When Old Stories Become Our Identity and How to Recognize the Beliefs Still Shaping Your Life
Written by Crissy Fishbane, Keynote Speaker & Writer
Crissy Fishbane is a keynote speaker and writer exploring what helps us build a meaningful life. Drawing from psychology and lived experience, her work focuses on worthiness, courage, curiosity, and belonging.
Some of the stories shaping our lives are difficult to recognize because, over time, they stop feeling like stories and start feeling like facts about who we are. Learning to recognize those old identity stories and understand how they still influence our choices can loosen their hold without requiring us to erase the experiences that shaped us.
How do old identity stories resurface?
A few years ago, I was with a couple of friends when the phrase “trailer trash” came up casually in conversation. I don’t remember exactly what we were talking about. I don’t even remember who said it. What I remember very clearly is what happened inside my body.
I immediately felt hot and clammy. Everything in me clenched up. I felt an intense rush of anger that seemed completely disproportionate to the conversation happening around me.
Then it all came crashing back to me.
When I was in elementary school, I had gotten into an argument with a girl who was a year ahead of me. Eventually, I realized the fight wasn’t going anywhere and turned to walk home.
I lived in a trailer park right next to the school.
As I walked away, she shouted loudly enough for everyone around us to hear: “Why don’t you just go home, trailer trash?”
I still remember the shame that washed over me. What I did not understand at the time was how thoroughly I would absorb those words. The trailer stopped simply being the place where I lived, and suddenly “trailer trash” became a story about who I was.
That story has walked alongside me into rooms for decades.
The stories we stop recognizing as stories
Psychologists use the term narrative identity to describe the evolving internal story we construct to make sense of who we are and how our life experiences fit together. We do not simply remember events; we also make meaning from those experiences and incorporate that meaning into our sense of self.
I lived in a trailer park with my single mother. That was a fact. The story I created about myself from that truth was something much bigger.
I began to believe I was less than. I felt that other people naturally belonged in certain rooms, while I had to prove I deserved to be there. I needed to show the world I was not defined by what that girl had once called me.
I didn’t consciously walk around thinking, “I’m trailer trash.” That’s part of what makes internal stories like this so hard to recognize. Eventually, they stop sounding like beliefs and start feeling more like our identity.
When one moment becomes universal
That story changed the way I walked into rooms. I became the queen of overachieving. If somebody suggested I couldn’t do something, something inside me immediately responded, ‘Oh yeah? Watch me.’
I wanted the people around me to like me because their approval felt like evidence that they could see what I was constantly trying to prove: I belonged there. I was worthy of taking up space.
For me, it was never really about having the right labels or owning the right things. Rather, I compared myself to others largely through achievement. I was continually seeking out evidence that I was successful.
When I wasn’t chosen, when somebody obviously didn’t like me, or when I was rejected, I rarely experienced those moments as one isolated incident involving one person.
I universalized it. See? This is how people see me. This proves I don’t belong in the room.
One moment became a through line in my life, and one person’s opinion became everybody’s opinion. A rejection from one person became a universal statement of my worth. I simply walked through my life collecting more and more evidence that proved the story to be true.
Why identity stories keep finding proof
Psychologists describe deeply held beliefs about ourselves as self-schemas, organized beliefs that can influence what information we notice, how we interpret it, and what we remember.
That helps explain something I can see so clearly now. Once I had absorbed the belief that I was somehow less than, I became extraordinarily good at spotting anything that seemed to confirm it.
A rejection or cold response from someone all of a sudden mattered so much more. Someone not liking me was strong evidence and something I felt deeply.
Yet any evidence that contradicted the story rarely carried the same weight. This is one of the most powerful things about an identity story: once we experience it as truth, we stop asking whether the events around us actually prove it.
We simply keep finding more evidence that seems to prove what we already believe.
Sometimes the body notices first
That is part of why the visceral response I experienced in the moment my friend uttered the words “trailer trash” mattered so much. I had spent years going about my life, building relationships, accomplishing things, and growing into a person who was far more comfortable being open and vulnerable than I had been when I was younger. Yet two casually spoken words were enough to make my whole body react before my mind was able to fully process what was happening.
Sometimes an old story shows up that way. Someone says a particular word, uses a certain tone, or criticizes us in a way that suddenly triggers an emotional response much bigger than the actual moment unfolding in front of us.
That doesn’t mean every strong reaction points back to some hidden childhood wound. However, I have learned to become curious when my response feels unusually intense.
Why did that affect me so strongly, and what old belief did this moment seem to confirm?
Sometimes an old story can reveal itself through our physical reaction before we can consciously explain what has happened.
