The Stories in Your Head Are Running Your Life—Here’s How to Rewrite Them
Your mind isn’t storing facts, it’s storing stories.
This morning, I woke up thinking about the word healing and why it carries such a negative connotation when, in reality, it’s one of the most beautiful things we can experience.
There’s almost a shame attached to needing healing, as if admitting we need it somehow means we’re broken. I used to feel this way. If I admitted I needed healing or help, I thought it would mean I was weak—that something was wrong with me, that I wasn’t strong enough to handle life on my own.
Externally, I have my shit together—so whatever is happening internally probably doesn’t matter as much, right? If I can function, if I can move forward, if I can keep everything looking fine on the outside… then the inside must not be that big of a problem.
At least, that’s what I convinced myself.
But healing isn’t about whether or not you cry. It’s not about whether you’ve moved on or handled it well enough to function. Healing is about reclaiming the parts of yourself that got buried under survival.
When I was 14, my dad died in a very, very traumatic way. It was all over the news. Schools were shut down. And I was home when it happened. No one prepares you for something like that. And yet, no one really teaches you how to heal from it, either.
We never went to therapy. Instead, we got really good at holding it in. Crying, but not talking. Surviving the best we could. And for a long time, I thought that was enough. That if I wasn’t actively breaking down over it anymore, then I must have healed.
But that’s not how healing works.
See, when you go through something that big, it takes center stage in your life. But there are also a million other little traumas—beliefs, patterns, and subconscious stories that, if left unchecked, just keep playing on repeat in the background.
And it’s those little moments (the ones we barely even remember) those are the ones that end up shaping everything.
They shape how we make decisions, how we show up in relationships, and how we see ourselves. They influence our confidence, our success, our ability to receive love. They dictate whether we take risks or play it safe, whether we trust ourselves or constantly second-guess every move.
The mind is incredible at compartmentalizing. It files things away, runs on autopilot, and builds patterns so we don’t have to consciously think about every little thing. But that also means it’s running off old programs, many of which we didn’t consciously choose.
And the irony? The big traumas, the ones we’d expect to have the greatest impact, are often the ones our brain tucks away, shoving them into the background so we can keep functioning. Sometimes, it even blocks memories entirely because the pain would be too much to process at once.
So what happens instead?
We live out the effects of those experiences without even realizing it.
We find ourselves stuck in patterns we don’t understand. Attracting the same kinds of relationships. Self-sabotaging right before a big breakthrough. Feeling unworthy without knowing why.
Because the mind isn’t just storing facts—it’s storing stories. And unless we go in and rewrite them, they’ll keep running the show.
Feelings are stories.
Perception is a story.
Beliefs are stories.
They aren’t the ultimate truth. They’re just programs that were written, coded, and stored. And just like a computer program, they can be rewritten and reprogrammed.
Your mind isn’t working off “truth.” It’s working off familiarity. It doesn’t care if you’re a good person, if you’ve done all the right things, or if you logically know better. It has a script, and like a movie, it plays that script on repeat.
But here’s what most people don’t realize—you’re not just the viewer of this movie. You’re the director, the screenwriter, the lead actor. You have full creative control over the narrative you’re living.
This work isn’t just for a select few, it’s for everyone. The entire point of life is to wake up to this power we hold within ourselves. To recognize that we are constantly shaping the movie we are watching. And at any moment, we can change it.
Our perception is not fact.
Our beliefs are not fact.
Our thoughts are not fact.
Our feelings aren’t even fact.
They are just our current version of truth—one we have the right to evolve at any time. It’s not about being right. It’s about growth. It’s about becoming conscious of the stories we’ve been living by and realizing that we get to rewrite them.
It took me a long time to admit that I needed healing. And now, I want everyone to try it.
Because whether you’ve been through something major like me, or something seemingly small, we all have things to heal from. And we shouldn’t be ashamed of that.
The way the brain works, the way we form beliefs, it’s inevitable that we’ll pick up things that don’t serve us. There is no perfect way to raise a child, no way to shield ourselves from every wound, every false story, every subconscious program we absorb from 0-7 years old. We all have things we need to undo, simply because that’s part of the human experience.
