The Power of Storytelling

Going all the way back to the time when I was a little boy, I would sit enthralled for hours listening to family elders tell stories of a time before that I could only imagine. I was blessed to spend time with a large number of seasoned old gents and dames who were at the tail end of their colorful lives, with nothing but time left to spin tales to entertain children. Nearly seventy years on myself, I still recall with vivid detail many of the stories I heard as a boy. Some were so remarkable that they stick with me to this day, long since added to my own repertoire, with perhaps a bit of elaboration.

Hearing accounts of how my elders and parents experienced life before me was a form of bonding and had a large part in shaping my own personality in the formative years. One could say that most of the stories that survived are directly tied to my identity - what I have become over the years. As soon as I came of age to become a storyteller myself – when I first sat around campfires with other boys in the Boy Scouts - I had many stories to share. Since then I have sent tall tales to the stars above around a thousand campfires on countless adventures. Add to that a few years of entertaining a captive, but receptive audience while teaching high school, I have had a lifetime of opportunities to spin endless yarns and leave my own legacy.

Exchanging stories with family members in particular is not an inconsequential pastime. Research published in Emory University’s Journal of Family Life shows that a people’s knowledge of their family history correlates to higher self-esteem, lower anxiety, stronger familial cohesion, and a better sense of control over one’s life. Furthermore, internalized family narratives can influence one’s sense of individuality.

James Allen, an assistant professor of psychology at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, has studied narrative identity theory, the notion that an individual’s stories about one’s life should be regarded as an essential element of one’s personality.

There’s lots of evidence that the stories we hear growing up in our families and in our cultures play a major role in how we develop a sense of autobiographical memory, which then leads to a sense of identity. The stories we hear growing up help us develop our sense of identity.

Narrative identity theory also maintains that the manner in which people tell stories about their lives may predict certain outcomes, such as their quality of life. In other words, people who tell happier stories about their lives tend to report higher instances of well-being, compared to those who share primarily negative stories. Telling stories with a mixture of qualities is associated with shifts in well-being over time.

Allen has also examined the relationship between oral storytelling and the socio-emotional development of elementary school-age children through a series of studies on their engagement with oral narratives. One characteristic he pays special attention to is the coherence with which children reproduce the stories they’ve been told.

Narrative coherence is a developmental skill that children learn, and it’s something that’s part of our socio-cultural environment. When we’re young children, we tell a lot of stories with our families, with members of our cultures, and with our friends. Each of these experiences of listening to stories is giving us different kinds of resources we can use to build our own stories.

A recent study by researchers from Princeton and New York universities found that there is significant overlap between the parts of the brain activated by both speech production and speech comprehension. This includes parts of the brain associated with social cognition and the ability to discern the mental states of oneself and others.

Trisha Lee, a U.K. based educator, founded the non-profit theater and storytelling arts program Make Believe Arts in 2002. She travels to schools to train teachers in a form of storytelling known colloquially as ‘helicopter stories,’ in which children create a narrative out loud as a teacher writes it down. The children then act out the story.

Participation isn’t mandatory, but students often come around on their own terms, Lee said. She described scenarios in which she’s seen otherwise non-communicative children happily participate in the creation of helicopter stories. How we make sense of ourselves is where we fit in the stories of our peers. That’s what we do in life—I understand your life because you tell me a story about yourself, and that’s what happens with the children. Stories help us understand and relate to others, which is important as children.

According to narrative identity theory, stories often convey a sense of purpose—or perhaps a lack thereof—on behalf of the narrator, and the delivery of a person’s story can provide insight into the state of their mental or physical health. Symptoms of mental disorders such as schizophrenia, for example, might include disjointed narratives.

According to pediatrician Sayantani DasGupta, the ability of health care professionals to attentively listen to their patients’ stories is vital to successful treatment. DasGupta teaches in Columbia University’s program in narrative medicine, an interdisciplinary approach to medicine that upholds that the humanities are as much a part of the health care profession as the hard sciences. The program is training the next generation of medical doctors in honoring the stories of their patients so as to produce better health outcomes.

DasGupta said: “Storytelling isn’t new to health care. It’s actually always been at the heart of health care. Before physicians and nurses could provide antibiotics and life-saving surgeries, what we had was the ability to show up and bear witness to people’s stories.”

While the advancement of medicine has improved society’s collective health, the quality of human interaction has diminished. When that happens, you get dissatisfaction on both sides of the stethoscope. We see the problems that happen when people on two sides of a relationship don’t communicate.

The consequences of poor communication between doctor and patient can manifest in the form of overlooked symptoms, misdiagnoses, and a lack of trust. DasGupta teaches her students a concept she’s coined: ‘narrative humility.’ It’s the idea that a listener—usually a practitioner—respects that stories are not complete windows into a person’s experiences. Narrative humility, DasGupta said, was born in response to the misconception that cultural competency can be achieved by studying paradigms that pathologize the health behaviors of people from different socio-cultural backgrounds. The humanities are as much a part of the health care profession as the hard sciences.

With a similar ethos in mind, third-year Brown University medical student Anna Delamerced founded a storytelling program at an assisted living facility after bonding with an elderly resident she visited as part of her first-year curriculum. Research has shown that group reminiscence activities, or sessions during which people exchange stories about their lives, can help combat the ennui seniors experience upon being institutionalized and reduce health risk factors such as social isolation.

“I wanted to start this storytelling program as a way to bring people together, make connections for the residents, and sort of let their voices be heard,” Delamerced said. She meets with the residents of Ethan Place in the city of Warwick, Rhode Island, at least once each week and prepares story-exchanging activities for them. While the initiative is primarily intended to benefit the residents, Delamerced said it’s been mutually beneficial. “I’ve just been humbled and in awe of their life stories. It’s helped me I think become a better med student and informed me in how I want to practice as a medical doctor in the future.”

Stories always brought me closer to not only my elders whose stories entertained me as a lad, but also to my peers, students, and my own children who I continue to share stories with to this day. I took it as a great compliment when a friend of mine, after we had run all night together in a hundred-mile race, related to another friend that the time passed so quickly and that I never repeated the same story twice. I guess I will always find an outlet to share my storied life. It makes me a better person, if nothing else, to listen to the stories of others as well as share my own.

Adapted from The Power of Sharing Stories by Liz Brazile  on February 3, 2021, in upliftconnect.com