Storytelling

Why Use this Skill

Life can be overwhelming if you feel like you have no control. Telling stories can help you connect the dots and see the ways that you do have power. It’s not about “seeing the bright side,” but about seeing things clearly and making sense of your experiences. Storytelling can help you better understand yourself, how you’ve grown, and what’s most important to you. Also, by sharing your stories with others, you can help them in their journeys by teaching them new things and helping them feel less alone. Stories connect and empower us.

When to Use This Skill

Use Storytelling when:

• You want to feel empowered or self-assured.
• You want to connect with others and build community.
• You’ve experienced traumas or difficult life experiences.

How to Use This Skill

Storytelling is about, well, telling your story. You can tell a big story—like your life story, including all of your history—or a small story—like how you practiced a new coping skill when you were upset yesterday. You can tell your story just to yourself, or you can share your story with other people. Sharing the facts of your story, and what it felt like, can help make meaning out of your experiences.

By creating a narrative about your life (or a specific problem or experience), storytelling can help you better understand who you are, how you’ve ended up where you are right now, and how you may be able to get where you want to go in life.

Here are some ideas:

• Keep a daily diary, start a blog, or journal about past experiences.
• Attend a Now Matters Now meeting, or other support group, and share your story.
• Record yourself telling your story out loud.
• Draw, paint, dance, or otherwise express your story and your experiences through art.
• Create the table of contents for your memoir. What would the title of your memoir be? If you were to have a separate chapter for each stage of your life, what would each chapter be called? Try writing one sentence or one paragraph that summarizes each chapter.
• Use chain analysis to understand why you behaved in a way that you wish you hadn’t.
• Tell a trusted friend about a difficult life situation you’ve been through.
• Use our Skill Story Guide to describe how you used a coping skill or use it to plan how you’ll use it.
• Explore your answers to questions like:
  • What events (or which people) have impacted me the most in my life? How did these events/people change or shape me? How did I change or shape them? How have I grown beyond them? Who am I now because of them?
  • What is most important to me in life? What parts of my life do I most dislike, and what parts do I most like?
  • What is my biggest current problem? When did it start? Why do I view this thing as a problem? How does it impact my life? How do I wish things were instead? What things have helped me with this problem before? When was the last time I didn’t have this problem? How did I feel during that time, and how did I manage to avoid the problem?
  • What (or who) gives me joy? What (or who) gives me pleasure?