The Stories We Tell Ourselves: Exploring Internal Narratives Through a Psychodynamic Lens

Oct 30

How Unconscious Scripts Shape Your Neurodivergent Identity and Relationships

“I’m always too much.” “I’ll never be able to do things like normal people.” “If people really knew me, they’d leave.” “I have to work twice as hard to be half as good.” These aren’t just thoughts — they’re the internal narratives that play on repeat in your mind, shaping every decision, relationship, and opportunity you encounter. Formed in childhood, reinforced through years of experience, and operating largely outside conscious awareness, these stories feel like truth rather than interpretation. For neurodivergent adults, these narratives often carry the accumulated weight of living in a world that consistently told you that your natural way of being was wrong, insufficient, or broken.

At Michigan Wellbeing, we use psychodynamic therapy to help clients uncover and examine these internal narratives — not to positive-think them away or replace them with affirmations, but to understand their origins, functions, and the unconscious needs they serve. These stories didn’t develop randomly; they were adaptive responses to real experiences, creative attempts to make sense of a confusing world, and protective strategies for vulnerable parts of yourself. Through psychodynamic exploration, you can begin to recognize these narratives as stories rather than facts, understanding how they formed and, most importantly, discovering that you have the power to revise them.

The Architecture of Internal Narratives

Internal narratives are more than conscious thoughts or beliefs — they’re deeply embedded psychological structures that organize how we perceive and interact with the world. Like the operating system of a computer, they run in the background, influencing everything while remaining largely invisible. These narratives weave together memories, emotions, bodily sensations, and meanings into coherent stories that explain who we are, why things happen to us, and what we can expect from life.

For neurodivergent individuals, these narratives often form around experiences of difference, misunderstanding, and failed attempts to meet neurotypical expectations. The child who couldn’t sit still in class doesn’t just remember being punished; they construct a narrative about being fundamentally disruptive. The teenager who couldn’t decode social situations doesn’t just recall confusion; they build a story about being inherently disconnected from others. These narratives become self-fulfilling prophecies, influencing behavior in ways that often confirm the story’s premise.

The power of these narratives lies partly in their unconscious operation. You don’t consciously think “I’m unlovable” before every social interaction, but that narrative influences how you interpret ambiguous social cues, whether you reach out for support, and how you respond to affection. The narrative becomes a filter through which all experience passes, highlighting evidence that confirms the story while minimizing or dismissing contradictory information. This confirmation bias keeps narratives stable even when current reality no longer matches the conditions under which they formed.

Origin Stories: Where Internal Narratives Begin

Understanding where internal narratives originate helps explain their persistence and power. These stories typically form during critical developmental periods when we’re trying to understand ourselves and our place in the world. For neurodivergent children, this meaning-making happens in contexts where their differences are often misunderstood, pathologized, or punished.

A child with undiagnosed ADHD who consistently fails to complete homework despite trying desperately might develop the narrative “I’m lazy and irresponsible.” This story serves multiple functions: it provides an explanation for confusing experiences, aligns with what adults are saying, and paradoxically protects against the more painful possibility that they’re trying their hardest and still failing. The narrative of laziness, while painful, feels more controllable than accepting neurological difference in a world that demands conformity.

Similarly, an autistic child who repeatedly experiences social rejection might develop the narrative “I’m meant to be alone.” This story transforms random, confusing social failures into something predictable and meaningful. It protects against the vulnerability of continuing to reach for connection that might not come. It provides a sense of control — if you’re meant to be alone, then isolation becomes destiny rather than failure. These protective functions help explain why narratives persist even when they cause suffering.

Family dynamics profoundly influence narrative formation. The stories families tell about themselves and their members become internalized individual narratives. If your family story was “We’re fighters who never give up,” your ADHD struggles might be narrated as personal weakness rather than neurological difference. If the family narrative was “We’re different from other people,” neurodivergent traits might be subsumed into family identity rather than understood as individual neurology. These inherited narratives interweave with personal experience, creating complex stories about self and belonging.

The Psychodynamic Excavation Process

Psychodynamic therapy approaches internal narratives like an archaeologist approaching layers of civilization — carefully, respectfully, with awareness that each layer served important functions in its time. The goal isn’t to demolish old narratives but to understand them so thoroughly that their power diminishes and space for new stories emerges.

The process often begins with recognizing narratives as narratives rather than truth. This sounds simple but can be profoundly destabilizing. The story “I’m broken” might have organized your entire life — your career choices, relationships, and self-care patterns. Recognizing it as a story rather than fact creates what psychodynamic therapists call “observing ego” — the part of you that can witness your patterns rather than being consumed by them. For neurodivergent individuals who’ve been told their perceptions are wrong, developing trust in this observing capacity requires careful therapeutic support.

