The healing power of stories - how and why healing of emotional wounds occurs when we express the pain in writing

Bbibliography of books helpful in stimulating writing for healing and spiritual development

949 words

The healing power of stories

In search for the meaning of life

Every story has the power to affect us. Why can stories heal? Because they deal with the big questions: who am I, why am I here, how to live, how not to live, and because the heroes search for the meaning of life. When the fundamentals of the bodily needs such as shelter, food, water and sunshine are available, the greatest human desire is that our lives would have a meaning. It is in the search of meaning to their own lives that readers buy books and read stories of fictional or real life experiences.

Stories give humanity a context for coming to terms with what is otherwise unbearable. It allows naming and reconciling with what at first feels terrifying, absurd, horrific, nonsensical, and for that reason the common expression that someone "lost the plot" when describing a nervous breakdown or insanity came to use.

A bronzed Ausie girl, one of the victims of Bali bombing, was interviewed as she stepped off the plane - and said trembling, with a bewildered look in her eyes: "I don't know how to feel. I don't know what to think. I don't know how to live with all this". People are struck by disaster - because it does not make sense.

Writers need to know that the most immediate and urgent need in dealing with a deeply touching human experience is to make sense out of what has happened. In order to resume normal life the day after we absolutely must understand the meaning of the event in such a way, that it makes sense according to what your character knows life is about. And one of the most beneficial ways of making sense is telling the story. Telling and retelling of the traumatic experience is one of the most powerful tools available to our spirit to effect healing of the aching soul. And that is why writers and storytellers have always had such a special place in society.

The pain that cannot be verbalised or told in pictures rages within like fire, causing untold destruction which freezes the spirit in a time zone of agony, anguish, sorrow, and torture. It may continue to smoulder for years and decades until it is possible to find the words to describe what has happened. The words to tell the story do not formulate in the mind unless and until our mind is able to make sense and we can see the experience as a story that can be shared. The healing is in the telling, in the words that give it a meaning, and in the listener or reader that takes the story to heart and responds to it emotionally.

The healing power of telling a story can only be equalled by the healing power of reading it and sharing evoked emotions. The writers are the storytellers who found a way of making sense of their own or someone else's experiences, or imagined catastrophes. Tragic or comic, the story fascinates whether the hero has the power to successfully overcome misfortune, or due to character weaknesses succumbs to the adversity and becomes a life's victim.

Writers and storytellers deal with human pain. Even comedies do - frequently offering a funny look at what could otherwise be seen as a calamity from a different standpoint. A writer is like the shaman who in tribal ways was the vehicle of wisdom in dealing with problems touching the members of the community. The writer has a heightened sensitivity to what the problem really is, and after working out the real meaning, offers the readers the philosophical, ethical, moral, truth-seeking understanding of it. Whether the verbal pictures are of the winning or of the fallen heroes, noble or evil characters, remarkable or ordinary human beings, the writer's inspiration in telling a story comes from a vision or a sensation that his or hers perception is important and needs to be shared. And it cannot be any other way, since from the beginning of human communities stories were told over the campfire from the same healing and sense-making needs.

When a deeply felt experience of an individual, whether lived or absorbed from the experiences of others has an impact strong enough, there is an inner need to spread it abroad, and not keep it to oneself. A person who has a story to tell and does not follow the fire in the belly may experience disturbing dreams, display neurotic behaviour, feel bouts of inexplicable anxiety, or even fall into a depression. Holding back a vision of having something to tell but keeping it as a personal secret may result in baffling changes in behaviour and suffering from mysterious ailments - until the story is told. For this reason writers and other artists are renowned as mavericks.

A plot, a coherent story must have its own momentum towards a climax, a significant connection between the episodes, and a reasonable hope that the conclusion will make sense. If readers have the sense that the lives portrayed in the story have a meaningful plot, they can absorb every kind of tragedy and suffering and learn the lessons of life they seek through sharing the experience.

Stories encourage us to live by the truth. The big questions of life can only be answered in the context of individual stories. In writing stories, fictional or non-fictional, depicting real or imagined events, the tone in which the story is told will affect the mutual healing - of the writer, and of the reader, if such healing is sought. The wisdom of stories is in their healing powers.

Bibliography - the healing power of stories

• 1.

Bronson, Catherine

Growing through the pain - the incest survivor's companion. - Prentice Hall 1990

• 2.

Campbell, Joseph

The Power of Myth. - New York, Doubleday 1988

• 3.

Ferguson, Sarah

What I Know Now - simple lessons learned the hard way. - Simon & Schuster 2003

• 4.

Franz, von, Marie-Louise

The Interpretation of fairy tales. - Boston, London, Shambala 1996

• 5.

Greenwood, Dr Michael & Dr Peter Nunn

The paradox of healing: transforming your relationship with illness. - London, Prion 1996

• 6.

Harrison, Dr John

Love your disease - it's keeping you healthy. - Angus & Robertson 1984

• 7.

Mazur, Marian:

The ABC of character - the elementary guide to human potential. - Global Living Publishing 1997

• 8.

Moore, Thomas

Care of the Soul - a guide for cultivating depth and sacredness in everyday life. - Harper Perennial 1994

• 9.

Rosenberg, David, ed.

The Movie that changed my life. - New York, Viking 1991

• 10.

Rosenthal, Norman E.

The Emotional Revolution - How the New Science of Feelings Can Transform Your Life. - Citadel Press 2002

• 11.

Sullivan, Evelin

The Concise book of lying. - New York, Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2001

• 12.

Taylor, Daniel

The healing power of stories: creating yourself through the stories of your life. - Dublin, Millennium Books 1996

• 13.

Voytilla, Stuart

Myth and the movies: discovering the mythic structure of 50 unforgettable films. - Michael Wiese Productions 1999

• 14.

Weingarten, Kaethe

Common shock: witnessing violence every day - how we are harmed, how we can heal. - Dutton (Penguin) 2003