"The Story of Your Life" from Hidden Brain
“Stories give us a chance to experience the real world without the risks of the real world. They allow us to run different scenarios and to think about the consequences of those scenarios.” - Shankar Vedantam
An important part of resiliency is the tools in your toolkit. Like a video game, when you seize dangling fruit to extend life or scale a building for that particular weapon you know you'll need in the next level, the more resources and skill sets you accumulate, the better. They all serve a different purpose at different times. Pardon the analogy.
Today’s tool is storytelling.
Description: “We can’t go back and change the past. We can’t erase trauma and hardship. But what if there was a way to regain control of our personal narratives? In the second part of our series on storytelling, we look at how interpreting the stories of our lives — and rewriting them — can change us forever.”
NOTE: this episode touches on themes of trauma and suicide.
There are four stories shared in this episode:
Story 1: Rachael and Greg - Rachael’s grief turned to rage. She began fantasizing about revenge.
Story 2: Raymond Marr - Psychologist at York University in Toronto, interested in why stories have the power to hold us captive.
Story 3: Julie Bolton - Educator and therapist sharing how therapeutic writing can help people discover and address deeply buried trauma.
Story 4: Krista Sanoor – Mother who used fiction to heal deep psychological wounds and turn her fantasies into a lucrative career.
There's a lot more to these stories than you think, including one that will help you learn how to truly put yourself in another person's shoes.
“Stories provide us with catharsis. A mechanism to safely explore difficult terrain.” - Shankar Vedantam
(1:16) SHANKAR: “The idea that stories can be a form of therapy has carried over into modern times. Sigmund Freud explored the idea. Psychoanalysis involves understanding the self as a series of stories. After Freud fell out of favor, researchers and councilors have continued to explore the role that stories play in our mental wellbeing. This week on Hidden Brain, how understanding the stories of our lives and rewriting them can change us forever.”
(20:21) SHANKAR: “Stories give us a chance to experience the real world without the risks of the real world. They allow us to run different scenarios and to think about the consequences of those scenarios… Stories, daydreams, and fantasies, in other words, allow us to imagine different versions of ourselves. They allow us to ask, ‘What would I do in this situation? How would I react? What kind of a person would I be?’
(24:04) SHANKAR: “This, of course, is the insight that Aristotle had centuries ago. Stories provide us with catharsis. A mechanism to safely explore difficult terrain… If stories can serve as a safe space to explore trauma and repressed feelings, can they also be used to heal those traumas?”
Yes. Tune in for more.
LISTEN TO THE FULL TALK, HERE. (51 min)
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