And yet, most people resist it. They don’t want to admit they need healing, because to do so would mean stepping into something uncomfortable. It would mean acknowledging the dysfunction they’ve learned to survive in. It would mean letting go of the safe little blanket of familiar suffering they’ve wrapped themselves in.
Healing isn’t about fixing yourself. It’s about freeing yourself.
And the sooner you let yourself admit that you need it, the sooner you can step into the life that was always meant for you.
Think about it—every single person carries some version of not feeling good enough.
Maybe you’ve said it to yourself in different ways:
“I’m not smart enough to get that job.”
“I’m not attractive enough to be loved like that.”
“I’m not successful enough to be taken seriously.”
“I’m not capable enough to make this work.”
“I’m not interesting enough to be the guy people look up to.”
“I’m not experienced enough to take this risk.”
“I’m not disciplined enough to stay consistent.”
“I’m not confident enough to put myself out there.”
Where do these beliefs even come from?
They start young. Maybe you were a kid who got good grades, but one time, you brought home a B instead of an A, and someone made a comment about “trying harder.” Maybe you were picked last for a team, and in that moment, you decided you’re just not athletic. Maybe you watched your parents struggle with money, and you subconsciously absorbed the belief that success is hard to come by, and people like you don’t get to have it.
The mind records experiences, but not as facts. It records them as stories.
And many of those stories weren’t even yours to begin with. Yet, they shape everything.
Your brain has something called mirror neurons, which means from a young age, you weren’t just learning through direct experiences, you were absorbing everything around you.
You didn’t just hear your parents stress about money; you felt it. You didn’t just witness a teacher’s disappointment; your brain mirrored it back, internalizing the belief that approval is conditional. If your parents never felt good enough, if they carried their own fears and doubts, your brain mirrored those, too.
This is why kids don’t just hear what’s said; they feel what’s unspoken. Just like adults can walk into a room and sense tension after an argument, kids pick up on it even more deeply. You could fight behind closed doors, then walk back into the room smiling, but their nervous system already absorbed the energy of that tension. Their mirror neurons are wired to tune into emotional undercurrents, not just words.
And this is why you can only give to others what you give to yourself. If you have only 10% love for yourself, that’s all others can truly feel from you—no matter how much love you try to show on the surface. Kids, partners, friends, they don’t just pick up on the actions; they pick up on the energy behind them.
This is why so many of the beliefs we carry aren’t actually ours, they’re absorbed from our environment. The mind doesn’t just store memories; it encodes them emotionally, attaching meaning to them. And those meanings shape how we see ourselves and the world.
But just like those beliefs were absorbed, they can also be rewritten.
Because your mirror neurons are still working, they’re just waiting for something new to reflect.
When you surround yourself with people who embody confidence, success, and ease, your brain starts mirroring that instead. When you expose yourself to proof that contradicts your old beliefs, your subconscious begins to recalibrate.
This is why the people you surround yourself with matter so much. If you spend time with people who operate from fear, scarcity, or self-doubt, your brain starts reinforcing those same patterns. But if you immerse yourself in environments where people think bigger, take action, and believe in what’s possible, your subconscious starts to rewrite the script.
Because transformation isn’t just about thinking differently, it’s about immersing yourself in something different.
That’s why I don’t really use the word healing anymore. Because healing implies we’re fixing something. But we’re not broken. We’re just reprogramming. We’re releasing the old narratives, shedding the layers of conditioning, and getting back to our natural state—the one that existed before we ever believed we weren’t enough.
Healing is feeling.
Healing is rewriting the story.
Healing is choosing a different perspective.
Think about love. Love isn’t something you analyze—it’s something you feel. You don’t logic your way into love, you experience it in your body.
And healing is the same way.
You can’t just think your way into a new belief, you have to feel your way into it. It has to move beyond logic and sink into your body, into your nervous system, where it can be fully processed on a deeper level. That’s why healing isn’t just about mindset work; it’s about embodiment.
