You Are The Hero of Your Life (even if you don't feel like one)

Whether you’re struggling with something or just going through a blah period of your life, seeing yourself as a hero can give you a mental map to make sense of where you are now and where you’re headed.

YOUR HERO'S JOURNEY TEMPLATE 

Origin Story: The traumatic beginnings of your journey. These can include your 5 Factors or other events (see The 5 Factors that Make You Who You Are)

Unknown Powers and Secrets: Things that weren't right about your life, and/or hidden powers you believed you had, but didn't feel safe revealing yet. 

Mentor or Sidekick: Someone you could confide in and trust with your secrets, or someone who became a helpful guide. 

Kryptonite: The things that sap your power. Like bad habits, addictions, or negative thought patterns, learning to avoid or overcome them. 

Honing Your Superpower: The period where you build up your powers, learn to manage them, and gain confidence in using them. 

Who Do You Save?: The moment you feel ready to use your powers, and you know you can make a difference. It might be saving yourself, your family, or someone going through the same origin story you went through. 

THE BRAIN SCIENCE BEHIND THE HERO'S JOURNEY 

When you speak positively to yourself, like saying “I’m heroically going through this tough situation,” your brain releases dopamine, the brain chemical for motivation and reward. This small burst tells your nervous system, “You’re safe. Carry forth!” That signal lowers your fight-or-flight while also increasing courageous feelings. It's not a magical potion that will change everything, but it is part of a process, a pattern you can start to build where you're reducing the sense of threat and increasing your sense of power.

That’s why just saying “I am the hero of my life” as I asked you to do at the beginning of this chapter, can start you on your path to feeling good.  

The stories we tell about ourselves can also activate neural pathways in our brains. When you’re on a hero's journey, your brain will build new connections that help you see yourself differently. Every time you say, “I’m a hero,” you’re doing some magic up there in your noggin, connecting new wiring.

Frame yourself as a victim, and your brain says, “Ok, you’re a victim.”

Frame yourself as a hero, and your brain starts building power. 

YOUR BODY DOESN’T KNOW IT’S A HERO YET BECAUSE IT IS AFRAID

There is a book, now considered a classic in psychology circles, about how trauma affects our bodies. It’s called The Body Keeps the Score. The author, psychiatrist and researcher Bessel van der Kolk, found that stress and trauma are held in our bodies, not just our minds and emotions. To help people with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), we must incorporate the body, which keeps a “score” of what has happened to us.

That “score” can show up as patterns the body learns when it has had to face danger. These patterns include how we feel, how we react, the hormones that are released, how our muscles tense, the way we breathe, and how our nervous system responds.

In other words, the body remembers how you survived something frightening, but it doesn’t always connect what it’s experiencing now with the facts of what actually happened in the past.

A classic example comes from people returning from war. They were once labeled “shell-shocked.” A car engine backfiring, the sound of a helicopter, or fireworks going off could send a former soldier’s body back to the moment of battle. If they once ran, crouched, covered their head, or shouted, their body might respond the same way years later, even in a completely different setting.

A simple way to understand this is that the body is constantly asking: Was I safe? If the answer was no, it may store the memory of the reaction without storing the context. This is why we might overreact when a fearful memory from the past connects to a comment, a raised hand, a threatening tone of voice, or someone standing too close behind us. Our body remembers and wants to re-enact what happened.

Van der Kolk emphasizes that insight through, for example, talk therapy, won't always get to the bottom of why we react to certain events the way we do. Healing must involve restoring bodily awareness and safety. Working with the body helps release the trauma response.

• Some healing practices that work are:

• Breath regulation

• Yoga and mindful movement

• EMDR (a therapy that uses eye movement while processing memory)

• Rhythmic activity like dance or drumming

• Play and creative therapies – even for adults, using miniatures in a sandbox can help in reprocessing

The point is not simply to “talk it out,” but to help the nervous system relearn what it feels like to be safe.

To learn more about how to give your mind and body the sense of safety we need, read How To Tame Your Nervous System.