Amanda and the Nonstop Narrator

Summary

Proxy Podcast Summary: "Amanda and the Nonstop Narrator"

Podcast Information:

• Title: Proxy with Yowei Shaw
• Host/Author: Y3 Productions
• Episode: Amanda and the Nonstop Narrator
• Release Date: July 1, 2025
• Description: Proxy delves into unique emotional dilemmas, offering listeners a platform to explore and understand their intricate emotional landscapes through emotional investigative journalism™️.

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Introduction to the Episode

In the episode titled "Amanda and the Nonstop Narrator," Amanda Montel seeks assistance from Proxy to address her persistent internal narration that impedes her ability to live authentically. This episode explores the psychological underpinnings of narrative identity and the impact of an internal monologue on personal well-being.

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Amanda Montel's Case: The Nonstop Narrator

Amanda introduces her emotional conundrum: an incessant internal narrating voice she refers to as the "storymaker." This voice incessantly creates narratives about her life, often leading her to feel disconnected from her present experiences.

• Amanda Montel: "It's the knot you can’t untangle - a problem so unique, it makes you feel alone."

She elaborates on how this internal narration distracts her from fully engaging with her life, causing her to prioritize crafting stories over experiencing moments genuinely.

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Jonathan Adler's Internal Storymaker Narrative

Jonathan Adler, the appointed Proxy for Amanda, shares his personal experiences with a similar internal narrator.

• Jonathan Adler: "My niche emotional conundrum is that I narrativize my life in a way that I think sometimes prevents me from authentically living it."

Adler describes how his constant storytelling within his mind leads to feelings of inauthenticity and anxiety. He explains that his internal monologue often drives him to frame his actions and experiences as part of a larger narrative, sometimes at the expense of genuine engagement with the present.

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Craig Finn's Psychological Insights on Narrative Identity and Memory

Craig Finn, a psychology professor, provides a deep dive into the concept of narrative identity and the evolutionary aspects of memory.

• Craig Finn: "Narrativizing our lives is the human adaptation. Stories are really effective and efficient tools for navigating our environmental niche as a species."

Finn explains that humans are wired to create stories as a means of understanding and navigating the world. He delves into how memories are not accurate replicas of past events but are reconstructed into narratives that serve present needs and future anticipations.

Key Insights:

• Memory Reconstruction: Memories evolve over time to fit current contexts and purposes.

  • Craig Finn: "Our stories are fundamentally reconstructive. We're always doing that all the time."

• Development of Narrative Identity: The ability to narrate one's life story emerges in adolescence, influenced by cognitive maturation, biological changes, and social expectations.

  • Craig Finn: "Narrative identity really doesn't emerge until adolescence... it's a spectrum."

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Managing Internal Narration: Shifting the Relationship

The conversation shifts toward strategies for managing the internal narrator to retain its benefits while mitigating its negative impacts.

• Craig Finn: "The goal is to shift your relationship with this storymaker character so that it's getting you the benefits of being a really compelling storyteller without robbing you of the things that you're worried about losing."

Using analogies from theater, Finn suggests adopting a more supportive and nurturing internal voice, akin to a theater director who collaborates with actors rather than a demanding film director who dictates every move.

• Jonathan Adler: "I like the idea of recasting the judgmental critic as someone who is not only kinder and more nurturing but as someone who surrenders to the notion that, like, this is live theater and if you mess up today, there's always tomorrow."

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Listener Interaction: Bill's Story

Bill, a listener and Patreon member, shares how Proxy aids him in understanding his emotions without directly experiencing them.

• Bill: "Sometimes people say that I'm not really in touch with my emotions... Proxy, I can sort of look at emotional situations and become a little more educated without necessarily experiencing them directly."

This segment highlights the podcast's role in providing emotional insights and support to its listeners.

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Concluding Insights and Takeaways

The episode concludes with reflections on the spectrum of narrative identity—from underdeveloped to overactive narrators—and the importance of finding a balanced relationship with one's internal monologue.

• Craig Finn: "Shifting the relationship might actually allow you to come back to being, like, the present actor who can do their lives, but also step back and reflect."

Key Takeaways:

• Narrative Identity is Universal: Most individuals engage in internal narrativizing, but its intensity and impact vary.
• Memory as Storytelling: Memories serve present needs by crafting narratives rather than preserving exact facts.
• Balancing Narration: It's essential to harness the benefits of an internal narrator for meaning-making while ensuring it doesn't hinder authentic living.
• Support Systems: Engaging with platforms like Proxy can provide external perspectives to manage internal narratives effectively.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Jonathan Adler [05:16]: "My niche emotional conundrum is that I narrativize my life in a way that I think sometimes prevents me from authentically living it."
• Craig Finn [16:27]: "Narrative identity really doesn't emerge until adolescence... it's a spectrum."
• Craig Finn [47:53]: "Nobody's in there feeling those feelings and having those thoughts with you."
• Jonathan Adler [30:12]: "I don't care about my memories and my life story being true as much as I care about liking it and it being entertaining for myself and other people."

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Final Thoughts

"Amanda and the Nonstop Narrator" offers a profound exploration of how internal storytelling shapes our identities and experiences. Through Amanda's vulnerability and the insightful guidance of Jonathan Adler and Craig Finn, listeners gain a deeper understanding of the intricate dance between narrativizing and authentic living.

For those seeking to navigate their internal narratives, this episode serves as both a mirror and a guide, encouraging a harmonious balance between storytelling and presence.

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Note: This summary intentionally omits advertisements, introductions, and outros to focus solely on the core content and discussions of the episode.

Transcript

[Yowei]

Hello?

[Amanda Montel]

Hey, babe.

[Jonathan Adler]

Hey.

[Amanda Montel]

How's the recording session going?

[Yowei]

Oh, it's good. It's great.

[Amanda Montel]

It's.

[Yowei]

Studio's beautiful. Sounds awesome. It's a lot of work. It's, you know, but it's fun.

[Amanda Montel]

Oh, that's great. But actually, I'm. I'm calling you about Proxy.

[Yowei]

Okay.

[Amanda Montel]

Okay. So you know that ad that you mastered? I forgot one line, and I need you to do it again. I'm sorry. I know you're so busy.

[Yowei]

Okay. People need to hear about weed in just the right way, so I'm really doing just a public service for, you know, the world. Really?

[Jonathan Adler]

Yeah.