Not every painful story should be erased
This is where I struggle with much of the advice we often hear to simply “rewrite our story.”
I don’t necessarily want to erase painful stories. That story made me work hard and contributed to my drive, ambition, persistence, and, in many ways, my success. There are parts of who I am today that only exist because of that pain I experienced. I genuinely value those parts of myself, and while I wish I didn’t have to experience painful moments, I also don’t want to erase them from my history.
Our difficult stories help shape us. They can build resilience, push us to grow, influence the work we choose to do, and eventually become part of what we have to offer others. If we attempt to morph our difficult stories into a simple ‘old stories are bad, just rewrite them’ framework, we can lose an important piece of our history.
The goal is not to pretend the painful thing never happened, convince ourselves it was secretly wonderful, or manufacture a shiny new identity that makes us feel better.
The goal is to recognize when the story shows up in your life now and understand how it influences the way you are currently living.
My “trailer trash” story helped me achieve some pretty amazing things. It also hurt me. They are two sides of the same coin, and both things can be true.
Build the counter to the story
Eventually, I realized I needed something strong enough to push back against the “trailer trash” story. For me, that counter became self-worth.
It was not the belief that I would always succeed or confidence that everyone would always like me. I still have moments where I doubt myself. I am still human. Rejection still hurts, and criticism can still knock me down for a while.
The difference is that I have developed a strong enough sense of self-worth that I can return to my baseline much faster now.
I know I belong in the room and that I have something of value to offer. I know another person’s judgment cannot define my worth.
That sense of self-worth did not appear overnight. Therapy helped me explore some of the stories I had carried. My relationship with my husband has been healing in ways I could never fully articulate. Being deeply loved and supported challenged much of what I had learned to believe about myself. Motherhood has made me look differently at my own worth as I watch my daughter navigate friendship, rejection, belonging, and questions about how other people see her. Most importantly, surviving hard things gave me evidence of my own strength.
Accomplishment has played a role as well. I began to collect a different bucket of evidence. Not necessarily evidence that I had finally proven myself worthy to the world around me, but rather evidence that the old story was never the whole truth.
Look for the whole truth
Sometimes the painful part of our story is true. Someone may really have rejected you. You may have failed. Someone may have said something cruel that has stayed with you for years. People may even have judged you because of where you came from, how you looked, what you believed, or what you were capable of at the time.
We do not need to rewrite reality, nor should we. I really did live in a trailer.
The goal is not to create a fairy tale. Instead, we can question the universality we have attached to those experiences.
For me, sometimes the counter is almost painfully ordinary. I might go for a walk in my neighborhood or look around at my home and the life I have built. I think about my family, the love surrounding me, the work I have done, the career I have built, the people I have helped, and the impact I have had.
I want to be clear: it was never really about moving from a trailer into a particular kind of home. It was about the meaning I attached to the words somebody once shouted at me in anger.
Less than. Unworthy. Someone who does not belong.
My life now contains an enormous amount of evidence that those words never told the story of who I am.
Recognition loosens the hold
I do not think we need to spend our lives searching for every painful story hidden deep inside of us. However, when one reveals itself, I think that recognition is a gift.
Pay attention when the same conclusion about yourself keeps surfacing, especially when something goes wrong. Notice the situations that make you want to prove yourself, shrink yourself, seek approval, or pull away entirely.
Then get curious. Where did I learn this? Is it actually true, or have I simply gotten very good at finding evidence that it is? What evidence might I have ignored along the way?
Perhaps most importantly: What do I need to build inside myself so this story no longer gets to run wild through my life?
For me, that counter was worthiness. Your counter may be something else entirely.
The goal is not to erase the story. The goal is to recognize when the story shows up and how it is impacting the way you live.
Because the moment you can say, ‘Oh. This is an old story,’ something has already shifted. You are no longer blindly experiencing it as truth. You can see it, question it, and recognize what it gave you, while also deciding that it no longer gets to play a part in your life.
Sometimes, simply recognizing and acknowledging a hurtful story is enough to loosen its power over you in the present moment.
Read more from Crissy Fishbane
Crissy Fishbane, Keynote Speaker & Writer
Crissy Fishbane is a keynote speaker, writer, and educator exploring one central question: What actually helps us build a meaningful life? With a background in psychology and education, she writes about worthiness, courage, curiosity, belonging, and the ways we can live more intentionally in a world that constantly pulls our attention elsewhere. She is the co-founder of HER Health Collective and host of the award-winning podcast Mama Needs a Moment, where she has spent years in conversation with experts about psychology, relationships, health, identity, and what it means to live well. In 2026, she placed third out of more than 4,000 speakers in Next Top Speaker Season 7.
