The Insight Cure: Change Your Story, Transform Your Life

INTRODUCTION

The word truth is overused in our culture these days. People claim to be truth tellers or to speak their truth. But for most of us, our truth—our sense of self, our assessment of our abilities, our assumptions about the way things play out, and our concept of how we fit into the world—is founded on a lie.

If you’ve ever said, I don’t know why I do it, but I can’t help myself, your truth is false.

If you make the same mistakes over and over again or have noticed that certain situations trigger intense reactions that overwhelm or paralyze you, your truth is false.

If you are stuck in a rut—in your career, marriage, weight, or habits—your truth is false.

You have been telling yourself one central false truth since you were a very young child. It was installed in your mind at a time of life when you didn’t know the difference between a healthy and an unhealthy reaction to something that scared or upset you. You just felt bad, and you self-soothed by telling yourself a story. The story was about you and how you should change your actions or assumptions about yourself and other people in order to feel safe. Since the story gave you comfort at the time, you told it to yourself over and over again, so many times that it played like a loop in your head. By now, you’ve stopped even hearing it, but it’s still in there, still playing, decades later. In psychological terms, this story is your unconscious narrative. And it’s a lie.

This unconscious narrative has shaped your psychology and inhibited you from pursuing life with confidence and strength. You are not all you can be because of it. You can’t even imagine all you could be because of it.

Basically, something bad happened—or something you perceived as bad—when you were very young, and it really messed you up. Most people know that childhood sets the stage for adulthood’s problems. What most people don’t know, however, is what set off the chain of reactions that created the faulty and damaging unconscious narrative. They certainly don’t know how to figure it out or how to change their old narrative for a new, better one in order to live a happier, healthier life.

In my 20-plus years of clinical practice, treating hundreds of patients, not one of them could at first accurately identify the false truth that was the root cause of all their suffering.

If you were one of my patients, and I asked you, What misconception from childhood is still defining you now, as an adult? would you able to come up with an answer? It’s a tough question, absolutely. People look at big-picture problems, like their parents’ divorce, a death, or bullying. As important as those things are, they are events that occurred. They’re not the big lie you told yourself about your role in the event. The event itself is different from how you changed because of it having happened. Your perception of the event and how it changed your behavior and sense of self are the issues at hand that are still causing problems for you now as an adult.

So what is this big lie?

Figuring out your false truth is the most important work you can do to unlock change in your life. It’s been the work of my career to help patients discover the lie that defines them.

One patient referred to me as the False-Truth Detector. I’ll take it.

Why is this work so important? If you discover your false truth, you gain valuable insight. And what, exactly, is insight in a psychological sense?

At its most simple, insight is the ability to recognize cause and effect. You already have the superficial insight to recognize that, for example, if you lie to your spouse, you will get in serious trouble when they find out. The lie (cause) leads to trouble (effect). The kind of insight I’m talking about in this book goes much deeper than that. In this example, the cause is actually the false truth formed in childhood that tells you to lie. The lie itself is the effect, and by extension, so are your unstable relationships. By gaining insight, you will have a clear understanding of where your impulse to lie comes from, and from that knowledge, you can work to uproot the cause and the effect, the childhood false truth and the adult self-sabotaging. When you are insightful about why you do what you do, you can change your behavior to live a healthier, happier life.

Insight can also be an epiphany, a realization when suddenly everything makes sense. For an insight to have a real impact, it has to go back to the false truth from childhood. Once you discover what that is and think about how it has affected your attitude and behavior, you will get that aha! feeling, when the fog lifts and you suddenly see and understand so many things that you couldn’t explain before.

Insight is also a superpower that goes by another name: self-awareness. It’s really knowing who you are and shedding delusions, filters, and masks. When you have such awareness, you don’t hide behind excuses and rationalizations that keep you stuck in ruts. Sometimes the ruts themselves are invisible. Insight reveals those to you too.

With insight, you can begin the process of fundamentally changing your sense of self and become the hero of your own life. You can throw out the old narrative that has been dragging you down, write a new one, live by it, and watch your life transform. No more self-sabotage. No more beating yourself up or shrinking from challenges. No more living with fear, depression, or addiction.