[Amanda Montel]

This is my first ad, and I am learning you have to say some things verbatim.

[Yowei]

Does it say, like, optional? You can say, like, I love weed.

[Amanda Montel]

Well, they welcome improvising.

[Yowei]

Well, wait, I think we have an experienced voiceover guy right here who loves weed.

[Amanda Montel]

Who's that?

[Yowei]

Joe? Can you say, I love weed gummies?

[Craig Finn]

I love weed gummies.

[Yowei]

All right, See, we could have just done that. We'd have taken no time at all.

[Amanda Montel]

Hey, everybody, it's Yowei, your emotional investigative journalist. Welcome to Praxi on Deck. Today we have the case of the writer addicted to telling stories about her life instead of just living it. That's after some ads.

[Bill]

Hey, it's Craig Finn. I'm a songwriter and the lead singer of the band the Hold Steady, as well as the host of a podcast called that's How I Remember It. I recently put out a new solo album called A Legacy of Rentals. It's a record about memory. How we remember friends that are gone, places that have changed, major events that are part of our past. Like all stories, these songs are subject to the imperfection and limitations of memory, the distortions that happen to our own histories when stretched by time and distance. So my new podcast, that's How I Remember it, takes this idea one step further, examining the connection between memory and creativity. In each episode, I sit down with one creator, like comedian Fred Armisen, Emily Haynes from the band Metric, or Billions showrunner Brian Koppelman about the role that memory plays in their art. These conversations reveal the different ways each creator synthesizes their remembered life experiences to tell stories about themselves and the world we live in. So subscribe to that's How I Remember it on your favorite podcast platform today.

[Amanda Montel]

The other month, I heard about this writer who'd written a book about cultishness, and then I learned she had a popular podcast about cults in everyday life. And who among us is strong enough to resist A story about cults. So I check it out.

[Jonathan Adler]

When Taylor Swift was in Los Angeles, where I live, I felt like I couldn't even go outside without confronting Swifty fanaticism.

[Amanda Montel]

It's her name is Amanda Montel, and she's talking about the cult of Taylor Swift. Not exactly a topic I care about, but, you know, I find myself listening, not turning it off like I do most new podcasts.

[Jonathan Adler]

Don't cancel me Swifties.

[Amanda Montel]

It's just she's theatrical, but not in an annoying way. She has this flair for colorful analogies that pull you into a world.

[Jonathan Adler]

Some people think of vanilla as plain, but it is a flavor. In fact, it's a flavor that everybody likes because.

[Amanda Montel]

And 12 minutes in, I notice I'm still absorbed and it's just Amanda talking. No guest, no co host, no clips.

[Jonathan Adler]

This, I think, is the ultimate cult leader quality, which I think Taylor Swift actually comes by pretty honestly.

[Amanda Montel]

Then I discover Amanda has another podcast, this one called Magical Overthinkers.

[Jonathan Adler]

When I would hear people throwing around.

[Amanda Montel]

Terms like narcissism, she's talking about how lately everyone is diagnosing everyone else as a narcissist without knowing what it means. And again, before the guest comes on, Amanda is essentially holding down a chat cast by herself. And she's captivating like, oh my God.

[Jonathan Adler]

Narcissism math is that thing when you go to confront someone about their behavior and then by the end of the conversation you end up being the one apologizing for that same thing, post, post, post. And all these likes flooded in and everyone was like, that's so true. And then I got to feel good about myself for clocking narcissism math.

[Amanda Montel]

And then I was like, I am convinced that Amanda Montel could make listening to paint dry sound interesting. It makes sense why so many people are hooked on her voice. And as it turns out, Amanda has a funny little problem about that, because one of those people is Amanda herself. Here is Amanda.

[Jonathan Adler]

My niche emotional conundrum is that I narrativize my life in a way that I think sometimes prevents me from authentically living it.

[Amanda Montel]

What do you mean?

[Jonathan Adler]

So I've seen a lot of discussion on the Internet about people who have internal monologues versus people who don't. And for those who don't like, that seems mind blowing to me and anyone else who sort of has an ongoing narrator's voice in their head. Whenever I'm doing something, I'm sort of explaining what I'm doing to myself in a sort of Alec Baldwin's vo in the royal Tenenbaums type way. Or I'm, like, almost practicing how I will present something that happened to me earlier in the day to a friend or to my partner or to no one in particular. I'm almost constantly, like, beta testing stories, even if they are utterly mundane.

[Amanda Montel]

Amanda calls the voice the storymaker, and I wanted to hear her, so I asked Amanda to send me some voice memos of the storymaker in action.

[Jonathan Adler]

This conversation about whether or not to have kids soon is really stressing me out. It's bringing out the worst in me. The dentist told me I need to focus on brushing my front teeth better. Why am I devaluing my front teeth? Make those puppies the stars that they are. Ding.

[Amanda Montel]

Ding.

[Jonathan Adler]

The fruit salad just arrived, and honestly, the watermelon looks pretty refreshing. But I'm not a melon person. I'm not someone who likes foods with a mild flavor. I'm a berry girl. I'm reading this tattered copy of Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh that I just found in this free little library, and actually, two of the pages just fluttered away in the wind. I hope people noticed. Very cinematic.

[Craig Finn]

Ding.

[Amanda Montel]

It's interesting because hearing you talk about this, I have the exact opposite of what you have. I have smooth brain. Love that there is, like, not much happening most of the time. Unless I direct my attention to thinking about something. I don't have intrusive thoughts.

[Jonathan Adler]

Oh, my God, what is that?

[Amanda Montel]

Like, this is why I can be really focused on, like, work, because I don't have other distracting thoughts happening. I can just, like, tunnel, tunnel, tunnel, tunnel. But it sounds nice to be able to have that voice. And also, it feels fun.

[Jonathan Adler]

It's fun. And I have leaned into it more, maybe a little bit, especially, yes, now that I'm a writer, all of that. I'm just even more incentivized to sort of lean into this. But I'm concerned that some part of me is trying to manipulate reality, not in a sinister way, but in a storytelling way. And that just creates this constant, unsettled feeling.

[Amanda Montel]

Though the storymaker has definitely had some villainous moments taking narrative liberties that aren't always great for Amanda. Like the time Amanda was going through a rough patch and needed to get on medication for her anxiety. But the storymaker was like, mm, doesn't fit the plot.

