As humans, the ability we have that makes us different from every other animal species is storytelling. It is a necessary part of our existence as societal creatures and we use some form of storytelling in nearly every communication we make.
We need to tell stories. Because of limitations to our senses, an experience can never be fully expressed, and thus we do the best we can to share it with stories. This is also how we create bonds with other people - by having stories that we share. Yet storytelling, especially oral storytelling, is no longer deemed as important or necessary, and this is changing the fabric of how we function in society.
As one on one, or even performer/audience storytelling is getting nudged to the corners of culture - replaced by charts, emoticons, and other technological adaptations - many feel less comfortable sharing an experience. This unwillingness to share and limited locations to listen to others can create a sense of isolation - “No-one knows what I’m going through”, “My experience is different”. Returning to the topic of recovery from TBI, or any injury, my sense is that this isolation from lack of storytelling can cause a healing person to give up - not consciously, but with the bombardment of medical charts and predictions a recovering survivor doesn’t feel compelled to ignore the statistics and heal.
I also believe that every healing journey has successes and failures, many of which are never chronicled in medical literature - perhaps the fear of getting into a car again after an accident, or the thrill of actually chewing and swallowing food after a mouth has been wired shut. By sharing these experiences through storytelling, a recovering person can better anticipate some future stages in the journey.
This is not intended as a criticism of technological advances or the modern medicine process. I love technology. Were it not for the medical technologies that were employed in my process, I would not be here - what happened to me would have been unfixable even 30 years earlier. Furthermore, I am sharing this entirely with modern technology - the internet - because allows communication that was absurd science fiction less than 50 years ago. My stance is that we need to continue to improve lives with technology, but in this kaleidoscope of bling bling excitement, we should be careful not to forget the elements that define us as human - simple, beautiful ancient methods of communication that may be less dynamic, but are sill powerfully potent in how they can change our mind and even our bodies well-being.
As an inspirational speaker and performance artist, I have had the privilege of sharing the story of “Who Am I, Again?” with audiences throughout America, and what I find most exciting and inspiring about the consistent response is how audiences feel compelled to share their own stories. Sharing a difficult story helps to remove the stress that story has burdened us with and sharing an inspirational story will bring joy to everyone involved - the listeners will feel inspired and remember their own success stories and the teller will feel a new validation for his or her experience.
This is the stance I hold as I begin this project. To date my experiences have supported this belief, but I feel a need for more proof to support this, so I will do what has been suggested by a multitude of teachers in my life - if I want to know more about something, do some research. And that’s one of my missions in this blog - to research the subject of storytelling in medicine. My initial Googles have turned up a variety of recent articles and books that reference this in some manner, and my goal is to start sifting through the information while keeping an open and critical mind. I will seek to understand any science that is behind the process, as well as seek to understand my personal reasons of why I feel so deeply about the power of storytelling. I’ll be sharing this information and commenting on it throughout these writings.
This is where I start, but what are your thoughts on storytelling as medicine?
No comments:
Post a Comment