When you are living in the glow of insight, your brain’s architecture will change accordingly. Old synapses, wiring-like pathways that were formed and reinforced by repeated bad behavior, will wither. New synapses, forged by healthy habits and thoughts, will grow brighter and deeper, making you a stronger, happier person psychologically and neurologically. Negative self-talk will stop. Positive assumptions and attitudes that lead to wise choices will take its place. Your brain will be reshaped for success.

Insight unlocks potential and jolts you out of stagnation. And it’s available and accessible to everyone, no therapist required.

Insight Itself

When I was in residency training at the University of California, San Francisco, I gained valuable insight into insight itself. I was among a small group of advanced residents in psychiatry. In our last semester, nearly four years of postgraduate medical education in, we were evaluated by the head of the outpatient department, who was in many ways the guru of the whole program. Dr. Amini was a classically trained psychoanalyst with a practicality that was unusual at the time. He didn’t say very much, but all his words were provocative and on point. He was above all else wise and practical and definitely very deep. A resident was permitted to graduate the training program only when Dr. Amini was satisfied that he or she was indeed competent.

After hitting the books and studying every psychiatric theory from Freud through Gestalt and beyond and reviewing our newly obtained clinical experience, on the day of the evaluation, I was ready for anything.

Dr. Amini came into the room, smiled at the group, and asked his first question: Who can explain what insight feels like?

The other residents and I, bewildered, looked at each other and then down at our laps. No one had an answer. I knew what insight was—recognition of cause and effect, when everything suddenly makes sense, and deeply felt self-awareness. Sometimes it’s described as a flash or a bolt out of the blue. But as a feeling, as a physical sensation in the body? I wasn’t sure. I hoped the professor wouldn’t call on me.

When he saw that all of us were avoiding eye contact with him, he waited. Then eventually he put us out of our misery. Insight is a sinking feeling, he said.

And then I got that sinking feeling myself. Yes, that was exactly what insight felt like. It’s not a moment to bounce out of your chair with excitement or to crumble across your desk in despair. Insight is gravity, a profound heaviness in your gut.

In fact, insight is the deepest feeling you can have because it’s the foundation of all your experiences. Insight clues you in to why you feel sad, angry, frustrated, grateful, or happy in a given situation. Deep understanding allows you to challenge your thoughts and change your behavior.

Until the day I graduated, Dr. Amini was still teaching us about insight and its profound importance.

Also as part of my psychiatric training at UCSF, I felt I had to go into therapy myself. I’d learned a lot of theory in school and I had some clinical experience. But until I started those therapy sessions, I hadn’t had much exposure to counseling from the other side of the desk in order to be able to apply the concepts to myself. I was uncomfortable at first, incredibly anxious because I felt so daunted and alone inside. I didn’t know what the nature and scope of my underlying issues might truly be. I know I need to be here, I told my therapist on the first day, but I couldn’t tell him why. I remember his warmth and curiosity and confidence as we began the process of discovery.

Like many of my own patients, I had no idea what I didn’t know about myself. After several sessions, though, I would figure out my false truth—and how lucky I had been not to let it define me as I grew up to be an adult.

When I was very young, my parents divorced. It was acrimonious. My mother and father were not capable of communicating with each other at all. I went to live with my mom and her parents. If I asked to see or talk to my father, Mom became visibly agitated and usually developed a rash. It seemed to hurt her if I brought him up at all. She was dramatic, and he was reticent. When my father and I did get together, he didn’t seem talkative and I couldn’t get comfortable with him for fear of upsetting Mom. It’s possible he had other interests, or he wasn’t very good at relating to a little kid. It’s hard to say. (My father and I have sorted things out and have a fine relationship now.) Even though I didn’t much enjoy visits with Dad, I wanted more of them. I learned not to ask for them, though, because Mom’s distress was overwhelming for me.

