking about blame and shifting blame to someone else and kind of not taking responsibility.

Speaker 2: 1:13

I heard someone say recently my mother's neurotic and I blame it on her, I blame this on her, that I was acting this way and I reminded them that we are all autonomous creatures. I don't know if that was appreciated or not. Either way, I say things that come to mind. I will always give it to you straight. I think that's what some people have said. They appreciate that. I think some others don't, and none of that is any of my business. I am.

Speaker 2: 1:48

I try to be honest and so with that, that kind of reminder of responsibility, I was reminded that I used to hold stories that I inherited from my mom and her family about what was meant for us and how worthy we are, and how people judge us, and how people with money are terrible, how life is always a struggle All of these narratives that were kind of passed down to me, and it wasn't until recent years that I was able to recognize some of the beliefs and stories that I held on to that weren't actually mine. They were given to me by other people. Like most of us, at a young age, we learn about the world from the perspective of our home environment, from the adults in our lives, and this does contribute to shaping us as we grow and learn to navigate on our own as adults. And there is a long held debate about nature versus nurture. Are we the product of our genetics or a product of our environment? And I think it's a little bit of a ridiculous debate.

Speaker 2: 3:03

And I think it's less of a debate now. I think this is one of the first things I learned in like Psych 101 or something which was too long ago to remember or want to admit here, but that was still a thing. I think with more current research we understand that it's not one or the other. We are obviously a product of both. Both of these things affect us. They can't not affect us, and we used to think everything was genetics. When we learned that environment has an impact on how genes are expressed, that changed things a little bit. Things that we used to think were hereditary don't actually have a genetic explanation. There isn't a specific gene to explain away aspects of being in this human experience, and more often than not we find that environmental factors contribute greatly to those things we used to think were hereditary. So what we do know is that our family patterns, our family's habits and lifestyle, and understanding of how to take care of ourselves, how we learn or don't learn to self-soothe and self-regulate in our developmental years, what our sense of safety is from that time or lack of these, are all things that affect us later in life. And while all of this is true and contributes to our health and our perspective and beliefs and how we know ourselves in the world, and none of that is our fault. We are responsible for ourselves. We are our own responsibility as we become autonomous adults who get to make decisions for ourselves. It is our responsibility to recognize the things that we do, the patterns that we have, and assess whether these things are things that serve us and how we want to be in the world or not. And if it's not, it is our responsibility to change these things, to seek out examples of other ways to live and learn how to move in a direction that feels better for us. Laming others for things we do as adults is both super lame because we're adults who have autonomy and it's a disservice to us If you're giving your power away to someone who probably doesn't even know or think about it as much as you do. It takes our ability to manage that situation, handle that situation, change that thing, relate to that thing differently. It takes that away, and people can only teach when we're thinking about our families of origin or people that we grew up with, things that affected us in our development and our perspective. People can only teach what they know, and so if you're not into it or it's not serving you. It is your responsibility as an adult person with autonomy to seek other options, other examples of how to relate to yourself and the world around you. And if you don't have that in your immediate environment, because not everyone does, you can find that in books, ted Talks, podcasts. Here you are. Follow the people who demonstrate the aspirational qualities or lifestyles that you want.

Speaker 2: 6:37

On social media, there are plenty of ways to find examples of something different, other than your immediate environment. That is more true today than it ever has been. We have access to so much and instead of spending our time specifically I'm talking about on the internet, you know, debating with trolls and looking back at your high school friends and what they're doing now, and judging people and comparing yourself to unrealistic standards that come from celebrities who don't even look like what they, the pictures they post, and all of these things that just make you feel like shit we could be spending our time in a better way, to take in things that we can learn Again, things that the to like. What are we learning? To learn new skills, to move in a direction that feels better for us, those aspirational qualities. We are learning how to navigate ourselves and the world around us in a way that serves us better. There is so much education on the internet you can literally find anything out there, so we do have access to this. And, again, our diet creates us, and our diet is not just food and things that we consume and digest like we do, but in a different way. It's not just about food. It's about the things that we are watching, the things that we're listening to, the things that we are taking in and cognitively, emotionally digesting and creating stories out of it. So choose better things to seek out with your time, especially on social media, is my point here.

Speaker 2: 8:32

When we're looking at shifting our blame to someone else and blaming these patterns and habits and lifestyle that we grew up in. And my mom did this, so it's her fault. Or my dad did this, so it's his fault. Or this is how I grew up and so that's the blame for it. Change only happens when you want to change. It's not because you know you should or because someone else wants you to. You will make changes when it's something you want to do or, more likely, you want the results that come from doing that thing, because the process isn't always super fun, even though the process of getting there is the whole point. We are learning through that process.

Speaker 2: 9:15

I remember for most of my life I used to blame all of my problems the way that I was in the world, the way that I navigated, the way that I saw the world on my growing up situations and to the point where I have this memory of a previous boyfriend I had when I was young and we were just getting to know each other and it was kind of like one of those we were hanging out and it was like oh, you know, tell me about yourself, kind of situation. And I remember I just listed out kind of chronologically, like all of the abuse, all of the adversity, all of the reasons that I thought I was fucked up and was like, hey, this is why I am the way I am. This is my life, and I think about that so long. I had this story for so long of why I was the way that I was and it wasn't my responsibility was because of all of these things that had happened.

Speaker 2: 10:26

And that's not useful, because that makes us feel helpless. It takes the agency out of our hands and unless we have that, unless we understand that we have that agency. Unless we understand that we get to choose how to navigate our lives now, unless we understand that we can choose something different for ourselves, we take that power away from us and never give ourselves the opportunity to create those reference points that we can navigate differently, that what we do in our lives matters, and often change happens not just when we want it to, but we wait to change until there is some kind of tragic event. For me it was my brother dying and my whole life changed drastically after that because I couldn't. Between my brother dying and the beginning of the time when I started having seizures, my whole life was kind of upended and I just realized I have to make some changes and so we don't have to wait until we get to that point. We don't have to wait until we are forced to change. We can choose that at any time. We can choose to take responsibility. We can choose to navigate differently. We can choose to rewrite the stories that we have held for so long. That may not even be ours.

Speaker 2: 12:04

And, yes, change is uncomfortable, because we are usually experiencing change that is new, and so it's unfamiliar, and that's okay. That is going to come with discomfort, and that is okay. You can do it when you make the decision to do so. So this one is something that maybe we'll take some time and sip with this one. Take this little cup of tea and sip on it for a while. That's all I have today. Until next week we will do this again. I hope you have a beautiful week. If you found this episode useful, please do like always share it with a friend so that they might also find some use in it. Thank you for your time and your energy and your attention.

Speaker 2: 12:56

I am immensely grateful that each one of you are here, so we'll do this again. Until then, I'm out of here.