the healing power of storytelling

 

Much of what is written about the power of storytelling to heal has to do with more or less intangible, warm, fuzzy concepts like finding your truth, defining your purpose, or sharing your message. It has to do with attention, affirmation, and empowerment. Optimism vs pessimism. Hope vs despair. All of which seem to influence our ability to heal. Somehow.

From a scientific standpoint, we know that storytelling causes the release of hormones such as oxytocin that governs empathy and social interaction, and cortisol that is connected to the stress response. We can measure the levels of these hormones so we have proof. That's what happens.

But the biological correlates of storytelling are far more complicated than that. Take this, for example:

"The coupling between speaker–listener and listener–listener brain pairings was assessed through the use of a spatially local general linear model in which temporally shifted voxel time series in one brain are linearly summed to predict the time series of the spatially corresponding voxel in another brain. Thus for the speaker–listener coupling we have this equation:

where the weights  are determined by minimizing the RMS error and are given by  Here, C is the covariance matrix  and  is the vector of shifted voxel times series, We choose , which is large enough to capture important temporal processes while also minimizing the overall number of model parameters to maintain statistical power. We obtain similar results with ."  

(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2922522/)

Got that? Probably not. You probably don't understand a word of it. I know I don't.

"Maybe stories are just

data with a soul."

~Brene Brown~

 

In plain English, though, this means that stories have the power to heal through the process of:

• Alignment: an unconscious process that enables communication between storyteller and listener so that their brains exhibit mutual temporal, coupled response patterns that synchronize over time. In other words, they are both connected by and engaged in the story.

• Coupling: the emergence of complex behaviors that require coordination of activity between individuals. In health care this is important because this factors into whether the patient will follow directions or change unhealthy behavior. If the health care provider doesn't attend to the patient's whole story, or the patient doesn't feel he has been heard, neurolinguistic coupling can't take place. Nor can healing.

• Dialogue: the exchange of ideas and information that leads to understanding, empathy, and interaction. 

~Cultural Detective Blog~

The interesting thing is that this can all be visualized by scanning the brains of storytellers and listeners with a functional MRI as they interact. You can watch the gradual alignment and coupling of electrical activity in specific areas of their brains as the dialogue progresses. And then you can observe the behavioral changes that follow.

This kind of information is important if you reject the validity of anecdotal evidence, and instead, cling to hard data to make your point: that storytelling directly affects brain function and, in doing so, it affects the physiology of the body. It explains how storytelling heals.

"The truth is, in order to heal

we need to tell our stories

and have them witnessed."

~Sue Monk Kidd~



If your job is to assess the cost effectiveness and clinical correlates of thorough history taking in the health care setting, this information helps make the case for improving physician-patient interaction by embracing the importance of narrative in clinical practice.

There is no doubt that:

.

"A story is a powerful, unifying tool

that connects mankind, breaks down barriers,

and heals wounds."

~nativehope.org~

jan