When the Story Can Steal Your Power: and Creativity Restores Choices

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been living inside a situation that felt hopeless and overwhelming.

Learning motherhood for the first time. Repeated illness. Financial pressure and mounting debts that could, at one point, lead to us losing our home. Living in a new area, away from my community. A genuine sense that things could tip in a direction I didn’t know how to stop.

Those are the facts.

And they matter, because without naming them, anything that follows risks becoming false optimism.

But alongside those facts, something else was happening.

A story was running in the background: constantly, quietly, relentlessly. A story that didn’t just describe the situation, but closed down any hope or possibility for life giving action.

The story sounded like this: this is going to end badly, and there’s nothing I can do but weather the storm.

Not “this is hard.” Not “this needs attention and careful thinking.” But collapse (and losing our home) is inevitable, and I’m too exhausted and under-resourced to  change my reality (or story).

That story had power. Not because it was true,  but because my nervous system believed it. And when that happened, I lost access to my creativity, my capacity to plan, and my ability to ask for or receive support.

A few months ago, walking by the canal and talking this through (again) with a friend, something shifted.

It wasn’t reassurance. It wasn’t someone telling me things would work out.

It was a return to accuracy and choice.

Yes → This is genuinely difficult. 

No → I’m not failing by being here. 

And also → the story I’m telling myself has removed all sense of choice.

→I know myself to be a resourceful woman.

→I know how to think creatively under pressure. 

→I know that the future my fear is projecting is not the only possible outcome available.

Nothing changed externally in that moment. The uncertainty remained. But internally, something fundamental shifted.

My body came back online. I could feel my breath again, my legs, the cold air. Life stopped being flattened by fear and returned to the foreground.

From there, facts and the energy to create or see other possibilities could exist side by side.

And that changed everything.

The first step was practical:

• I called the bank and arranged a mortgage break, creating time and space to plan more clearly.

  Then I made a simple, realistic agreement with myself : 

• One money-making strategy per evening, worked on quietly while my son sleeps on me in bed.

• At least 1 support call per week so that my old story continues to unravel and I am supported to move towards possibility again. 

  
  

Before that, the story was “I don’t have time.” In reality, I didn’t have access, because the story had already decided the outcome for me and took all my energy away with it.

I’m sharing this because I see the same dynamic everywhere: in relationships, in workplaces, in teams under pressure. Something genuinely hard happens: And then the dark story takes over.

This / I will never change. They’ll never meet me / understand. There are no good options… I am stuck here.. Etc etc.. (Add your own flavour of disaster / negative belief system..) 

When we live inside that story, we stop relating to the actual situation in front of us and start responding to a future that hasn’t happened yet. And in doing so, we give up the very power we need to navigate what’s here.

This isn’t about bypassing emotion or pretending things aren’t serious.

It’s about refusing to let fear collapse reality into a single, hopeless narrative.

If you’re in something right now that feels stark or overwhelming, you might try this  gently, honestly:

• Name the facts as they are, without minimising them.

• Notice the story layered on top → especially where it removes choice completely.

• Ask: What possibilities still exist here, even if they’re limited or uncomfortable?

  
  

I don’t see resilience as a call to feeling better or putting a positive outfit over something difficult.

I find myself the most resilient when I can stay with the truth and let facts and possibilities restore a sense of agency and maybe even excitement for change.