[Jonathan Adler]

This is so. This is so irrational. But I felt like the life events that had brought out an unmanageable amount of anxiety in me didn't fit the Freytag's pyramid Of my life. I was like, I don't identify with these stressors. They feel really random. And the people who caused me pain, I don't want them to be main characters in the story. And someone would totally become a main character if they created such anxiety that I needed to go on medication. And thus, I'm going to ignore it. I'm going to discard this.

[Amanda Montel]

Amanda eventually got the pharmaceutical assistance she needed, but it took her four years.

[Jonathan Adler]

To my detriment and to the detriment of those who love me and spend the most time with me.

[Amanda Montel]

And this is why amanda came to us. For the most part, Amanda likes the voice. The voice makes life fun, meaningful. But she doesn't want to miss what's actually happening in her life because the storymaker is too busy telling a story about it. I will let you know what I find Before I let you go. I've been asking everyone this question. If you had to vocalize the. The sound of your emotional conundrum, what would it be?

[Jonathan Adler]

Oh, my God. The first thing that came to my mind Was the sound of my alarm clock.

[Amanda Montel]

Amanda said she's not sure why the alarm clock. Maybe because it slaps her out of sleep, which is, like, the most present we can be in our bodies with no internal narrator, which is a really.

[Jonathan Adler]

Beautiful sound Because I have this cool alarm clock, and it's like, I'm gonna hum it. It's like.

[Amanda Montel]

After the break, we find a proxy who can hopefully help amanda hit snooze on that voice in. And now time for some proxy math with listener bill. Hey, bill.

[Bill]

Hey, yoi.

[Amanda Montel]

How's it going?

[Bill]

It's good. I played one of the best tennis matches of recent memory.

[Amanda Montel]

What makes it the best?

[Bill]

I feel like I just had a lot of free power. You know, I was just not tensed up or anything. Just chill. It was a nice day out, and I was just seeing the ball real big.

[Amanda Montel]

Is this, like, your favorite sport?

[Bill]

Oh, yeah. It's the only sport.

[Amanda Montel]

Okay, very good. So, bill, you're a listener. You're a patreon member. Would you be willing to give up playing tennis for proxy to keep existing?

[Bill]

Give up playing tennis forever for proxy that. Keep existing? Yeah, I feel like that might be a lot.

[Amanda Montel]

What about for a year?

[Yowei]

For a year?

[Bill]

I mean, I'm getting up there in years. Like, everyone's kind of precious.

[Amanda Montel]

How old are you?

[Bill]

I'm 44.

[Amanda Montel]

Okay, so no to a year. What about a month?

[Bill]

I would give up tenants for a month for proxy to continue existing. Yes, absolutely.

[Amanda Montel]

Lucky for You. If you want Proxy to keep existing, you don't have to give up tennis at all. For a mere $5 a month, you'll get ad free episodes and exclusive bonus interviews. What a bargain. Just go to patreon.com ProxyPodcast to sign up. That's patreon.com ProxyPodcast but seriously, thank you to everybody who's already signed up. You are helping keep this independent show going.

[Bill]

We could probably even add a little more time to it because I really like it.

[Craig Finn]

It's.

[Bill]

It's helpful for me to listen to it.

[Amanda Montel]

Why?

[Bill]

Sometimes people say that I'm not really in touch with my emotions. I mean, I'm trying to get better, but I feel like Proxy, I can sort of look at sort of emotional situations and become a little more educated without necessarily experiencing them directly. But it's more. I like it for more reasons than that. That's just one of them.

[Amanda Montel]

Thanks, bill. Go to patreon.com proxy podcast to become a member. That's patreon.com proxypodcast the day of the Proxy conversation, Amanda is traveling in New York City.

[Jonathan Adler]

This is so funny, but I'm in a fucking wework right now.

[Amanda Montel]

I didn't know they still exist.

[Jonathan Adler]

You and me both, dude. I know. I'm just like.

[Amanda Montel]

We get set up and Amanda hits record on her audio recorder. Amanda, it's been a while.

[Jonathan Adler]

Yeah. And I've been overanalyzing it. When I was telling you about it and then reflecting upon telling you about it, I started to feel self conscious that I, A, that I would be perceived as a truly unwell person and then. Which maybe I am, and B, that I wasn't presenting even the most honest version of what I do. Am I narrativizing even this? Like, am I spinning this into a sensible story?

[Amanda Montel]

Okay, Proxy's here. Are you ready for me to let them in?

[Jonathan Adler]

Yeah, I'm ready.

[Amanda Montel]

So the Proxy on this show, what we do is look. Look for a stranger who can help our guest get a little less stuck. That could be someone who's gone through the same thing. Or sometimes our guest's conundrum opens the door to big questions that we never thought about. In Amanda's case, this topic is actually a hang up of mine. I've always wondered what it means that I don't have an internal monologue, at least a voice that I've noticed. So I started reading about internal monologues. I learned that. Shocker. It's hard to study what's going on in people's heads. We are unreliable narrators of even our own narrators. But there were these studies that used this interesting method where they trained people to wear beepers. And when the beeper randomly went off, the person would jot down what, if anything, they were thinking at that exact moment. And they found that people have an inner Voice Something like 25% of the time. And sometimes those inner voices were telling a story about their lives, like Amanda. But what does that self narrator do for us? What are even the different ways we narrate our lives and how does that affect the way we live them? And what do you know? I learned that there were people out there trying to answer exactly that question. That's what led me to Jonathan Adler.

[Craig Finn]

Hello. Hi.

[Jonathan Adler]

Hi there.

[Amanda Montel]

Amanda. I've told Jonathan a lot about your situation.

[Jonathan Adler]

Oh my God. Sounds like you're describing like a really unflattering skin condition.

[Craig Finn]

Well, no one hearing this can see us, but you look amazing.

[Amanda Montel]

I asked Jonathan to introduce himself.

[Craig Finn]

So I'm a psychology professor. You know, my whole career has been focused on studying stories and the way that we make sense of our lives by telling stories and how those stories support our well being or don't support our well being.

[Amanda Montel]

Like Amanda, Jonathan specializes in stories. He's a psychology professor who studies narrative identity at Olin College, where he co runs a story lab and produces story slams and workshops. He also works with a nonprofit called Health Story Lab, where they do something I never heard of and sounds really cool. They use the science of storytelling to support medical patients navigating their experiences of illness and healing.