Dreams, fantasies, and seemingly random associations often reveal narratives operating below conscious awareness. The recurring fantasy of being discovered as a fraud might reveal a narrative about not deserving success. The dream of being unable to speak might symbolize a narrative about voice and agency. The sudden memory during therapy of a teacher’s dismissive comment might illuminate the origin of a narrative about intellectual inadequacy. These unconscious communications bypass the defenses that protect painful narratives from conscious examination.

Transference relationships become particularly rich sources of narrative information. The stories you unconsciously expect to play out with your therapist reveal core narratives about relationships. If you’re constantly anxious about boring your therapist, it might reveal a narrative about being inherently uninteresting. If you withhold struggles to avoid burdening them, it might expose a narrative about needs making you rejectable. The therapeutic relationship becomes a space where narratives can be observed in action, examined, and gradually revised through new relational experiences.

Common Neurodivergent Narrative Themes

The Imposter Narrative: “I’m fooling everyone and will eventually be exposed” This narrative often develops from years of masking, where the gap between internal experience and external presentation feels like deception. Success feels fraudulent because it required such effort or accommodation. The narrative maintains anxiety about exposure while preventing full ownership of achievements. It keeps you working desperately to maintain the façade while never feeling secure in your accomplishments.

The Burden Narrative: “I’m too much work for anyone to truly want me” Formed through experiences of others’ frustration with your needs, this narrative interprets support as obligation rather than care. It leads to minimizing needs, refusing help, and preemptively ending relationships before others can feel burdened. The narrative protects against rejection by controlling the terms of disconnection, but prevents experiencing genuine care and chosen connection.

The Broken Narrative: “Something is fundamentally wrong with me that can’t be fixed” This narrative transforms neurological difference into moral failing or existential flaw. It explains struggles while protecting against hope that might lead to disappointment. The narrative can paradoxically provide comfort through certainty — if you’re irreparably broken, you can stop the exhausting effort of trying to be fixed. Yet it also maintains depression and prevents recognition of neurodivergent strengths.

The Compensation Narrative: “I must excel to make up for my deficits” Often developing in families that emphasized achievement, this narrative drives perfectionism and overwork. It assumes your worth is conditional on compensating for neurodivergent struggles through exceptional performance elsewhere. The narrative creates unsustainable pressure while preventing acceptance of yourself as inherently valuable regardless of achievement.

The Function of Painful Narratives

Understanding why we maintain narratives that cause suffering reveals their unconscious protective functions. These stories, however painful, served important purposes when they formed and often continue serving unconscious needs. Recognizing these functions with compassion rather than judgment creates space for gentler change.

Painful narratives often protect against even more painful possibilities. The story “I’m choosing to be alone” protects against “I’m desperately lonely but no one wants me.” The narrative “I’m lazy” defends against “I’m trying my hardest and failing.” “I don’t care about success” shields from “I want things I can’t achieve.” These protective narratives maintain some sense of agency and control in situations that might otherwise feel unbearably helpless.

Narratives also maintain connection to important figures, even when those connections were harmful. The internal narrative that echoes a critical parent’s voice maintains psychological connection to that parent. Changing the narrative might feel like betrayal or abandonment, even when the parent is deceased or estranged. For neurodivergent individuals whose families struggled to understand them, maintaining negative narratives might preserve whatever connection was available, however painful.

At Michigan Wellbeing, we help clients explore these protective functions without judgment, understanding that narratives developed for survival shouldn’t be ripped away without care. As clients develop new resources and relationships that meet the needs these narratives served, old stories naturally loosen their grip. The narrative’s protective function becomes less necessary as genuine safety increases.

Revising Your Internal Narratives

Changing internal narratives isn’t about positive thinking or affirmations — it’s about deep psychological work that addresses the unconscious structures maintaining old stories while creating conditions for new ones to emerge. This process requires patience, as narratives formed over years don’t transform overnight, and courage, as releasing familiar stories means tolerating uncertainty about who you are without them.

The revision process often begins with developing curiosity about narratives rather than immediately trying to change them. What experiences contributed to this story? What evidence has been ignored or dismissed? What would be possible if this narrative weren’t true? This exploration happens not through logical analysis but through emotional experiencing — feeling the grief of years lived under narrative constraints, the anger at those who contributed to painful stories, the fear of who you might be without familiar narratives.

