How to Tell Your Story - Definition

I’ve written a lot about why storytelling can be beneficial in rehabilitation after Brain Injury (BI), but I realized that I have not written much about how to do this storytelling. It can be intimidating to try something if you don’t know what you’re getting into, and for that reason I’m going to start a series of blog entries that offer suggestions on how to do this. I want to be clear, these are my thoughts, and while they I have done my research, these are original ideas and suggestions that have not been medically tested or documented with studies. Furthermore, these blog entries are a process of organizing my thoughts, so there may be some rambles and wandering as I write. The goal is to encourage a conversation as to how storytelling can be used by in a rehabilitation setting, so I hope you read along and join in the conversation. But we must begin with an understanding of what we’re talking about, so for this first entry I define what I mean when I use the term “storytelling”.

Drawing from my experience, Rehabilitation Storytelling after BI is when a storyteller/survivor takes time to research, compose, rehearse and perform a spoken narration about the BI experience intended for an audience of people both familiar and unfamiliar with BI and the survivor’s experience.

As I’ve begun sharing this idea, some have asked how is Storytelling Rehabilitation different from Narrative Therapy? I respond by recognizing that the difference is in the focus. As I understand it, Narrative Therapy focuses on the client forming an interpersonal narration with a goal of personal understanding. While there is potential for public presentation as part of Narrative therapy, the focus is still on the client’s understanding of his or her personal story. In contract, the focus of Storytelling Rehabilitation is on those listening, with the goal of creating a performance that can be related to and understood by a general audience, with the therapeutic elements coming from the aim of being understood by a general audience, and this shift in focus is beneficial because it requires that the storyteller/survivor comes to an understanding of the BI experience and follows a narrative format and can be clearly communicated. I suggest that this encourages a less abstract understanding of the events. To be clear, I do not suggest this is an improvement or a next step in Narrative Therapy, but a separate rehabilitation process that can create space for different benefits. While storytelling rehabilitation could be tied to discoveries that come from a narrative therapy process or vice versa, I do not suggest these therapies be done in tandem — my instinct is that having multiple focuses could hinder both processes. But again, to emphasize, these are early thoughts in this work and I have not found any research that supports or refutes my suggestion of a storytelling rehabilitation process. I encourage you to share any research or thoughts you have.

To date, however, I haven’t found any research on BI rehabilitation using my definition of storytelling, and that’s why I’m pursuing this focus for my blog — I’m want to encourage further exploration of this topic and I hope to be a part of studies that explore how Storytelling Rehabilitation can be used.

If we broaden the definition of storytelling, as is being done in a scooping review research project that I’m a part of, we have found thirteen studies in the past 30 years that look at eleven interventions involving art forms that include a narrative element — video production, song lyric composition, written works, and visual art accompanied by explanation — and while we accept these forms by our necessarily inclusive definition, none of these interventions use storytelling specifically as I define above. I don’t suggest that there is anything wrong or lacking when using alternative art forms to express a story, especially considering that all these studies have reported positive responses by the survivors engaged in these arts, but my focus is on using prepared spoken narration, and I believe this will have different effect because it uses a more standard form of communication, the spoken word. Despite what Broadway musicals would lead you to believe, rarely does a person spontaneously break into song when describing an emotional experience. In future entires, however, I will share thoughts on how employing multiple art forms can assist a storytelling process.

So that sets the course of this blog for the next while — I’ll be suggesting techniques of how a survivor can find ways to share a story of recovery and sharing my reasoning behind these ideas. Be clear that these are only suggestions. I cannot present anything in this blog as a sound, medical solution. The world is still at the beginning stages of this research and we just don’t have the data yet, but what I share is a place to start. I am sharing thoughts I have formed from personal experience and what studies I can find to support my ideas in the hope that it will help create a starting point. That said, please share your thoughts, comments, and ideas along with this blog — I’m excited about learning your thoughts on this topic and any research or experience that can add to this discussion.

Let’s explore this together!