[Craig Finn]

And then I also have this whole theater side to me. I'm a theater director and a playwright. I had a play, I co wrote a play that was off Broadway a few years ago. And I direct a fair amount. So I'm really fascinated by stories from so many angles. And I've been really looking forward to hearing about your story.

[Jonathan Adler]

Oh my gosh. I have a background in theater too. When I was in middle school, I would host all our cast parties. Cause we had a hot tub nut.

[Craig Finn]

There you go. Done and done.

[Amanda Montel]

I will add that I was also a theater kid.

[Craig Finn]

Theater kids unite.

[Jonathan Adler]

Theater kids unite.

[Amanda Montel]

What you're about to hear is the proxy conversation. And I want to state for the record, Praxi conversations are not therapy. Yes, there are feelings. Yes, there is processing, but everyone involved knows it's not therapy. Think of it as just a really good conversation between two strangers at a bar where one of them has just the right experience to talk about the other person's problem. We begin with Amanda explaining her case to Jonathan.

[Jonathan Adler]

Perhaps I'll frame it as a fear, and this fear manifests in a few ways. But I'm also deeply attached to the fear because it comes with some positive side effects. So I'm afraid that I'm living a fundamentally disingenuous existence because I can't help but mismake my life in real time or, or tell myself a story about my life and costume design it and market it, treating life as a means of entertaining others and myself from a very young age.

[Craig Finn]

So bring us up to today, Amanda. Tell me a little more. Like, what's the part of this that goes wrong for you? Because it sounds fun.

[Jonathan Adler]

Yeah, no, it's fun. It's totally fun. So first of all, I think sometimes I take myself down a bad narrative path. Sometimes I tell a story about my life that I think negatively affects my self esteem, my self perception that makes me paranoid about other people's intentions because I've say, cast another person in my life as some kind of villain when really they're not a villain, or I've cast myself as the villain in that day's story. And that can cause me to really, you know, suffer. And I also suffer from this thing where I always, always feel like I'm lying, even when I'm not. I often hear myself saying something to another person about anything from what I did earlier today, to why I can't show up to something on time, to what my plans are tomorrow. And as words are coming out of my mouth, I. I feel like I have written a story that is untrue and that I am spinning a tale to like, entertain them or to pursue an intention, if we're using like, theater terminology. But everything coming out of my mouth is true. Everything is true. I feel like I am deceitful. Like I'm telling this for reasons other than truth.

[Craig Finn]

Yeah. So I have like a million thoughts in a bunch of different directions. So I guess I'll just start talking and then tell me what's landing for you. I. I think everything that you've said actually sounds like the way that stories actually operate in our lives. Right. So folks from a bunch of different disciplines, from philosophy to evolutionary biology have talked about narrative as the human adaptation. Like, this is the thing that our brains have evolved for navigating our environmental niche as a species. And stories are really effective and efficient tools for doing that. And, and the interesting thing is that we all have two roles to play with respect to our stories. We are both the main character in our stories where we're just going about being the protagonist of our lives, but then we're also the narrator. Right. We can also step out of the flow of our daily lives and self consciously tell that story. So everything that you're saying sounds totally normal to me. What's different is that you are sort of questioning your self. Narrator. Right. So it's something about the way that the stories are coming out that feels off to you or inauthentic or something. Does that feel right?

[Jonathan Adler]

Yes. And I don't necessarily always mean that in a bad way. Like, I enjoy doing this. It's not always conscious either.

[Craig Finn]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Adler]

But for some reason, maybe it has to do with something in my childhood. I don't know. This isn't therapy, but for some reason, I feel like I'm constantly, like, chameleoning. I'm using that as a verb, Chameleoning myself to tell, like, the best possible version of the story of my life as a means of, like, entertaining everybody.

[Craig Finn]

Sure.

[Jonathan Adler]

The way this manifests is, like, I almost live my life, not every single action. There are plenty of thoughts and sensory experiences happening in my brain and body that I am not narrating. But the ones that I am conscious of in the moment, for whatever reason, the ones that have captured my attention, I guess as a narrative device, I am telling them to myself as I'm experiencing them as if they've already happened and I'm describing them to someone else.

[Craig Finn]

You're jumping to the story. You're seeing, like, what's the story of this gonna be on the other side of it, as opposed to living it and then narrating it.

[Jonathan Adler]

Exactly, exactly.

[Craig Finn]

All right. I have thoughts about sort of first how this skill comes to be in the first place, but then also the sort of range in which people do it. So again, this is a normal thing that we have this inner narrator. But it's not there from the beginning. Right. Like, babies are not doing this. Indeed, as a species, we're born without weight, words, let alone stories. So this is something we have to learn to do. And that does get scaffolded over the course of childhood. So, like, the first milestone is language acquisition, which is usually like, the first year or two of life where we're learning how to speak. Then we have to develop what's called theory of mind, which is the idea that other people have different internal experiences than we do because stories have to have multiple characters. And it's not really until adolescence that this phenomenon emerges. Psychologists call this narrative identity, the idea that the best way to think about identity is as a story. And narrative identity really doesn't emerge until adolescence for a couple of reasons. First, there's just a fair amount of cognitive maturation that has to happen for us to be able to do this. Like weaving all the pieces of our life into a coherent story just takes some cognitive maturation. But then also we think about the biological transformation of the body that happens during puberty. It really sort of begs the question for the first time in a big way, how am I the same person that I was before this, even though my body is so transformed? And then also social expectation, Right. Like we might ask a 5 year old, what do you want to be when you grow up? But we don't expect them to mean it. But by adolescence, we do start to expect people to be able to articulate the ways in which the person they've been relates to the person they are and the person that they're becoming. So we talk about cognitive maturation, biological transformation, and social expectation as sort of conspiring in adolescence to kick off narrative identity.

[Jonathan Adler]

This really tracks because yoe, I think when you asked me when I remembered this beginning, I said, in middle school.

[Amanda Montel]

Exactly.

[Craig Finn]

That makes total sense. That is often the developmental moment when we become the narrator of our own life stories. Right. And before that, again, we're practicing. So, you know, my husband and I have young kids, and when we put them to bed at night, we tell them the story of their day. It's like, you know, we did this, you felt this. And there's a really interesting research actually, on the gendered ways in which this plays out. Some fascinating research that shows that both fathers and mothers tend to tell their little boys stories about what happened to them. Like we went to the zoo. And they tell their little girls stories about how they felt about what happened to them. Like, remember you were.

