Who Are You Without the Role? Survival Performance, Masculinity, Midlife Reinvention & Narrative Liberation with Jon Symes
Notes from the Edge
Host Lisa Lacy sits down with leadership consultant Jon Symes to discuss the concept of 'Narrative Liberation.' The episode explores how ind
Key takeaways
- Jon Symes introduces 'Narrative Liberation' as the process of recognizing and releasing roles adopted for survival.
- The concept of 'midlife reinterpretation' suggests that long-held stories often cease to be effective during middle age.
Main topics
- Narrative Liberation
- Masculinity and Identity
Notable quotes
What if the person you became to survive is no longer the person you want to be?
Conclusion
The episode offers a transformative framework for identifying and dism
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:04) Welcome to Notes from the Edge, where we have the conversations we should have been having all along. We talk about the things that we're not talking about. I'm your host, Lisa Lacey, writer, trauma educator, executive advisor, and author of the upcoming memoir, Notes from a Certified Madwoman. Welcome to the Edge. Speaker 2 (0:33) we should have been having the whole time. Guess what? You ain't talking about it. So we're gonna today with our guest, John Symes, and he is a speaker, leadership consultant, founder of Whole and Free, and creator of Narrative Leadership. frameworks. For more than 20 years, he has helped leaders, executives, and people in transition, such important times for us because I think we're all in transition right now, uncover the invisible stories driving our decisions, relationships, and identities. And you know, we love that word in here. His newest book, The Stories That Are Killing Us, challenges the idea that we are broken. Instead, he suggests that we have simply made survival performance our identity. So this conversation is not just about trauma. It's about leadership, success, masculinity, relationships, identity, and what happens when the story underneath our lives, the surface. quietly begins running everything without us making conscious choices john welcome to notes from the edge how are you today my friend lisa Speaker 1 (1:42) i am so excited to be here i i just i i love the scope of the show already uh and happy to let's let's dive in and find Speaker 2 (1:51) out well let's dive in it's nose from the edge so we jump right in um your message when i saw it i was like that is the heartbeat of the show which was so cool but When you ask people, when you're working with people and you ask them, hey, look at the story underneath your life. Why are we so scared to go there? Why do you think? What have you uncovered there? Speaker 1 (2:16) Well, there are two responses to start with. Some people don't even realize that they're running a story in their life. Speaker 2 (2:21) Yes. That's just Speaker 1 (2:22) how it is. And that's how it is. It tells us that a story has become embedded in the unconscious. And we don't see it as a story. We just think that's reality. Speaker 2 (2:34) Yeah. Speaker 1 (2:35) So for some people, the idea that they might be living out a story is itself news. For the people that recognize that and then want to look underneath and see, well, what is the story? The fear comes up that without the story, I don't know who I am. Speaker 2 (2:53) Exactly. Speaker 1 (2:54) And it comes back to something you said in the intro there. We have become so used to performing stories that they become our identity. Speaker 2 (3:02) You know, I'm Speaker 1 (3:03) the good guy. I'm the guy that helps. Or I'm the smart one round here. Or it could be I'm the person that supports other people's success. It could be any of those. None of them are good or better or worse. They are just the stories that we've learned. Speaker 1 (3:23) unconsciously and started to live out unconsciously. Speaker 2 (3:27) Yeah. John, what happens when we're on autopilot? I know what happened for me, it was total mental collapse. That was just my lived experience. But what happens when we are operating these stories that may be self-abusive stories? I mean, it depends on what our situation is, but what happens when we're on autopilot in our lives? Speaker 1 (3:51) Well, there's a period, I believe there's a period when that actually serves us. And I think about it sometimes in terms of age and think about coming into adulthood age, let's say 18, 20. And through our childhood and our teen years, we've been struggling to form an identity. And then we actually get to walk out in the world. And we get to walk out in the world with the stories that we think will serve us. Speaker 2 (4:20) Typically, Speaker 1 (4:21) that's a collection of stories that we have had some hand in the design of. So this is how this is the career I want to choose. This is how I want to be seen. But there's also in there this huge mix of the unconscious stories that we can't even see. And so we get then in those first adult years to walk inside the stories that that are that combination. And it takes some time usually for us to see the efficacy or the utility of those stories. And it might be that we pretty quickly realize that they they can serve us. And if I keep doing what I'm doing, I'm going to keep being