Deric Bownds highlights the conclusions of an interesting book about psychological change – “Timothy Wilson’s new book “Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change.”
The part which caught my eye was the conclusion –
Wilson uses the thought-provoking metaphor of “story editing” to describe the ingredient common to many of the successful interventions he reviews. They alter the narratives people tell themselves about their world and their place in it: Is it safe or threatening? Do I belong or not? Am I capable or not? During sensitive periods, people’s storytelling can be redirected and the change can build on itself over time. Amend the opening sentence of the story of your transition to college, or to a new job, and the arc of your story may be entirely different from what it would have been otherwise. This helps explain why seemingly simple interventions, such as writing about a traumatic experience, or volunteering for a humanitarian cause, improve health and well-being. They give people an organizing narrative that puts their lives in an optimistic context.
Well that’s certainly my experience. That’s the focus of our everyday work at the Centre for Integrative Care in Glasgow – helping people to write new narratives of their lives (or what I’ve described as helping people to become the heroes of their own stories)
Heroes Not Zombies 
That jumped out at me too . Practically , do you use writing as a resource or therapy with patients Bob?
I can see real mileage in encouraging this especially in a supportive environment . I was thinking of the work of Pennebaker http://www.utexas.edu/features/archive/2005/writing.html
Larry Butler in Glasgow has done some really interesting work in this area with Lapidus and I went to a workshop with Ted Bowman on story telling which was excellent . If you ever get a chance to meet Ted he is an inspiring person .
Yes, Ian, where it’s appropriate. We’ve all different and that’s why we have a wide range of options for helping people to develop their health. We work with a kind of mind map of “body, mind and energy” and offer treatments and interventions from whichever of those three ways of engaging might be best for each individual. We work with story (or narrative) in a number of ways – through dialogue, through writing, through a consultation focused on compassionate listening, and through uncovering the narrative themes of someone’s life which allows the selection of individualised remedies.
People really are amazing, and the capacity to create new narratives of their lives is utterly inspiring.
Hello Bob,
Can you explain what you mean by ‘new narrative’ – do you mean old experiences but from a safe or changed place/perspective?
hmm…I don’t really mean that. I think narrative is one of the main ways we create a sense of self and one of the ways in which we create meaning in the world. By encouraging a coherent, holistic telling of a story, and listening in compassionate, non-judgemental ways, a new narrative is created – and in so doing, new meanings and even new selves emerge!
I think one of the important things is to help create what Ian McGilchrist and others would call “a necessary distance”….. to help a person to stand apart from the phenomena of their experience – that being able to witness and recognise the flow of thoughts, the recurrent feelings – and to not feel so intensely bound to them that the thoughts and/or feelings become all that is.
The story of the symptoms is a different story from that of the illness, and that latter story becomes an insight, even an opportunity, when contextualised in the story of a life.
Oh dear, I’m not sure I’m writing terribly clearly here! Maybe I’ll have a go at a post on this…….