One time for a job, I attended a mental health storytelling workshop that was open to the public. A lot of people told their stories—those who lived with mental health disorders, those whose families were affected by mental health disorders, those who didn’t know much about mental health but wanted to learn. Towards the end, one woman stood up and said, “In my culture, mental illness doesn’t exist.”
She went on to say that hearing other people’s stories about Depression made her realize she wasn’t lazy or unmotivated. She had a diagnosable mental health disorder for which she needed treatment. What she meant by her first comment was that she grew up in an environment where people didn’t talk about mental health disorders. Hearing stories gave her not just the diagnoses—words she’d probably at least heard before—but a deeper and more human context she could relate to.
Storytelling is a big part of 12-step fellowships. This relatability seems to be one reason. When a newcomer hears how someone with more time sober has turned their life around, it can make recovery feel possible. I don’t use AA, but when I was planning to get sober, I reached out to people in recovery I knew. Hearing their accounts turned sobriety from a faraway concept into an imaginable future.
As this article from Harvard Business points out, stories have something for every type of learner. Visual learners imagine the story in their head. Auditory processors focus on the sound of the storyteller’s voice. Kinesthetic processors—who learn best by doing, experiencing or feeling—connect to the emotion in the story. While at 12-step meetings, people aren’t necessarily using their stories to teach in a literal sense, other people’s stories inform you about other people’s experiences. And they show you how you might want to live your own life.
Telling your own story helps you make sense of your life. In some ways, that’s what therapy is; sifting through your life story with a professional who helps you recognize patterns and notice through-lines. In one—well, story—I found online, a guy named Chris said that when he entered recovery, he had “… no story that was mine, no coherent line through my life…All I had was a confused mess of vignettes, smothered in anger, loneliness, and self-pity.”
Stories also help foster empathy. A review in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences found that reading fiction was linked to increased empathy. I would argue that it’s not just fiction, but any story where you’re inside another person’s viewpoint.
Someone may really have come to that mental health storytelling workshop thinking mental health disorders don’t exist. But it would be hard to hear all those stories and not become more open to understanding.
And they can help you understand yourself in a different context. There is something to be said for taking power back through narrative. The stories you might have told about yourself in active addiction—or that were told to you—may have portrayed you as selfish or irresponsible. But your worst moments of active addiction don’t have to be the center of your narrative. They are just one part of a much longer story. In sobriety, you get to reshape that story.
I entered sobriety with over a decade’s worth of drunk/otherwise intoxicated anecdotes. I like that as I approach five years sober, the recovery stories are adding up too. As you gain more time sober, you will likely find it less and less compelling to see yourself through the lens of those old stories. You will have new ones to tell.
If you are struggling with a substance use or mental health disorder, TruHealing Centers can help you rewrite your story. We are open throughout the COVID-19 crisis, with hospital-grade sanitization of our facilities and telehealth options. At our recovery centers across the country, we will help you work through traumas and build the coping skills to thrive in long-term recovery. Call an admissions specialist at 410-593-0005.
