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Quick Summary
- You can discover your core values and needs by revisiting the stories you loved as a child.
- Your childhood heroes and narratives often reflect the central themes of your evolving identity.
- When you feel lost, returning to early stories can help clarify your direction and sense of self.
- Using childhood stories as a compass supports deeper self-understanding and personal growth.
This month, I returned to work full-time after several months of maternity leave with my newborn daughter.
It was a beautiful (and challenging!) time as any new parent on the planet will tell you.
SUMMARY
The stories you loved as a child — the books, movies, and heroes that captivated you — carry clues about your deepest needs, values, and sense of self. When life feels unclear or directionless, returning to those early touchstones can be a surprisingly useful exercise in clarifying what you actually care about and who you want to become. This post shows you how to use childhood stories as a compass.
Narrative Identity
Narrative identity is the internalized, evolving story a person constructs about their life — weaving together past experiences, present circumstances, and future hopes into a coherent sense of self. The stories we loved in childhood often foreshadow the central themes of our narrative identity: what we most need, most fear, and most value. Revisiting them can be a powerful tool for self-understanding.
Related reading: What does it mean to be an ambitious, upwardly mobile woman from a relational trauma background?, Attachment Trauma: How Early Relationships Shape Your Adult Connections, Trauma and Relationships: When Your Professional Strengths Become Your Relationship Blindspots
It was a time of endless feedings, endless diaper changes, endless cuddles and sweet moments of bonding, and beginning to read lots and lots of children’s books to my little girl, many of which I’ve held onto since my own childhood.
Reading to her has been and will likely continue to be a great joy of mine and it will be a gift to see how she develops her own relationship with reading and with books as she grows.
I’m particularly curious which books will become her stalwarts, her pen and paper cornerstones, the stories that stick with her for the rest of her life.
Because it’s these stories which I imagine she will be able to return to as an adult when she’s feeling lost.
When she’s feeling stuck, or uninspired, to retrieve clues about what mattered to her in her younger days.
I truly believe that the stories we loved as children – whether stories from books, movies, or orally told to us by someone – contain clues for our soul. And when we revisit these stories, we can gain important information that we can apply in our adult lives.
And today’s blog post is all about this subject and contains a list of inquiries to help you recall and perhaps utilize the information you re-discover in the books you particularly loved as a child.
Join me here to keep reading.
Here’s to healing relational trauma and creating thriving lives on solid foundations.
Warmly,
Annie
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why do the stories we love in childhood matter as adults?
The stories that captivate us in childhood resonate because they speak to something real in our developing psyche — a longing, a fear, a value, a sense of who we want to become. Psychologists and therapists often use early story preferences as windows into a person’s core emotional needs and narrative identity.
How can revisiting childhood stories help me when I feel lost?
When adult life feels unclear, early stories can act as a compass — pointing back to what genuinely matters to you beneath the noise of obligation and expectation. Asking ‘who was my hero, and what did they represent?’ or ‘what did I love most about that story?’ can surface authentic values and longings that career pressure and adult responsibility may have buried.
What does it mean if I always identified with the protagonist who was misunderstood or had to figure things out alone?
It may reflect an early relational experience of not being fully seen or having to be self-sufficient. These story preferences often mirror real childhood experiences — they were the books and films that felt true because they resonated with your actual emotional reality. Exploring that resonance in therapy can be illuminating.
Is there a therapeutic use for exploring favorite childhood stories?
Yes. Narrative therapy and Jungian-influenced approaches often explore personal mythology — including the stories, characters, and archetypes that have most moved a client — as a way to access deeper layers of identity and desire. It’s a gentle, often revealing form of self-exploration.
How do I use this exercise practically when I’m feeling lost?
Sit with these questions: What stories, books, or films captivated you most as a child? Who was your hero, and what qualities did they have that you admired? What kind of world did those stories imagine? What were the central themes? Then ask: which of those themes still speaks to something true in me today — and what does that tell me about what I actually want?
DISCLAIMER: The content of this post is for psychoeducational and informational purposes only and does not constitute therapy, clinical advice, or a therapist-client relationship. For full details, please read our Medical Disclaimer. If you are in crisis, please call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) or text HOME to 741741 (Crisis Text Line).
You deserve a life that feels as good as it looks. Let’s work on that together.
References
- McAdams, D. P. (2001). The psychology of life stories. Review of General Psychology.
- McLean, K. C., & Pasupathi, M. (2012). Narrative identity development in adolescence: The internalization of self-defining memories. Developmental Psychology.
- Singer, J. A., & Blagov, P. S. (2004). Narrative identity and meaning making across the adult lifespan: An introduction. Journal of Personality.
- White, M., & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends. W. W. Norton & Company.
- Bowlby, J. (1988). A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development. Basic Books.
What’s steering your life?
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About the Author
Annie Wright, LMFT
Annie Wright, LMFT helps ambitious women finally feel as good as their resume looks.
As a licensed psychotherapist, trauma-informed executive coach, and relational trauma specialist with over 15,000 clinical hours, she guides ambitious women — including Silicon Valley leaders, physicians, and entrepreneurs — in repairing the psychological foundations beneath their impressive lives. Annie is the founder and former CEO of Evergreen Counseling, a multimillion-dollar trauma-informed therapy center she built, scaled, and successfully exited. A regular contributor to Psychology Today, her expert commentary has appeared in Forbes, Business Insider, Inc., NBC, and The Information. She is currently writing her first book with W.W. Norton.
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