Holding it Together: Three Ways to Shape Your Life Story

Without realizing it, you are creating your life story, page by page and chapter by chapter. What’s called “narrative identity” in psychology captures this idea that we are constantly trying to make sense of our experiences. For some people, this comes more easily than for others. How can you learn to make your life story work for you?

Level of Personality Functioning and the Life Story

In a new study by University of Houston’s Kennedy Balzen and colleagues (2026), the idea that narrative identity can become a psychological asset becomes the framework for understanding personality disorders. In particular, borderline personality disorder (BPD) can be seen as “a fragmentation of the narrative self” (p. 2). People with BPD have life stories that are incoherent, emotionally negative, and lacking in the motives of agency (sense of self driving) and communion (bonding with others).

The U. Houston team joins the ranks of critics within the personality research community of the DSM-5-TR (the diagnostic manual)’s categorical listing of personality disorders. In the past 13 years since publication of the DSM-5, there have been a bevvy of studies showing that personality disorders don’t exist as distinct clusters, but as dimensional continuums. The life story or narrative approach, Balzen et al. argue, can help clarify even further the processes underlying maladaptive personality functioning.

Writing the Life Story in BPD

The primary focus of the Balzen et al. study was on BPD, and how people with this disorder differ from others their own age who do not have BPD. Because this disorder in particular is so intimately tied up with disturbances in sense of self, it provides an excellent testing ground for the value of narrative identity. The two samples of young adults (18-25 years old) consisted of 94 college students who did not have BPD with 46 who received a clinical diagnosis.

To get an idea of how to construct your own life story, try following the prompts that the samples received:

Imagine your life as if it were a story in a book, developing each of the chapters as you go. Then, think of two life-changing events. Describe each of these and then reflect on how they in fact did change you.

In coding the narratives, the authors used the 3 themes summarized here (with examples). See how your own compares:

1. Affective and motivational themes related to agency (autonomy) and communion (connection). Did the narrator initiate change? Does the main character have satisfying relationships?

2. Autobiographical reasoning, or making sense of life. Did the narrators try to work through their life events? Were they curious about how the events affected them?

3. Valence (positive or negative) of seeing whether one is growing or deteriorating. Did the narrators come out of the experience with a sense of personality development, or did they focus on their flaws?

These ratings were linked to level of personality functioning, as determined by both interview and questionnaire measures. An example of a personality function interview item is, “How certain or safe do you feel in [close] relationships?” The interview also included identity questions, including “What kind of person are you?”

Among the narrative ratings, deterioration (negative valence) turned out to be the most strongly related to level of personality functioning. As the authors explained, “this is likely because deterioration specifically captures the narration of events that are perceived to change the self in a causal, negative way” (p. 10).

One of the narratives provided by an individual with BPD shows how this process operated: “After … I had friends that liked me, um, I got bullied… I felt so lost and hopeless, I even – like I eventually began to hate myself… I felt that was a result of my own personal faults, or something that I lacked in” (p. 10).

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Although some findings suggest that people with BPD create more negativity in their life (called “stress generation”), it was the interpretation of these stressful events as negative, vs. growth-producing, that the authors saw as most important. The issue is not so much whether you have negative events or not in life, but in how those events become incorporated into the story you tell about your life.

Turning Your Life Story into the Narrative You Want to Tell

The U. Houston findings reinforce the importance of developing a sense of continuity and wholeness in your life story. They do not necessarily provide the remedy for those whose narratives emphasize negative themes and lack coherence. We do know from other research that it is possible to encourage people to write coherent life stories by learning to reframe the negative into more positive and growth-affirming messages.

Consider the example of the participant who reported being bullied. She did take the experience as evidence of her personal faults. An alternative interpretation would allow her to focus on those who bullied her as being the ones at fault. She need not deny that the bullying occurred, but she could learn to see herself as having risen above their meanness and pettiness.

As you tried your hand at the narrative exercise, what themes did you find emerging? Were there events such as those of the bullying that you could rewrite, or do you feel that you were able to control and direct your life story in a way that fits with your sense of self?

To sum up, fulfillment doesn’t always involve having everything in your life go your way, or even as planned. The very effort of trying to piece together significant chapters in your past can be an affirming process as you start to appreciate the unique events that make you “you.”