[Jonathan Adler]

That doesn't surprise me at all.

[Craig Finn]

And so that then prepares people to be different kinds of narrators of their own lives. They've learned, like, the raw material that is supposed to go into my life story is different. And again, my husband and I, knowing this literature, are very intentional to tell both our son and our daughter about what happened to them and about how they felt about what happened to them.

[Jonathan Adler]

To sort of scaffold, okay, this is so illuminating, and it's causing me to draw connections already. I have a good memory and I. I know that doing things like journaling, and I'm sort of journaling without writing utensils all the time in my brain.

[Craig Finn]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Adler]

Yeah, I know that. That can help you consolidate your memories and sort of carefully evaluate everything that happened to you. And I am consolidating memories and carefully evaluating everything that happens to me all the time. And so I make these, like, sort of memory paths in my mind, you know, like, really, people with champion memories. I think one of the reasons why their memories are so good is because they take, like, seeming disparate, like, images and words and stuff, and they create a story out of it. So I think, like, maybe that's one of the reasons why my memories.

[Craig Finn]

Let me. Let me hum a few bars about memory. In particular, what psychologists call autobiographical memory. So memory about the self.

[Jonathan Adler]

Yeah.

[Craig Finn]

So across our species, our memories are actually quite bad. We're actually bad at remembering the objective facts that happen to us. And for a long time, that really annoyed cognitive scientists, and they were like, why would we have this very elaborate system in the brain that's not good at the thing that it should be good at? But there was a real turning point in the history of the field where folks realized that if you think about why we have memory in the first place, from sort of an evolutionary perspective, it's actually not to hold on to everything that happens to us. So the example I often give is, like, if you think about our evolutionary past and you imagine, you know, walking by a cave and a bear jumps out at you, there is some adaptiveness to remembering that bear and that cave.

[Jonathan Adler]

Yes.

[Craig Finn]

But it's actually a lot more adaptive if you remember that dark places might hide danger. Right. And so actually, our memory systems evolved to hold onto the gist of experiences rather than the specific details. Why do we need memory now? We need it so we can navigate the present and sort of anticipate the future. And the present and the future are never an exact replica of the past. So if we could only hold onto the past exactly as it happened, it actually wouldn't be that useful to us.

[Jonathan Adler]

Wow, that's fascinating. It's also funny because when you said the reason we have memory now, and my brain filled in so that we can tell stories.

[Craig Finn]

Well, that's exactly right. And the reason that our memories get woven into stories, as opposed to lists of facts, is that stories serve a psychological function in the present. Our stories are these ways of reconstructing the past and interpreting the present and imagining the future in ways that serve us right now. And there's research about the ways in which even sort of cherished personal memories change a lot over time. And that is not because we're starting to Lie to ourselves. It's because we're pulling on that memory for a very particular reason. There's a wonderful study by this psychologist, Ruth Ellen Joselyn. Early in her career, she was studying this cohort of women who were just about to graduate from college, and she interviewed them once a decade for 40 years. So she wrote up this beautiful case study of this woman who, as she's about to graduate from college, her story is very much about this interracial relationship that she's having that her parents don't approve of. That's very much what her identity is wrapped up in. Ten years later, she's not with the guy anymore. And she tells the story more as an evidence of how she was an independent woman and not just bound by who her parents are. Ten years later, she has a young child. Now the story is very much about what kind of parent she wants to be. And 10 years later, the relationship doesn't even show up in her story. Right. So our memories are always coming and going, being reconstructed to serve whatever's going on for us right now. So one of the things I would love for you to think about, Amanda, is loosening the idea that somehow your memories are supposed to be capital T true. Right. Like, as if there is. Is supposed to be some correspondence between the actual plot of your life and the way you reconstruct it in a storied form. Because our stories are fundamentally reconstructive. We're always doing that all the time.

[Jonathan Adler]

I feel like I have an awareness of that, and I don't know what this says about me, but, like, I don't care about my memories and my life story being true as much as I care about liking it and it being entertaining for myself and other people. Yeah.

[Craig Finn]

I wanted to ask, so do you think about this, like, narrativizing voice in your head? Is it a character or it's you?

[Jonathan Adler]

I don't know how the difference.

[Craig Finn]

Yeah, okay. Okay. No, no, that's helpful. What's the goal of this, like, story maker in your head? What are they trying to do?

[Jonathan Adler]

I don't know. I guess that's one of the questions we should pose today is like, I don't know. This is just what I do very naturally. I'm not doing it on purpose. I assume that on a sort of very wholesome level, I'm doing it to inject my life with purpose and meaning so that when I get to the end of my life, speaking of, like, the past, present, and future, I feel like it was robust and full and well lived. And I was memorable to others and that I, you know, treated others well and that I made others feel special and that I did something while I was here.

[Craig Finn]

Those are all really important, valuable, good goals. So that all sounds great. Go on.

[Jonathan Adler]

Thank you. And then the other side of it, and this. This is something I'm talking out in real time. I'm spitballing. I'm spitballing this whole entire topic of conversation.

[Craig Finn]

Me too.

[Jonathan Adler]

Which is, like, vulnerable, because I like to know what I'm saying before I say it. The other side of it that I'm suspicious of is, like, is some part of me narrativizing my life on an unconscious level in order to exploit that story later? You know? Like, I am a professional storyteller.

[Craig Finn]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Jonathan Adler]

So am I constantly cultivating the raw material? Yeah. Am I constantly, like, packaging myself? Yeah, that's a concern.

[Craig Finn]

I think you're onto something there. What would worry you about that if you were doing that?

[Jonathan Adler]

I guess the bad part is, like, who wants their main life value to be commercialism? And I want to access presence.

[Craig Finn]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Adler]

I want to show up to life in a present way, but I don't want to be bored either.

[Craig Finn]

Yeah, totally. Can you give an example of a time when this voice actually made you behave differently?

