(Re)write Your Story

Host Anna Borges (The More Or Less Definitive Guide to Self-Care) is joined by Dr. Renee Lemus and Dr. Christina Rose–hosts of Las Doctoras podcast–about rewriting the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and rewiring the messaging that comes from the world about who we’re allowed to be. 

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Follow Las Doctoras podcast online at lasdoctoras.net. 

Mood Ring is a production of American Public Media and Pizza Shark!

Full Transcript

Anna Borges: Let’s kick things off by reading an old journal entry of mine from freshman year of high school. And I guess that comes with all of the disclaimers that you would expect.

 

[sighs] All right… I wrote…

 

I need to get my shit together. It sounds so easy, but why have I always failed so miserably? I don’t know how I let myself get so far behind, or why I can’t delay instant gratification, or when I got so fucking lazy. I know what I have to do. Why can’t I just do it? What is wrong with me?

 

I know I only wrote that in freshman year of high school because of the date at the top of the page. Because to be honest, like, I’ve probably written some variation of that a hundred times over in the decade and a half since then. And maybe you have too? Berating yourself for something - for not being good enough, or fast enough, or a million other things. And for me, it was my inability to focus, to accomplish my goals, to function, basically, the way that I thought I should be able to function because it seemed like everyone BUT ME could do it.

 

It was a recurring subplot in my journals for years.

 

And then, eventually—like 15 years later eventually—I got diagnosed with ADHD.

 

THEME MUSIC

 

[laughs] So…yeah. Which, that cleared a lot of things up in hindsight.

 

And while I felt some relief at having an explanation, I also felt this, like, sense of grief for this person I thought I knew. Like, how could it be that all of these core beliefs about myself, as unkind as they were, were suddenly just…wrong?

 

What do you do when you discover you’ve been an unreliable narrator of your own story this whole time?

 

Hey friends, what’s up?

 

I’m Anna Borges and this is Mood Ring, a practical guide to feelings—even when your feelings about yourself feel like cold hard facts.

 

Every episode, we’re exploring one new way to cope — with our feelings, with our baggage, with our brains, with the world around us. And with the unkind stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

 

And today, we’re talking about how the stories we’ve told ourselves about ourselves can burrow their way into our brains and impact our self-worth and even our whole self-concept. And a lot of those narratives come from messages we get about who we’re supposed to be, or how we’re expected to function, or how our lived experiences fit the mold of what we’re told is normal or acceptable or right.

 

MUSIC

 

After my diagnosis, I started to wonder, like: how many of us are carrying around stories that we believe wholeheartedly, stories that tell us we’re not good enough or smart enough or talented enough or worthy enough?

 

So this episode is about stories. Stories we tell ourselves and stories others tell us ABOUT ourselves, and how we can do the work to untangle it all.

 

To help us with all that untangling, I reached out to Dr. Renee Lemus and Dr. Christina Rose. Together, they host the podcast Las Doctoras and run a writing course that seeks to help students decolonize their writin