My grandparents were wonderful people. My grandfather was a physician and an exquisitely positive role model, but in the family lore, he was a saint and could do no wrong. My mother and grandmother put him on a pedestal. I found him approachable, but he didn’t struggle with the worries and anxiety I felt, and I couldn’t relate to him as much as I could admire him.

At school, I was shy and insecure and I developed a stutter. My predominant emotions were vulnerability and fear, especially when I compared my feelings with the apparent confidence of others. I was surrounded by love at home from Mom and my grandparents, but I didn’t have a relatable male role model and I felt this absence acutely. I was confused about how to act and worried about doing or saying the wrong thing.

My false truth was the belief that I was terrifyingly alone despite being around other people and that I wouldn’t prove capable of finding my way through life. Due to my experience of my mom’s distress and my father’s distance, I grew up stumbling over my words for fear of displeasing the people I counted on for survival. I retreated deeply into myself and at times could barely speak. The stutter was a manifestation of feeling insecure and isolated.

Then, thanks to good luck and my mom’s good sense, I was saved from growing up believing the on my own false truth. Mom sent me to an all-boys’ middle and high school where I found approachable role models in my friends’ fathers, my teachers, and my coaches. I saw how these men conducted themselves, and I was able to cobble together an idea of the kind of man I was supposed to be. The lucky part was that the father figures I adopted were all excellent people who generously took me on. In a systematic but unconscious way, I proved to myself that I wasn’t on my own after all.

In therapy during my training, I got the sinking insightful feeling of understanding the constant ache of my childhood. I realized that if it hadn’t been for my motivation and good fortune to find role models, I might still be the middle-aged version of the shy boy with a stutter, afraid to express his needs and wants. My unconscious led me to find role models who made me feel less alone and afraid. I fixed a problem I didn’t know I had. Interestingly, I’d done the same thing again in my current situation. When I was initially looking for a therapist to work with, I asked Dr. Amini for suggestions. I asked him to recommend a person who was not only a good psychiatrist but who himself was leading an admirable life. I didn’t want a coach who couldn’t play the game. Dr. Amini told me that in all his years of matchmaking therapists for psychiatry residents in training, he had never been asked that, and he advised me to consider what about that request was particularly important to me and why. I wasn’t able to answer his question until much later, but now it is clear that having role models is a particularly important compass point as I navigate life. I needed role models who cared about me in order to get in touch with my own sense of inner adequacy. So there I was, unknowingly seeking out what I knew I needed, yet without any real insight into how that worked.

A cascade of revelations followed therapy, shedding light on my relationships with my parents and on how things might have played out for me if I hadn’t gotten lucky. This was huge! The process of insight leading to such discoveries was elegant and profound. I had to learn more about the concept. As I intensely studied theories about insight, I learned that most people aren’t as lucky as I was. Most people don’t unconsciously correct their childhood false truths. They get stuck with feeling alone, misunderstood, unloved, unworthy, and worthless. Their entire lives are shaped by these common false truths. As a therapist, I set out to relieve patients of their misconceptions and help them move forward unburdened.

Insight can allow you to hit the reset button on life, no matter your age or how entrenched you might be in your old ways. There is no reason you can’t get rid of childhood misconceptions and use your adult intelligence to redefine yourself.

The Insight Cure: Eight Steps to Change

Becoming insightful is a process. One step builds on the next. All the steps are absolutely necessary and distinct. To hit the reset button on your life, you have to follow each step in order and give it the time and attention it requires. Glossing over a step, skipping ahead, or starting at the end won’t get you the optimal relief and results you want.

The progression below is something I developed over decades in clinical practice with my patients. If you made an appointment with me and came to my office, I would work through the process in the same way, in the same order, using the same strategies with the same guidance and support offered on these pages.

Part I of the Insight Cure contains the first three steps and focuses on awareness. Why is change so hard? What might be your childhood misconception? What actual event caused it? How did it develop into an unconscious narrative (a story about who you are, how you fit in, and what you can expect) that has controlled you ever since?