[Jonathan Adler]

Ooh. Okay. Sometimes. Sometimes I use it to justify a choice. So, like, today, live from New York. I'm in a wework right now. All right? And I'm in a wework because my partner and I are in New York City, and we needed a place to do our. To do our capitalism for the day. And I needed some more quiet to record this episode. And when he pitched a coworking space, as, you know, the site of our daily duties, the narrator was like, no, no, no. This is not the setting that I want for today's story. I don't like being put on a conveyor belt. But then when he suggested we work, I was like, I actually like that because I talk about cults, and I am the cult girl. And how fun would it be for today's story to, like, invade the belly of the beast? And then when I am on the call with yoe, I can mention that as the setting for this story of today. And I saw online that that wework has a big red couch, and I'm gonna wear a bright red sweater.

[Craig Finn]

You're setting the scene in your head.

[Amanda Montel]

It's like writing. Writing the movie, writing the story as it's happening, and then, like, using that to actually make choices.

[Jonathan Adler]

That sounds insane.

[Craig Finn]

No, it does. Not sound insane. You definitely have to be easier on yourself around that. What it sounds is you're like, you're heightening the drama. And the thing that you're worried about is that it's making you inauthentic, right. That you're making choices to heighten the drama as opposed to. Because that's actually where you want to be.

[Jonathan Adler]

I guess it's a little bit of the concern, but I love heightening the drama. So it's actually okay, in theory to heighten the drama. I'm worried that it's causing me not to be present and that I'm going to miss important things because I'm concerned with the story. Instead, I want to catch the details that I might otherwise miss. Okay, here, let me bring up another example. We went to Sleep no More the other night.

[Craig Finn]

I've seen it four times.

[Jonathan Adler]

You've seen it four times? Cult of Sleep no More.

[Amanda Montel]

For those listening who don't know this, I don't know what Sleep no More is.

[Jonathan Adler]

Jonathan, you go for it. You've been four times.

[Craig Finn]

Sleep no More is a theatrical production originally put on by this amazing British company called Punchdrunk. And they were really sort of pioneers in the immersive theater. And it's a much, much more sophisticated immersive theater than like a murder mystery dinner party or whatever. Basically the story of Shakespeare's Macbeth, but sort of merged with Hitchcock's Rebecca, told in a five story warehouse in Hell's Kitchen that they have taken over. Oh, your phone goes in a yonder pouch. There are no photos. You wear a white mask. And the only rule is that you cannot talk. And then you are set free to wander around. This is a fully designed space. So sometimes you're in like a 1920s speakeasy, and sometimes you're in like a haunted graveyard. And you can wander around, you can open drawers, you can eat stuff, like, whatever you want. But there are characters who embody the plot of Macbeth. It's all told with movement as opposed to with words. And they are the only unmasked people. So the last time we went, we didn't know where we were, but it turned out we were in the King Duncan's, like, dressing room and his servant was putting a tux on him. And we were like, that's gotta be the king. We're following him. If we follow him long enough, we'll get to see him get murdered. And indeed, we see him go down to the ball, and then he comes up and then Macbeth kills him. And then we follow Macbeth who goes in the bathroom.

[Jonathan Adler]

I've never seen anything this good.

[Craig Finn]

And takes off all his clothes and gets into the bath with the blood all over him. And lady Macbeth comes in and cleans him off. And it is a spectacular, brilliantly executed artistic production.

[Jonathan Adler]

So I have been twice, and I never see anything. I never catch any nudity. I don't manage to follow the right characters.

[Amanda Montel]

Wait, so what do you mean you don't see anything?

[Jonathan Adler]

Okay, I try to follow characters, but, like, I guess my instincts are really bad. And so, like, I find individual characters when they've just finished doing something exciting or, like, I stop following them just before they're about to do something.

[Craig Finn]

The other thing that I think that is brilliant about it is that there are minor characters in Shakespeare's play, like Lady Macbeth's nurse, But because she has her own trajectory throughout the evening, you might end up following Lady Macbeth's nurse, who only intersects with the actual plot of Macbeth, you know, a teeny bit, but actually then has her own story. But as an audience member, you might be like, well, that was boring.

[Amanda Montel]

This is a good example, Amanda, because you're not being open to your direct experience, because you're in your head making stories up as you're going through the building, and so you miss the clues. Okay, that's a pretty clear example.

[Craig Finn]

Yeah. And I think you're probably right. I think there probably is stuff you're missing because you're spending so much time in your head crafting the story as you're experiencing it.

[Jonathan Adler]

Yeah. No, I think I, I, I want so badly to be one of those people who's, like, so in the moment and gets swept up into something they could have never expected. But my internal story maker is colliding with that pursuit.

[Craig Finn]

Yeah.

[Amanda Montel]

When we return, Jonathan gives the storymaker notes. Welcome back to the show. So our proxy, Jonathan Adler, has just explained that Amanda's storymaker is totally normal. Amanda is just at one end of a spectrum. She doesn't need to feel like a freak. But is it possible to cast a different narrator for yourself?

[Craig Finn]

I mean, I think ultimately there are sort of two levels at which you could intervene. There's sort of the micro everyday level, and then there's the more macro one. Like, try some mindfulness. Try some cognitive restructuring from cognitive behavioral therapy. And those things probably would work. I mean, those would be helpful, probably in the moment to quiet that inner voice and stay super present. And those are also really worthwhile goals. But what I'm most intrigued by is sort of the macro. Take it Seems to me like you need to shift your relationship with this storymaker character in your head so that it's getting you the benefits of being a really compelling storyteller without robbing you of the things that you're worried about losing. And. Yeah, would mindfulness help you do that? Probably it would make you more present, but I think it would be a more profound shift to really think about, like, what is my relationship with this storymaker like? And what do I want it be? Like? I want to do one other, like, nerdy digression. So one of the founders of American psychology, William James, whose brother Henry James was a famous novelist. But so like, in 1890, William James made this distinction between what he called the I and the me. And the me is like the main character. They're the person, like going about and doing your life. And the I is the storymaker. The I is the one who takes all the stuff of life and weaves it together into a self. And we all fluidly go back and forth between those two roles. So I would love to think for you about, is this like a demanding film director? Is it the reality TV editor? Is it a Victorian novelist? What's the relationship there between you and the storymaker?

[Jonathan Adler]

Okay, this is an interesting question because now that I think about it, this is another fear that I have. And this is like, very vulnerable. But I'm a little bit afraid that the eye as dominant and as like, dramatic as I'm describing this eye to be. I actually think I'm most afraid that there is no solid eye and that this I is just a combination of all of my harshest critics throughout my life and me trying to prove to whatever I that is that my life is meaningful and that I'm a good person.