met with success. However, we define success might be climbing a career ladder. It might be enlarging a family. Who knows? So sometimes we get the feedback that says do more of it. And then there will come a point. There will come a point, and I'm pretty sure in everybody's life, there is a point when the stories stop working. I've come to see, Lisa, that that's what we have often described as midlife. Speaker 2 (5:33) And so Speaker 1 (5:33) we have this idea of midlife crisis. And, you know, I'm from the UK originally. You know, over there, the story would be that age 40, I'm going to go and buy a motorbike. Speaker 2 (5:44) Exactly. You hear so much about that. I did. Speaker 1 (5:47) I did buy that motorbike. I Speaker 2 (5:51) thought Speaker 1 (5:51) we were going Speaker 2 (5:51) to stay Corvette, not motorcycle. Oh, my God. That's great. I ended up buying a Speaker 1 (5:56) motorbike, which I'd never owned a motorbike in my life before. Speaker 1 (6:02) The reason that people do strange things in midlife is because we have, we've been living a while inside those stories and Speaker 2 (6:13) they Speaker 1 (6:14) served us for a while. Speaker 2 (6:15) Yes. Speaker 1 (6:16) And then they didn't. Speaker 2 (6:18) Yes. And Speaker 1 (6:19) so that period in which they served us could be two years. It could be 40 years. We might hit midlife before we're 30 and we might not, we might still be having midlife reinterpretation. When we're in our 70s. Oh, Speaker 2 (6:32) I like that midlife reinterpretation because we do. And I think it's so important to ask ourselves the question because it might be for some people, it might still be serving them. Great. Live that out. Wonderful. But for some of us, some of us, we get to the place of, oh, this is not me. I'm not digging any of this. What the hell am I going to do with it now? Yeah. Speaker 1 (6:56) And that I think is most often. Because to live in a story which isn't our authentic self, we have to give up a part of ourselves. Speaker 2 (7:07) Oh, there's grief involved in that. Speaker 1 (7:11) There's grief, there's loss, there's regret. Some anger Speaker 2 (7:16) splashed in a little bit. Speaker 1 (7:18) Yes, it can come out in all sorts of different ways. And I've been exploring this. I've been exploring it in my own life. I'm exploring how I may be typical of men generally in our culture and what are the stories that men inhabit. I'm fascinated by that. for a couple of reasons one is because a lot of men need help yes and Speaker 2 (7:42) and can't say it there's shame and stigma around needing support and struggling yeah that's Speaker 1 (7:48) part of the male story i do it myself you know Speaker 2 (7:50) yeah um Speaker 1 (7:52) but also i'm looking at it and we might come back to this as well the i'm looking at it because male behavior has such a large influence in the world Speaker 2 (8:01) in a Speaker 1 (8:02) culture that's patriarchal in nature it is the the way men see the world, the way men choose to act in the world that has more influence. And so if we look at the stories that men are living inside of, then we get clues as to the stories that we're living in as a culture. Speaker 2 (8:19) So Speaker 1 (8:19) I've been exploring all of this and seeing how, you know, the stories that I learned about... Speaker 1 (8:30) being a man have cost me something. Can I give you an example? Speaker 2 (8:34) It snows from the edge. It's your show. Go, go. Of course, we like examples and stories. I can Speaker 1 (8:41) remember as a boy, I must have been nine or 10 years old. I remember one and I remember all the detail of this so vividly. I was walking to church one day and I suddenly heard the sound. of new corduroy trousers rubbing between my legs. You know, as you walk. Speaker 2 (9:07) Yes. Speaker 1 (9:08) Yeah. And corduroy makes a noise when you have that. I have some on, Speaker 2 (9:13) actually. You have a corduroy? Speaker 1 (9:16) They're orange. Speaker 2 (9:18) I Speaker 1 (9:19) haven't worn corduroy since this story, but that's, I hear this noise and to my nine, ten-year-old mind. Speaker 1 (9:28) I'm terrified that anybody else hearing that noise will mistake me as gay. Speaker 2 (9:37) Oh, wow. Speaker 1 (9:39) And I didn't realize how I responded to that fear until somebody told me, must have been nearly 20 years later, they asked me why I walked around bow-legged. Why do you walk bow-legged? And I was mimicking a John Wayne walk. You've probably Speaker 2 (10:05) given yourself really bad back pain too. Speaker 2 (10:13) And Speaker 1 (10:13) nobody ever told me, you know, all of the stories that were there, that I wanted to be a man, that John Wayne was a man. I didn't want to be seen or confused with somebody that was homosexual. All of that was somehow imprinted in me as a nine or 10 year old. Nobody had ever said that to me straight, I don't think. And I'd made a decision that affected my body. The way I walk, the shape of my legs. Out of the story. Speaker 2 (10:45) Wait, wait, wait. I got to ask. When you were made aware, guys, awareness is key. When you were made aware, did you change your walk? Did you change your gait after that? Or did you just stay with the bow leg at the end? Speaker 1 (11:00) Well, to the degree that you can be