A frustrating interaction can last seconds, but the story we build from it can shape an entire day. Joe Rockey and Father Boniface Hicks dig into where that story comes from, why it feels automatic instead of chosen, and how naming it — with curiosity instead of judgment — is what actually gives you power over it. This one lands on parenting, road rage, therapy, and the AI frustrations from last episode, all through the same lens. Key Ideas: The story running underneath a feeling usually isn't consciously chosen in the moment — it's already shaped by past experience. The choice comes after: noticing the story, naming it, and pressing back against it.Asking "why am I frustrated?" with curiosity and compassion (not more frustration) is what actually surfaces the hidden narrative driving a reaction.Validating a child's fear instead of dismissing it prevents layering a second, worse story on top: "I can't trust my own feelings."The same self-awareness that defuses road rage — noticing you're anxious about timing, not really wronged by the other driver — applies to any moment tempting a reaction before understanding what's underneath it.Rewriting deep, nervous-system-level stories isn't instant. It takes disconfirming experiences over time, often surfaced through therapy, prayer, or trusted people willing to mirror your patterns back to you.Links & References: None explicitly referenced with a clear official/source link in this episode. If this helped, please leave a review or share this episode with a friend. Questions or thoughts? Email FatherAndJoe@gmail.com. Hello and welcome to another episode of Father and Joe. I'm Joe Rockey here with Father Boniface Hicks. And Father, you said something at the end of the last episode that I wanted to put in the last episode, but because of time limits, I figured it's probably better to bring up in this one. And who knows, it might be an entire episode in and of itself, which is you mentioned the story that we tell ourselves and how we use that to drive it. And there were a couple of internal thoughts that just jumped off the page as you said that, and one of them being that it's a choice. You know, you can have three different people watch the exact same movie, event, whatever, and have three different takeaways of it. That's wildly proven throughout science in many different aspects, which gets back to the story that we're telling ourselves is a choice. And I think about the example that I do with my five year old, you know, I tell him bedtime stories and he takes away the part that he wants to hear of it nine times out of 10. And is the story sometimes have a purpose or sometimes? Yeah, like whenever it's bed timing, you're fighting me. One of your monster trucks magically gets in trouble for not listening to go to bedtime. And I just happen to pick his favorite one every single time when that's what we're trying to get across. And admittedly, sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. But at any rate, it's what I go with there. And that's the story that I'm telling him. I bring this up to say that we all have these choices over how we react and how we build our own narrative and what it is that we want to do with it. And it kind of astounds me how, given that fact, how little people actually look at the story they're telling themselves, especially in moments when they're not getting what they want, is if the story is against them that they made themselves. And that contradiction is something that I kind of want to spend an episode on because I think that it's something that when we find ourselves when things aren't going right, they're not the way that we want them. It can easily spiral. And using this practice could be a way to quote unquote, get your life back on track. So with that being said, I want to give you the floor and go from there. Yeah, I love that you picked up on this point because it's, I think, so valuable to just make that realization. You said it's a choice. And I would I would actually peel that apart a little bit and say a lot of times the stories that are coming up are are not chosen in the sense that it's it's already happening in me. And one of the one of the steps of greater emotional intelligence and self-awareness is actually noticing even to name the story. So, you know, again, we were talking about these various examples that I that I hope are accessible to people. They're certainly things that are common enough, I suppose, or familiar enough in my own life. You know, I'm driving and I hit every traffic light and I'm starting to get frustrated. So I'm noticing the frustration. That's actually the first thing that comes up. But if I start to ask myself the question of like, why am I frustrated? And I do that with curiosity and compassion, not in a frustrated way. Why am I frustrated? Rather, why am I frustrated? I wonder what's coming up here. Then I might be able to peel apart. Like, I feel like I'm never going to get there. I'm never going to arrive. I'm going to hit every traffic light. Nothing goes right for me. My day is going. So I can start to name. That's actually when I noticed the story for the first time that it's that's playing out inside of me. And that story is shaped across a lot of experiences. My own woundedness, the the influence of various spirits in the moment. It's influenced by a lot of different things. But the first thing is actually noticing it and naming it and then counteracting it. And that's where the choice comes in. And we can start to press against those stories and say, well, you know, it's my life is I am going to make it. And it's going to be OK. I'm going to be five minutes later. It would be 20 or 30 minutes late, but I'm going to get there. And if there's somebody I need to call or, you know, you were so kind to schedule our recording a little bit later because I was running late today. And I just realized at some point several things had cascaded that I was just like, yeah, this is not going to be recoverable. I need to just fall on my sword and see if Joe can start a little later. But but noticing the story of, you know, and with you, you've been so kind and flexible with me that already kind of in my nervous system, I'm a little bit less nervous because you are have been so flexible. And so I can say, well, let me see if he's willing to reschedule. And I don't have anxiety around that. But maybe somebody maybe there's a boss who gets really frustrated when you're late, never wants to reschedule. Maybe there's a friend who is going to blow up if I say something, but I can notice my reaction. I'm going to have some fear and anxiety about even bringing it up even before I bring it up because I'm telling myself a story which may be based on truth. There may be real evidence there, but it's going to go badly. That's the story I'm telling myself. And that's why I'm afraid. And I don't want to bring up, you know, asking for a reschedule or telling somebody I'm running late or that I've done something wrong or whatever it is. So I can notice that story that's generating that that anxiety. I may be able to kind of rework that and say, well, I can't do anything about it. I need to tell the person I'm running late or I need to reschedule. But I might also say, you know, I don't know why I'm so anxious because actually this person has always been very kind to me. Maybe I'm actually reacting against other people who haven't been kind to me. But that's not who I'm talking with in this particular case. So sometimes I can tease apart what's what's happening there. Now, again, changing that story is not as simple as, you know, flipping a switch. Those things tend to get written in our nervous systems there. We're responding to things before we're consciously aware of it most of the time. And so it takes a little bit of work to have the disconfirming experiences to show us that our built in story is wrong and can be refactored. And again, all of this work, noticing it, naming it, being able to try to push against it and then developing new evidence that supports a different story. All of that is part of the process of of healing and growth, we would say. That's the kind of thing that we end up doing in therapy. If you're in therapy, you're sharing your experiences and the therapist is helping you to tease apart the story and to understand what was leading to that and what your thought process was and why those feelings were coming up and why you were reacting in that way. And then even in the context of therapy, sometimes we can rework that that story. Therapy is just a particular model for doing that in our friendships, sharing our experience. We can help each other with this by the way that we just kind of mirror to them what they're going through and help a person to to refactor that story that's going on in them. Yeah, I think that there's a couple of big things here that I didn't give enough credit to in Father and Joe, Joe Rockey, Father Boniface Hicks, the story you tell yourself, self-awareness, emotional intelligence, cognitive narratives, road rage, parenting, validating feelings, childhood fear, subconscious patterns, nervous system, emotional regulation, therapy, healing, personal growth, curiosity, self-compassion, humility, virtue, golden rule, keeping your peace, anxiety, frustration, reframing thoughts, mindfulness, self-reflection, relationship with self, relationship with others, relationship with God, prayer, spiritual growth, patience, communication, rescheduling, boundaries, emotional maturity, disconfirming experiences, habit change, self-talk, Catholic spirituality, Catholic podcast