Step one: Understanding why change is hard. Insight begins with the desire to change. You know that you’re not happy, and you suspect that life doesn’t have to be as much of a struggle as it has been. The desire to change might be strong, but for many reasons, you can’t seem to put those wheels into motion. Each of us has substantial psychological obstacles already in place in our brains that prevent us from surging ahead. As much as we want to change, humans are preprogrammed to resist doing so. This first important step is about understanding and acknowledging the forces that keep you locked and blocked. You have to see the obstacle before you can get around it. As an adult who is motivated to change, you can use focused determination to get to the root of your old story.

Step two: Recognizing your false truth. You suffered an early disappointment, loss, or feeling of guilt or shame, and your interpretation of what happened was probably inaccurate because you were a child. You internalized the misconception and adjusted your behavior in accordance to it—out of necessity, you believed. The false truth turned into a story, the central, unconscious narrative in your life, a pattern of anticipatory ideas and expectations that has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The goal of this step is to formulate a general idea about your unconscious narrative by examining your life philosophy, set of assumptions, and how you use language to talk yourself out of the behavior you don’t want and into the behavior you do want.

Step three: Tracing the false truth’s origins. Although it’s not absolutely necessary to pinpoint the exact moment your false truth began—it’s impossible for most of us to remember that far back—it is possible to approximate the timing and using a series of exercises, to form an accurate picture about how and when it got started.

Part II of the Insight Cure is made up of three steps devoted to dismantling your unconscious narrative—that old story about who you are, how you fit in, and how the world works—and building a new story for yourself.

Step four: Reflecting on the old story. Your unconscious narrative was constructed on a shaky foundation, to say the least. As a child, you didn’t know anything about nuances in relationships or life. You were defenseless, and your shield against pain was a protective false truth. Now that you’re an adult, you can see subtle shades of meaning. You’re no longer defenseless, and you don’t need to hold on to that shield anymore. During this step, you’ll revisit specific experiences and events from the near and distant past to see, in the blazing light of insight, how the false truth controlled your actions and reactions. It can be painful to relive important events, but in order to destroy the old story, you have to fully appreciate how the consequences of your false truth have played out in your life.

Step five: Working through the old story. This step will help you gain a mentality of reality for an even deeper understanding of what’s really happening and of the choices you make. You will take a giant leap forward by learning to look at the past as an observer of it, seeing yourself objectively. To learn from the past, you have to remove the emotions from it and see things as they really are from multiple perspectives. You’ll learn the important skills of forgiving yourself and others and separating decisively from the old narrative.

Step six: Building your new story. To make the journey from the familiar world of your false truth to the extraordinary new world, you need a new sense of self. Your new narrative is the story of objective reality. Who are you, really? What are your virtues, strengths, skills? You get to construct your new narrative from the ground up, based on what you’re genuinely good at. Constructing a new story is not about making a vision board with pictures of a mansion and a Mercedes or fantasizing about revenge or glory. Insight isn’t wish fulfillment. It is being the best version of yourself, making positive assumptions, and setting good intentions.

Part III of the Insight Cure is made up of the final two steps: reinforcing and living in your new reality. It’s not enough to construct a new idea of who you are. You have to go into the world and experience being your new self.

Step seven: Testing the new story. Go into the world and test your new story to confirm and reinforce it. You’ll start with small challenges with guaranteed successful outcomes. Then you’ll level up to bigger challenges that will call upon your powers and strengths. Even if you fail, you still win, because every test gives you more insight into navigating life as a new person. Setbacks are setups for future success. As you accumulate experience, you’ll settle into your new narrative and continually reinforce it until it starts to feel natural.

Step eight: Making change stick. By not acting out your former bad habits and destructive patterns, you allow the brain synapses associated with your old story to diminish and disappear. By acting on good habits and constructive patterns, you allow neurological pathways associated with your new narrative to form. Before long, your new habits and patterns will be normal and automatic. The old ones will feel strange and antithetical to your sense of self. In this step, you’ll also learn resilience skills and how to use insight to get on track in case you find yourself sliding back.

By going through all the steps, gaining awareness and deep insight and reinforcing the new