New narratives emerge through lived experience rather than conscious construction. The therapeutic relationship provides crucial new experiences that contradict old narratives. When your therapist consistently responds with interest rather than boredom, the narrative “I’m uninteresting” begins to destabilize. When they maintain warm regard despite knowing your struggles, the story “I’m too much” loses credibility. These experiences must be repeated many times before new narratives solidify, as single contradictions are easily dismissed as exceptions.

The goal isn’t replacing negative narratives with positive ones but developing more complex, nuanced stories that account for your full experience. Instead of “I’m broken” or “I’m perfect,” a new narrative might be “I’m a complex person with neurological differences that create both challenges and strengths.” Rather than “I’m unlovable” or “Everyone must love me,” you might develop “I’m loveable to compatible people who understand and appreciate my neurodivergent traits.”

Living Between Stories

The space between releasing old narratives and fully embodying new ones can feel destabilizing. You might intellectually understand that old stories aren’t true while still feeling their emotional pull. You might have moments of living from new narratives followed by regression to familiar patterns. This liminal space — between stories — requires tremendous therapeutic support and self-compassion.

During this transition, identity can feel uncertain. If you’re not the person your narratives said you were, who are you? For neurodivergent individuals whose identity has been shaped by difference and struggle, releasing narratives about brokenness or inadequacy might create identity confusion. The therapist’s consistent presence provides stability while you explore who you might be beyond limiting stories.

This intermediate space also offers unique opportunity for choice and creativity. Without fixed narratives determining your responses, you can experiment with different ways of being. You might discover capacities that old narratives declared impossible. You might find that struggles you thought were permanent were actually narrative artifacts. This experimental phase, while anxiety-provoking, can be profoundly liberating.

Creating Neurodivergent-Affirming Narratives

As old narratives loosen and space for new stories emerges, the opportunity arises to consciously participate in creating narratives that honor your neurodivergent reality while supporting growth and connection. These aren’t fantasy stories that deny real challenges but integrated narratives that account for both struggles and strengths, both difference and belonging.

Neurodivergent-affirming narratives acknowledge neurological reality without making it the entire story. “I have ADHD, which means some things are harder for me and some things I do brilliantly differently” creates space for both challenge and gift. “My autism affects how I connect with others, and I can form deep, meaningful relationships with compatible people” honors both difference and possibility. These narratives avoid both the denial of real challenges and the totalization of identity around diagnosis.

These new narratives often incorporate understanding of systemic factors that old narratives ignored. Instead of “I failed because I’m defective,” a new narrative might be “I struggled in systems not designed for my neurology, and I’ve shown remarkable resilience in surviving and adapting.” This shift from individual pathology to systemic understanding releases shame while maintaining personal agency. You’re neither entirely victim nor entirely responsible, but a complex person navigating complex systems with the resources available to you.

Your Story Continues

The narratives that have shaped your life until now aren’t the only stories available to you. While you can’t change the experiences that contributed to painful narratives, you can change your relationship to those experiences and the meanings you derive from them. The child who was told they were “too much” can become the adult who understands they were appropriately responsive to an overwhelming world. The person who believed they were broken can discover they were differently designed in a world that demanded uniformity.

This narrative revision work requires support, which is why psychodynamic therapy can be so transformative for neurodivergent adults. At Michigan Wellbeing, we provide the consistent, attuned presence necessary for examining and revising deep narratives. Our therapists understand both the psychological complexity of internal narratives and the neurological reality of neurodivergent experience, offering a unique space where all aspects of your story can be explored and honored.

Your internal narratives have been your companions, protectors, and sometimes tormentors throughout your life. They’ve shaped your choices, relationships, and sense of possibility. But they are stories, not destiny. With courage, support, and patience, you can become the author of new narratives — stories that honor your history while opening new possibilities, that acknowledge your neurodivergence while refusing limitation, that integrate all aspects of your experience into a coherent but flexible sense of self.

The story of your life is still being written. The narratives that brought you this far might not be the ones that carry you forward. In the space between old stories and new ones, between who you’ve been told you are and who you’re discovering yourself to be, lies the possibility for profound transformation. Your story — complex, neurodivergent, uniquely yours — deserves to be told with nuance, compassion, and hope for chapters yet unwritten.

Ready to explore and revise the internal narratives shaping your life? Michigan Wellbeing offers psychodynamic therapy that helps neurodivergent adults understand and transform deep psychological patterns. Contact us today to begin rewriting your story.

Ready to start your journey? Contact us today to schedule an appointment.
📞 Call or Text: (248) 266–5775‬
📧 Email: info@miwellbeing.org

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