You don’t just tell yourself a new story, you have to experience it as real. You have to find proof that reinforces it and let yourself feel that proof, allowing it to become your new truth.
The reason old stories stick so deeply isn’t just because we’ve repeated them—it’s because they’re tied to emotion. The feeling is what locks them in as programs running in the background of our lives.
If you’ve ever seen the animated movie Inside Out, it actually does a great job of illustrating how memories are stored in the brain. Memories aren’t just facts; they’re imprinted with emotion. That’s why a single experience can shape a belief that follows us for years because it wasn’t just what happened, it was how we felt when it happened.
And the other thing about your memories is they’re wildly inaccurate.
Every time you recall a memory, your brain alters it slightly, adding or removing details based on your current emotions and perceptions. Most of the time, when we look back, we only see ourselves—we focus on what we did or didn’t get, what we lost, how we were hurt.
We feel like victims of our own past, trapped by circumstances we didn’t choose.
And this is where most people get stuck. They think they’re healing because they’re talking about it—rehashing the same stories over and over again in therapy, analyzing every detail of what happened, why it happened, how it shaped them. But talking about something doesn’t rewire it.
Our bodies don’t know the difference between past, present, or future. It doesn’t distinguish between an old memory, a new experience, or something you’re simply imagining—it just knows what you are feeling right now.
So when you recall an old memory, your body relives it as if it’s happening in real-time. Your nervous system doesn’t register that this is the past, it just reacts. If that memory carries pain, your body feels the pain. If it carries fear, your body responds with fear.
This is why so many people feel stuck in their healing. They go to therapy, they talk about their pain, they analyze their trauma but their body is still living in it.
Talk therapy can be helpful for awareness, but awareness alone doesn’t create change. If all you do is relive the pain, dissect the trauma, and validate the story, your brain keeps reinforcing it as truth. You stay stuck in the same loops, feeling the same emotions, telling yourself the same narrative—without ever actually shifting it.
The loop keeps running because they haven’t given their brain and nervous system new proof of what’s possible.
This is why I don’t just have my clients talk about their problems—not because their experiences aren’t important, but because reliving the past doesn’t change the future. What matters is identifying the belief, the program running in the background, and rewriting it so it no longer controls you.
I don’t do healing through conversation, I do it through experience.
Everyone who works with me gets homework, but not the kind you dread. It’s the kind that shifts your entire reality.
Because when you start doing the work, when you start implementing the shifts in real-time, you don’t just feel different—you see different.
You watch the people around you change before your eyes, not because they’ve changed, but because you have.
You see things unfold in ways that used to feel impossible.
You start noticing synchronicities, breakthroughs, and solutions that weren’t available to you before.
Because when you change, your reality has no choice but to change with you.
And that’s the magic of this work.
Healing isn’t about fixing—it’s about freeing.
Because the truth is that we are never really stuck.
No matter what’s happened, no matter what stories we’ve been carrying, we have the power to change them. Not by pretending they didn’t happen, but by shifting how we see them.
I am home in FL right now, and my niece asked me what I do. I told her I help people get rid of the old, mean stories we play in our heads. I asked her a few questions to see what hers were, and kids are amazing—they’re so honest and connected to their emotions in a way adults often aren’t.
Without hesitation, she said, "That my parents don’t love me."
That hit me. Not because it was true, but because this is what our minds do. They take an experience, a moment, a feeling, and turn it into a belief. And if you haven’t reprogrammed those beliefs, there’s a 7-year-old version of you still directing your life today.
We all have some version of this buried deep inside us. Maybe not the exact words, but the same underlying fear:
"I’m not enough. I’m not worthy. I’m not valuable. I’m not loved."
And the way we shift it isn’t by telling ourselves to “just think differently.” The mind doesn’t work that way.
We reprogram by giving the mind new proof. By creating new memories, new experiences, and new interpretations that don’t carry the same emotional charge. That’s how we shift the story, by showing our brain a different reality.
And the moment you start to see that? That’s when everything starts to change.
With love and gratitude,
Stephanie