[Craig Finn]

Yeah, yeah. So I mean, that immediately imbues your eye with a character. Right. This is a demanding, critical.

[Jonathan Adler]

I think it's a super.

[Craig Finn]

Your life isn't so good. And you're like, yeah, it is.

[Jonathan Adler]

Yes, yes. That is totally the dynamic.

[Craig Finn]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Adler]

It's like, who the fuck are you?

[Craig Finn]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Adler]

What are you wearing? Yeah, yeah, I can tell you ate a lot of carbs yesterday and you didn't go to Harvard. So what else you got?

[Craig Finn]

Uh huh.

[Jonathan Adler]

And the me.

[Craig Finn]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Adler]

Is trying to meet that eye by being like, I went to Italy for six weeks. I just did. And I wrote my novel there and I met the most extraordinary witch when I was there and we had the most incredible evening together. And I swear, like, and then I was kind to an old woman near a church and, like. And I'm, like, trying to. I definitely think, okay, because I identify as a tap dancer, I cannot fucking actually tap dance. Okay. I'm a. No. No foot abilities. And my Wikifeet rating is mid at best. But I do find that I am constantly attempting to prove myself.

[Craig Finn]

Yeah, this is what I think. I think we should try to shift your relationship with that character by making that a better character, a different kind of character who you can relate to in a different way. And I think we should lean into our theater. Kids unite. There's a way in which what you're describing sounds like this, like, demanding, awful, like, film director who's like, no, take two. Do it again, except you're doing it preemptively. Does that.

[Jonathan Adler]

Yeah.

[Craig Finn]

Does that feel right?

[Jonathan Adler]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for some reason, when you say demanding film director, like, I think of a man.

[Craig Finn]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Adler]

So I'm like, am I a man?

[Craig Finn]

Here's what I think. Here's a Let. What if we move away then from this, like, stereotypical, demanding film director who's like, cut, take two. That was boring. Do it again. And we shift to, like, the best possible theater director. Right? So for me, a theater director is so fundamentally different than a film director, right? They're both ultimately responsible for crafting stories, but the film director is always standing right off camera, gets to say, nope, do it again. Nope, do it again. Whereas the theater director, ultimately, when it's opening night, hands it over. The theater director's job is, like, pace at the back of the theater and be anxious not to stand backstage and be like, can you be louder in the next scene? Can you be faster in the next scene? Right? And the thing that I love about being a theater director are the ways in which it is this fundamentally collaborative. We work together, the cast and crew and me, and then it's opening night, and then it's theirs, and I hand it over to them. Any actor knows that it is this live, embodied experience that changes fundamentally based on the mood of the audience. Right? Like, the magic of theater happens in that electric space between the performers and the audience. And that means the audience plays an active role in it, not cause the actor's, like, decide to change their lines or their entrances from night to night, but because it's a live, attuned thing. And so I wonder if we can get you the most loving, supportive theater director voice instead of a demanding, critical film director who can make you do it and do it and do it until you get the best take, right. That you can say, you Know what? We have eight shows a week, so we'll do it again tomorrow and it'll be. It'll go differently. I don't know. What do you think about that?

[Jonathan Adler]

Yes, I really like that. That's so emotional. Yeah. No, I also like that analogy because you're describing also some surrender as being part of, like, the theater director's role. And I think I do have like this, like, dinosaur claw grip on this story and on the performer. And a theater director has to loosen their grip to let the actors do their thing. And so, yeah, I like the idea of recasting the judgmental critic, their relationship to the eye as someone who is not only kinder and more nurturing, but as someone who surrenders to the notion that, like, this is live theater and if you fuck up today, there's always tomorrow.

[Craig Finn]

That's right. And you keep going. Right. If you fuck up, you just keep going. It'll be fine. The rest of your cast around you has got your back and so does the crew. And then if it wasn't your best show, you got another show tomorrow.

[Jonathan Adler]

Yes, that's the other issue. And you just said something that reminded me of it. Is that, like, it's like lonely in here. Like, the best version of this storymaker's tale is still like a solo journey, right? And so, yeah, like, I don't know, even people who don't story make their lives to this degree. Anyone who lives in their head, whatever that means to them, can probably relate to the notion that that is a lonely experience. Like, nobody's in there feeling those feelings and having those thoughts with you.

[Craig Finn]

And ultimately, even though we think about narrative identity as a story, right? And it is a story that lives in our head, but it's also a story that exists to be told, Right? Stories are meant to be told. There's a wonderful paper in my field called Selves Creating Stories Creating selves. And the idea is like, you create the story and then you perform the story and you get feedback on that story. And then the feedback you get is going to inform the way you tell it the next time. And so I love the idea of thinking about it not as a story that only lives in your head, that is lonely and you're in charge of. But it's always been a story that lives in the space in between you and the other people you tell it. They give you feedback, sometimes verbally, sometimes non verbally on it. You sort of rejigger the story, try it again the next time. And that revision of our story has Actually always been the default mode of how narrative identity plays out.

[Jonathan Adler]

But I guess it is very validating simply to know that narrativizing your life, even to this extreme, doesn't make you, like, a dishonest freak.

[Craig Finn]

No, not at all. I sort of think about a spectrum of extent to which people do this. So I. I work at, you know, at this engineering college with this really, you know, low acceptance rate. These are, like, unbelievably bright, accomplished, driven students. Their intellectual capacity is so far beyond what mine was at that age. And what I find is that sometimes they come to college and they are so intellectually precocious, and they sort of put their head down into their math and science and didn't do anything else, and so the rest of their identity feels sort of underdeveloped. And part of my job is to actually encourage that. I. And to be like, congratulations, you got into the really competitive school. Now you should figure out who you actually want to be. And college is a great time to do that. So that's one end of the spectrum where people have sort of, oh, my.

[Jonathan Adler]

God, Jonathan, are you going to prescribe me to do a bunch of Sudoku puzzles or something?

[Amanda Montel]

No.

[Craig Finn]

No, I am not. I don't think Sudoku is the answer to anything. So on the one hand, there's that where it's like a sort of underdeveloped eye. Right. They've just, like, put their head down, and they've been me, like, I'm a math and science person, so I do all the clubs, and I, you know, invent the robots and whatever, but I don't actually know if that's what I want.

[Jonathan Adler]

Yeah.

