"Stories set the inner life into motion, and this is particularly important where the inner life is frightened, wedged, or cornered. Story greases the hoists and pulleys, it causes adrenaline to surge, shows us the way out, down, or up, and for our trouble, cuts for us fine wide doors in previously blank walls, openings that lead to dreamland, that lead to love and learning, that lead us back to our own real lives a bit wiser."
-Clarisa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run with the Wolves
What is storytelling?
Storytelling identifies, expresses, and even shapes the past, present, future, accomplishments, challenges, life goals, dreams, purpose, values, and other fabrics in the tapestry of who we are as human beings.
Expressed verbally, through writing, and other art forms, when people tell their own story, they are reflecting on themselves and their life's journey.
What are the potential health benefits of storytelling for people affected by cancer?
Storytelling may help people define themselves, their experiences, world, and relationship to life in general. Stories can provide the opportunity for people to make meaning and even have a witness.
Studies suggest that writing about challenging life experiences such as trauma improves health. Expressing rather than repressing feelings about stressful events can enhance well-being, reduce emotional stress, decrease frequency of medical visits, and improve immune functioning, according to studies by psychologist James Pennebaker, PhD, and others.
Storytelling in a cancer patient-provider consultation also helps cancer care providers understand the whole person.
In honoring our stories, there are many opportunities for meaning making, positive life changes, connection, and healing, as described by Lora Matz, MS, LICSW.
- We can search for wholeness among our fractured parts.
- We can explore our past, come to a more profound understanding of our origins, and future directions.
- We can create awareness for how the past interfaces with the present, and how the present ebbs back into the past.
- We can journey inward and discover connections previously not understood or acknowledged.
- We can come to know who we are in new and unexpected ways.
- We can formulate our view of the world through words.
- We can determine how adversity has enriched our meaning and purpose in life.
- We can explore how love experienced and love lost have influenced our time on Earth.
What are some types of stories?
In The Wounded Storyteller, Arthur Frank defined three types of stories used by people dealing with health challenges that he calls illness narratives that apply to those affected by cancer.
Restitution Narrative
"Restitution stories attempt to outdistance mortality by rendering illness transitory. It is a response to an interruption, but the narrative itself is above interruption. It is all about the body returning to its former image of itself before illness."
Chaos Narrative
"Chaos stories are sucked into the undertow of illness and the disasters that attend it. Chaos stories remain the sufferer's own story, but the suffering is too great for a self to be told. The voice of the teller has been lost as a result of the chaos, and this loss then perpetuates that chaos."
Quest Narrative
"Quest stories meet suffering head on; they accept illness and seek to use it. Illness is the occasion of a journey that becomes a quest. The quest narrative affords the ill person a voice as teller of her own story, because only in quest stories does the teller have a story to tell. Stories have to repair the damage that illness has done to the ill person's sense of where she is in life, and where she may be going. Stories are a way of redrawing maps and finding new destinations."
What is a model for storytelling?
Many different models and formats exist for storytelling.
The Lifeline Exercise was developed at McGill University Health Centre, Montreal General Hospital in Canada, as a Meaning-Making Intervention (MMi) for people with cancer1. The process uses storytelling with a witness to cope with the cancer experience and existential plight. Ideally, people with cancer do this exercise with a trained professional. The exercise can also be done through writing responses to steps 1, 2, and 3.
Take a blank piece of paper and draw a single horizontal line across the middle of the page. The far left side of the line represents when you were born, and somewhere on the right side of the line represents the end of your physical life. Draw a circle on the lifeline to represent yourself and where you think you are given the cancer diagnosis.
When this work is done with a trained professional, people with cancer are given a brief introduction about reactions to life-threatening illness, the process of moving through life's transitions, and the influence of beliefs and past experiences on present and future responses.
- Acknowledge the Present
Tell your story from diagnosis to present. Consider including symptoms that led you to seek medical attention, immediate and ensuing thoughts, feelings, and actions, who you told or did not tell, what has changed in your life, and what has not changed.
- Potential Benefits
- Facilitates, invites, and allows the expression of any and all emotions related to the cancer diagnosis and time since then
- Preserves a sense of control by acknowledging what was and what is, as well as what can and cannot be changed
- Demonstrates the co-existence of the negative and positive in life
- Contemplate the Past
Talk about pivotal life events prior to the diagnosis of cancer. Label these events to the left of the circle representing yourself. Identify the strengths and coping strategies that have been previously used to deal with these past challenges that were equally as unexpected as the present situation with cancer.
- Potential Benefits
- Embeds the cancer experience within the existing framework of past coping strategies and techniques
- Introduces new coping strategies that might be experimented in the present situation
- Live the Present for the Future
Talk about how to live life as fully as possible in the context of cancer. Identify and label important life goals and activities to the right of the circle representing you.
- Potential Benefits
- Emphasizes awareness about the inevitable outcome of death for all people, and possibly in the midst of cancer, which can lead to concrete plans to achieve important life goals
- Presents uncertainty about the future against a backdrop of strengths related to mastery of past challenges
EmbodiWorks would like to thank our Integrative Cancer Care Advisory Board member Lora Matz, MS, LICSW for her input related to Storytelling. More information about Lora and her work can be found at Transformative Practices.
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References
- Lee V. The existential plight of cancer: meaning making as a concrete approach to the intangible search for meaning. Support Care Cancer. 2008 Jul;16(7):779-85. Epub 2008 Jan 16. Review. PubMed PMID: 18197427.
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