When life is uncertain we tend to become stressed. Dr. Tomer Baklesh explains that the mind is a system of conditions of certainty, from the moment we were born the mind translates into patterns everything that happens around us. We need to connect events in the context of cause and effect. That meaning will help us deal with the threat (illness).
The personal narrative should not be used as an exact mirror of the past, but rather as an intermediary between past events that will reflect on the present and help us to deal with the future.
Frank, Arthur w. in his book “The wounded storyteller: Body Illness & Ethics” explains that in narrative therapy, the story is not used as a means but as a goal. In this approach we are the author of the story and therefore also able to change it, being a creative and active character.
This made me think about something that I've experienced in my family. I suffer from RA (Rheumatoid Arthritis) and so does my mom, my grandmother, my uncle..perhaps it's a family thing. While reading the chapters, I laugh because I often see how we use each other’s stories in the family as a basis for our own stories. The difference is that each of us tells the stories to the next generation a bit differently in order to cope with it in the right way for us. Symptoms are very individuale so in order to adapt the narrative I heard from my mom I changed it so it will help me and become my own reality.
This experience and while reading this week I thought about a game we all used to play when we were young - The Broken Telephone. Each person transforms a sentence (the story) to the next one but each time we only hear part and like in the game the last one that listens to the whisper only gets half of it or not the same thing at all only in life and in my experience it's actually a good thing.
My Broken Telephone
When reading about Frank’s chaos narrative it got me thinking about something else that we do when we tell someone about our story. I often found that while transferring an experience to someone I am also transferring an emotional state. Sharing the story can lead to experiencing the same emotions as those who share the story with us.
In my illustrations the emotional state is a reflection of the red shirt, each time when the story changes the level of the same emotion changes accordingly.
Sometimes the mental state we share can be positive and give hope to the next one but what happens if those are bad emotions. If I am depressed I don't want to transfer it too and then the question raises is what is the right way to share the narrative?
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