Let Me Tell You a Story
Storytelling in relationships is essential to build closeness, mutual understanding, trust, connection and meet a wide variety of needs. It can be rewarding and wonderful to share all the stories of your life with your friends and family and your partner. Building shared reality over time. Our life stories also serve as a way to build empathy in relationships, providing information that helps people choose ways to relate that feel good to each other –not from obligation, yet from caring about their well-being and ease.
Sharing stories often helps you bond and develop trust so you are able to re-wire the neural pathways that have developed over time and are at play in your communication capacities. Angeles Arrien wrote in her book, The Fourfold Way: Walking the Paths of the Warrior, Healer, Teacher and Visionary, writes, “Dancing, singing, storytelling, and silence are the four universal healing salves.” So, storytelling is fundamental to our healing.
Storytelling, however, is not a way to resolve conflict.
Usually if you are telling someone your sad story when you are in conflict, you are trying to get them to change their behavior from the place of ‘they should want to if they care about me’. Obligation. Perhaps you are wanting to change their mind so they agree with you about why they should or shouldn’t have said or done something. Has this ever worked in the long run? Maybe in the short run, someone gives in, so it seems like there is more ease between you. In the long run, resentment and/or resignation builds, withholding begins and the relationship deteriorates from one of curiosity, care, respect and honesty into one where ya’ll are walking on eggshells hoping not to trigger the other’s awful response and then ‘having to’ listen to the reaction.
Storytelling can show up in other ways as well. Perhaps you are wanting to make decisions or choices in your life. Big or small. Do you find yourself spinning thoughts in your head? ‘Maybe I should do this?’, ‘I want to do this, yet what if it doesn’t work out?’ I want to be authentic yet I’m not sure they want to even get to know me.’ And on and on. In this case, it’s not the stories you’re telling someone else that plague your happiness, it’s the stories you are telling yourself, over and over.
You might not be intentionally telling yourself stories. You might not even be particularly aware that it’s happening. Simply it’s the way you are, so-to-speak. You think your way through things, attached to the ideas rather than sinking into the needs that you are hoping to meet by each and every choice you make.
When explored even further, your thoughts might reveal how disconnected from your own experience you might actually be. For example, as you think about things you want to say or do, your mind pulls you into ‘what might they want?’, “they would have reached out to me if they….”, “maybe they are too busy to…”.
The thoughts themselves aren’t particularly bad to have. They could be valuable, especially if you sink into the needs they are pointing to. They can offer you information leading you to the touchstones of supporting your confidence to make choices. Without connection to the needs, though, your thoughts lead you down a rabbit hole of unanswerable questions making it more difficult to choose the very next step. For example: You find yourself attracted to someone. You are moved to discern if they might have similar thoughts. You tell yourself, ‘if they were attracted to me they would reach out.’ Well, maybe yes and maybe no. These thoughts are contributing to your suffering about whatever ‘it’ is. Internal conflict. This conflict will also not get resolved by the stories. The thoughts are, in fact, the conflict itself. Write your thoughts down, keep track so-to-speak, and then you might be able to respond to your internal questions with confidence. If the needs in this example is for clarity, excitement, hope, partnership, then what are some of the very next steps that you might take to meet them? Can you think of more than one? Maybe you wouldn’t choose any of the strategies or steps, even though they will bring you a bit closer to the experiences you long for. It is the same when you are in conflict with others. You have conflicting stories (thoughts) that you are attached to. It will be interesting to answer the questions you each have (stories) once you know what they are pointing to (needs).
As a habit, I invite you as often as you can remember, and as often as you can, brings the needs to front and center in your process. Let them speak to what’s next. Which, of course is making an offer or sharing a request.