[Craig Finn]

On the other hand, I think where you are is, like, this overdeveloped narrator that's got, like, too much control. And so in shifting the relationship, we might actually allow you to come back to being, like, the present actor who can do their lives, but also step back and be like, how'd that go? Did I like that? Is that who I want to be? And that might actually be much more supportive and adaptive for you.

[Amanda Montel]

Well, in that way, what Amanda is doing, it's like a superpower.

[Jonathan Adler]

Exactly.

[Amanda Montel]

It's like she's doing exactly what you would want your college students to do.

[Craig Finn]

That is totally how I feel. Amanda, I really feel like what you've got is actually a superpower. No wonder that you are doing all this podcasting and writing. I bet you're really good at it.

[Jonathan Adler]

Exactly. Because the thing I was going to say is that, like, I don't want to get rid of it. I really, really don't. I can't imagine that. Like, it's so fun. It's who I am. It's what I do. I mean, I don't know if this is language that we're using. It's what I am. But, like, even if there was no commercializing, like, and there wasn't when I was 12, you know, I would still be doing this 100%. I think you're right. The problem is not that I'm doing that and creating meaning in doing that and triangulating an identity by doing that. It's that there is a character in there that is perverting the vibes and.

[Craig Finn]

Also restricting you to a particular genre.

[Jonathan Adler]

Some episodes are just for vibes. No plot.

[Amanda Montel]

Sometimes it's slow tv. One takeaway I'm having is that we can take more action and we have choice to in making shifts.

[Craig Finn]

That's right.

[Amanda Montel]

We have how we tell stories, who is telling the story, what genre, our relationship. If we need to, you know, strengthen the I, the sense maker, or if we need to strengthen the me, just, like, being in the moment, like, we can change these things totally. Well, Amanda, on that note, I have a final question. So I asked you before what the sound of your niche emotional conundrum was, and you said it was the sound of your alarm clock, which was a lovely sound, and you hummed it. And I'm just curious. Yeah, I'm curious if the sound has changed at all.

[Jonathan Adler]

Yeah, that is a really nice sound. And, you know, not sponsored, but that hatch fucking alarm clock. Great, great noise. I would say that the sound that came to mind more just now would be like, more of, like, a binaural beat. It's like a little bit more of a humor. It's not so much like, wake up. It's kind of just like, exist, exist to this. It's a soundtrack, though, ultimately.

[Craig Finn]

You know what I think it is? I think the alarm clock. Yeah. Was that, like, you've been asleep. Even if it's a gentle way of coming into consciousness, it's like, get on, get on. Right? And maybe this is like the hum, I think of, like, the hum of the backstage speakers. Like, the lights go down and the show hasn't started yet, but the actors are waiting in the wings, and you can hear the little bit of feedback from the stage manager's headset. And it's like that buzz of, like, this is going to be great. I know what I'm going to do.

[Jonathan Adler]

Oh, my God, I feel so safe. With you. Theater kids like you have no idea.

[Amanda Montel]

Well, thank you both for doing this so much.

[Craig Finn]

Oh my gosh, this was so fun. Amanda, thank you so much for for being willing to share all this with me and being so open.

[Jonathan Adler]

I appreciate you more than words can say. This has been like unbelievably nurturing.

[Amanda Montel]

Thank you to our Proxy, Jonathan Adler. Jonathan is a psychology professor at Olin College. You can find his work at www.jonathan-adler.com. and thank you to Amanda Montel and her storymaker for being so vulnerable. Amanda has a new book called Magical Overthinkers about the cognitive biases that are fueling our irrationality in this information overloaded age. She's also the host of the podcasts Magical Overthinkers and Sounds Like a Cult. We'll have all those links in our show notes. We'll be back with a new episode on Tuesday, July 15. New episodes every other Tuesday for the rest of the year. This episode was edited by Tim Howard, produced by me and mixed by Kyle Pulley. Research and production support from Kim Nadervane Petersa with help from Anna Karan Santana and Charlie Klein. Our newsletter editor is Juliana Feluciana Reyes. Music in this episode by Tim Howard and theme music by Breakmaster Cylinder. Special thanks to Dave Nussbaum. As always, you can follow us on Instagram Proxy Podcast and I'm Oueshaw. We also have a free newsletter. You can sign up at our website ProxyPodcast.com proxy is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent creator owned listener supported podcasts. Discover Audio with Vision at Radiotopia fm. Radiotopia's executive producer is Adrej Martovich and Yuri Lozordo is director of network operations. Speaking of Independent Proxy depends on listener support, so consider joining our patreon. For just $5 a month you'll get ad free episodes and exclusive bonus interviews. So far we have 11 exclusive bonus episodes and counting about all kinds of topics like how to decode the feelings of people with Alzheimer's. The sweet spot for political polarization and restorative justice. Conversations with people who've come forward because of me too. To listen, go to patreon.com proxypodcast to become a member. That's patreon.com proxypodcast and remember, if you have a niche emotional conundrum you'd like investigated by proxy, get in touch atproxy the pod gmail.com hey Babe, should we talk about what happened earlier?

[Yowei]

Uh, sure. Yeah, I guess we can.

[Amanda Montel]

Okay, so you were mixing the podcast and you called me.

[Yowei]

Uh huh.

[Amanda Montel]

And you sounded pretty. You sounded agitated.

[Yowei]

Just because I had another client where they wanted me to rebound a song and they needed me to fix something, and I was having trouble figuring that out because it was like a very minute detail. And so I was doing. Kept doing that. So I was kind of, you know, on edge. And then I was just hoping to finish Proxy sooner, so.

[Amanda Montel]

Oh, and then you opened up this session and it was filled with markers.

[Yowei]

Filled with markers. And then. Yeah, and then I was trying to call you and you weren't picking up and I was just. Yeah, I mean, I didn't mean to come in so hot. So I'm sorry.

[Amanda Montel]

But you know what? You're doing a lot for proxy and you're doing it all for free. So it's okay to be emotionally expressive with me, right? Because you're not allowed to be emotionally expressive with other clients, right?

[Yowei]

No.

[Amanda Montel]

Okay, so maybe this could be like something you get out of this. I could be like the proxy client, Right, for your other clients.

[Yowei]

Yeah.

[Amanda Montel]

Like you can take out all of your frustrations, complaints. Yeah, you can take it out on me. Now.

[Yowei]

That sounds like a toxic work environment.

[Craig Finn]

Radiotopia.

[Amanda Montel]

From prx.