To Witness
How do the stories we hold influence what we experience, the meaning we make, and how we feel?
We are all storytellers. We use stories to connect and understand one another. We use stories to piece together our lives, making sense of our highs and lows. Our stories are crafted by our experiences and the meaning we ascribe to them. Our stories help us define the characters in our lives, describe the settings that have shaped our brightest and darkest parts, and create the overall plot.
Narrative Identity
Without our stories, who are we? Our internal worlds, where our "narrative identity" lives, can get messy. Our narrative identity is the inner story that helps us navigate our external worlds. It is the myth, the legend, the tale we construct that informs who we think we are and what our purpose is. Our narrative identities may contain victors, victims, and villains like all myths and legends. These roles we imagine or have come to believe about ourselves can either help us or hurt us.
Experts explain that our stories tend to focus on the most extraordinary events we've experienced, both the good and bad. The very good and the very bad experiences tend to need more sorting out. Storytelling allows us to tell and retell our experiences so we can make some sense out of them. It is during this process we shape our views of ourselves and the roles others have in our lives.
Redeem or Contaminate
Dan McAdams explains that we typically tell two types of stories: redemptive stories and contamination stories. Redemptive stories are those that capture transitions we've experienced from bad to good. Contamination stories are those in which people interpret their lives as going from good to bad. It likely won't surprise anyone that those that tell contaminated stories are less driven, more anxious, and more depressed than those that tell redemptive stories. McAdams explains that redemptive stories are defined by growth, communion, and agency.
Narrative Choice
While researching and preparing for this blog, I paid closer attention to how the stories I tell and those I listen to add or take away from the experience I am wanting for myself. Like all storytellers, none of us are exempt from "narrative choice" to create the stories that best support how we see ourselves and our lives. Narrative choice also enables us to avoid addressing aspects of our experiences that we do not believe to be true and that do not reinforce the central theme of our myth. For example, in my work as an advocate I am compelled to focus on the deficits that need to be addressed rather than the progress made or successes. Narrative choice in this case allows me to tease out the parts of the story that do not align with my core value or goal, which is generally to address a gap that is hurting a system and the lives affected by it.
For those who have experienced conflict or trauma, it is likely that somewhere along the line, they began to identify with a more dominant and problematic story, losing the parts of their identity that experienced less stress, less anxiety, less anger. Perhaps the leading character goes from hero to villain, riches to rags, helper to helpless, loved to unloved, powerful to powerless.
Witness Narrator
START: Creative Arts Therapy Services invites you to be a Witness Narrator to your own story. A witness narrator doesn't try to hide the parts of the story that they don't like or that may make others feel uncomfortable. They simply recall what they witnessed. There are different types of witness narrators, each with distinctive features. Some examples include; impersonal witnesses who behave like a camera, recording what they see. There are eyewitnesses who recall past events they experienced first hand and informant witnesses who transcribe an event as if writing a formal report. No matter the type of witness narrator you decide to be, there are some things they all understand and agree on.
Witness narrators are not the Author. They do not write the story.
They understand they cannot be everywhere, see everything, or know what others are thinking.
They must always try to remain IMPARTIAL.
They describe what they see. They do not try to explain why something may have happened or a behavior.
They provide reliable information that makes someone feel as if they are experiencing something first hand.
They use their own language and do not subscribe to what others want to hear or what they don’t personally understand.
Let's take a shot at it. Imagine yourself as a witness narrator. Choose an experience in your life to examine.
What time of the day is it?
What is the temperature?
Where are you?
What are you wearing?
Who is with you?
Describe the space you're in.
Why are people gathered in this space?
How are others engaging you or those around them?
What do you hear?
Describe any conflicts you notice.
Describe any expressions of affection you notice.
How are people responding? What do you notice about their behavior?
Describe your behavior and your contribution to the environment or discussions.
Are you satisfied with what you saw and what you heard? Do you feel safe right now? Do you feel healthy? Empowered? Maybe you are imagining something different for yourself. Maybe you saw the event unfold in a different way.
Use this resource link to begin deconstructing stories and the meaning we have attached to them and to a lifetime of editing, revising and reinterpreting stories of Empowerment, Growth and Change!