The Power of Stories: Exploring the Narratives that Fuel Our Lives

“The power of a symptom seems to depend on the unwavering description of the story...if in exploration, the therapist expands the story, includes other people, or introduces novelty in any way, the automaticity of the symptom is challenged”.

Salvador Minuchin. (Mastering family therapy, 2006, pg. 80).

As a child, I had a horrifying incident. Escalators were new in the early 70s. The gap between the steps was big. But as kids, we did not know the danger. My brother and I were fascinated with this staircase that could move on its own. It felt like a really big toy. We kept running up and down the moving staircase, playing and testing its magic. It was our first experience on an escalator. Then, I fell because the gap between the steps was big, and my T-shirt got pulled into the gap of the steps. I was lucky. The assistant at the shop turned off the escalator without me getting too injured.

However, that experience made me terrified of escalators. Lucky for me, the story did not end there. In the following weeks, my father took me to different malls with escalators and would hold my hand in his; he would count to three and get me to take that first step onto the escalator. I remember feeling scared and safe at the same time, but the dominant feeling was that of safety. His big hands felt warm. His voice was reassuring. His gentle manner was protective. It did not take me long to forget about the accident.

This was one of the many stories of my life that always made me feel protected and pushed me to believe that, in essence, even if life can be difficult, it is safe, and family is a place of healing. Later in life, stories like this inspired my move to choose family therapy as my second career.

Therapists work with people’s stories. People are interpretative beings who make meaning of their lives using stories. Stories help us organize our reality and make sense of it. Stories we tell and retell become maps we use to guide our lives. These stories can trap us or set us free. Our dominant stories influence the choices we make. For example, if we grow up in a home that tells stories that only people of our race can protect us, we start hanging out with people who are of our race. Then, when we are in trouble, only the people of our race are around to help us, reinforcing the story that only our race can help us. This leads us to make choices that can be narrow, like only marrying within our racial grouping, looking for work with people of our race, hanging out with people of our race, and only trusting the people that belong to our race. Thin stories will lead us to live life in thin spaces. But the opposite is true.

If we grow up with stories that are complex, nuanced, and have space for contradictions, we can move forward into the world with the complexity needed to face a complex world. These are what narrative therapists call thick stories. Thick stories allow for rich outcomes. It allows us to enter and manage complex transitions in life.

Stories are events that we link up over time. These stories typically carry a plot, giving our lives meaning and direction. As we race toward the end of another year, it might be a good time to review the stories that fuel our lives and those that drain us. It will be an excellent time to choose the stories that we should amplify so that we go into 2024 with strength and the stories that we would like to downplay and reduce their influence.

What is your dominant plot/story that has left you drained and what is the alternative plot/ story you would like to explore for 2024?

If you find this idea interesting, join us on the 13th of January 2024 at 2 pm. The team at the Andolfi Center will host a podcast and focus on how to choose and reframe the stories in our lives. We want to share some ideas on how to move from identifying with stories that leave us with little energy to swapping them with alternative stories that are also available to us. When our stories lack complexity and contradictions and are too simplistic, they can limit our lives. Whereas choosing an alternative plot/story can be very life-giving.

—---

This piece was written by Darrel Lourdes, a counselor at the Andolfi Family Therapy Center. If you would like a session with Darrel, drop us an email at hello.andolfi@gmail.com.

Darrel has a master's in counselling (HELP, Malaysia), a graduate diploma in couples and family therapy (Italy), and a certificate in family therapy (Australia). He is supervised by Professor Andolfi, a master family therapist and David Hong, a family therapist with over 30 years of experience.

Before getting into counselling, he worked at Intel and Shell for over 20 years. He was the HR Director of Shell before pursuing a career in counselling.