WHEN A STORY ARRIVES

Mosaic at Sheridan Square

In many years of facilitating healthy change through storymaking, I have observed that when we can translate our raw experience into a story, something remarkable and unexplainable in rational terms happens: a deeply transformational process is set into motion.

We feel the presence of a story by the quality of greater presence and attention it brings. A story often begins to tell itself. As a teller, something stronger than intellect is directing our words. As a listener, we understand intuitively that someone is sharing something important with us—a moment that may have changed the arc of their life. 

When a story arrives, we stop speaking in concepts (For example: “I habitually lie to my wife for no reason because I learned as a child that lying saved me from my father’s rage.”) These concepts are important in understanding intellectually the path to self-sabotaging behaviors. But they’re not experiential; therefore not transformational. In transformational story, we're not looking for "facts" as much as we're hoping to untangle emotional knots that keep us frozen.

             

When story takes over, we slow down, begin to speak from our senses, within a concrete setting and time, communicating an emotional quality, repeating significant dialogue, possibly surprised by forgotten details, in which we feel the emotions we weren’t able to feel when the event happened, but buffered and released, as in what happens when we watch a good film or read an engaging novel. For example, here’s the story that might arise:

“One time, I was about nine, I opened a bottle of Dewar’s that my father kept in the bar in the den, and I took a sip. It was awful! Bitter. Why did anyone drink this stuff? I remember the TV was turned on to some after-school program. I hated the program and the Scotch and decided never to do either again. When my father got home from work and saw the torn label, he yelled, “Who did this?” I knew he would beat up the guilty party because he always did. So I lied and said it was my older brother and his friends. It was easy to blame Eddie because he was always getting into trouble and our father didn’t believe his denials. He was the one who got beat that time.”

Untold, we may reenact that lie that saved us over and over, like re-listening to a garbled voice mail to understand the message. Fully told, we are released from that freeze frame that has blocked the flow of our life force around the issue of truth for decades. There’s no longer a need to reenact it. 

Our listener feels the shift in energy as well, and inevitably resonates with their own emotional associations. Story enables catharsis, emotional detox, and liberation for everyone.
 

In storymaking, we give ourselves permission to play with memory. We might create a “What if?” tale to give that little boy in the story what he really needed: a sense of safety around his father. What if a dad swims out to rescue his son who has paddled too far into the lake, wraps one strong arm around his precious child, and swims with the other arm back to shallow water? Not only does this tale inject parental safety into that painful memory, changing the neural pathway that held it; it triggers a new emotional state, and launches the limitless possibilities of a new story. 

If you feel caught in old behavior or relationship patterns, it’s likely that you’re stuck in such a story. You will likely find, as a client of mine did after telling a similar story, that the compulsive need to lie has dissolved. That story is over.

Try This

Reporting facts as they happened chronologically. (“He said, then I said, so he said…”) is not a story. In fact, it can shut down your listener’s receptivity and your own emotional engagement in what you’re saying.

Teller: Tell the situation as you remember it. In three minutes, describe a problematic situation with a trusted friend, therapist, or life coach. Think: context or problem, your usual response, the usual outcome. Compressing time this way forces you to get to the “bones” or essentials of your story.

Listener(s): Listen! The greatest gift you can give someone is to hold space for them while they process for themselves what they said out loud. The Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh once said the most healing thing we can say to someone grappling with a problem or strong emotion is, “Friend, I hear you.” (This also holds true as well for listening to our inner voices. Respond with empathy and the strong emotion will soften and become quieter.)

Teller: Now describe the  as a situation as a scene or master shot, as if you are watching a movie.  Giving yourself another three minutes, ground your story in a setting, with people, describe how the problem manifest in concrete terms, what you did, and the outcome. You’re improving here. Forget about doing it “right.” Just say what comes. When it gives you an ending—and it will—give it a title that captures the feeling you have about it. A title is like the ca-ching of a cash register; it concludes the transaction. In story terminology, it frames the experience and establishes your authorship, and thus your authority, over the circumstances. This is how you become the storyteller of your evolving life.

Listener(s): What stands out for you? Do not interpret, analyze, intellectualize, or give advice. All worthy responses, but a different kind of process from story. Above all, don’t impose your own meanings and solutions, no matter how well-intended. Story medicine is based on emergence: the knowledge that each person intuitively knows is right for them and our role as listener is to help them gain access to it. Respond with what you heard, and what had resonance for you.

Each of you: What do you each take from this exchange? You have engaged in dynamic, direct sensory experience together, rather than a retelling of a problem. Now you can discuss it in your usual roles as friends or client/counselor as usual. 

What do you now see that you didn’t see before? 

Do you have a new idea for what to do about the issue? 

Transformation doesn’t have to be earth-shattering. Life changes incrementally when we think or do one small thing differently. 

I call it a Grail Moment.

© 2018, Juliet Bruce, Ph.D., from the appendix of my forthcoming book, "A Write of Passage: In the Darkness, a Story Path Home."