Telling Your Story in a New Way

In this episode of the Dignity Lab, Jennifer Griggs discusses the importance of storytelling in the healing process after experiencing harm. She emphasizes the need to tell our stories in a way that allows for emotional detachment, which in turn can facilitate healing. Jennifer provides practical techniques to help individuals reframe their narratives and gain new perspectives on their experiences. She also encourages listeners to share their stories with trusted individuals to foster connection and understanding.

Takeaways

• Storytelling is essential for truth-telling and healing.
• Keeping stories in the dark can sap joy and energy.
• Writing stories down can help detach from emotional pain.
• Start with smaller stories to practice the writing technique.
• Writing in the second or third person can provide perspective.
• Identifying violated elements of dignity is crucial.
• Sharing stories with trusted individuals can aid healing; it's important to clarify what you need from listeners.
• Reflecting on the impact of storytelling is valuable.

Exploring what it means to live and lead with dignity at work, in our families, in our communities, and in the world. What is dignity? How can we honor the dignity of others? And how can we repair and reclaim our dignity after harm? Tune in to hear stories about violations of dignity and ways in which we heal, forgive, and make choices about how we show up in a chaotic and fractured world. Hosted by physician and coach Jennifer Griggs.

For more information on the podcast, please visit www.thedignitylab.com.
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Transcript

This is The Dignity Lab, a podcast that seeks to define dignity, its violations, and its reclamation. No matter who you are, no matter what you’ve done, no matter what’s happened to you, you can reclaim your dignity.

Hosted by physician, narrative medicine practitioner, and leadership coach, Dr. Jennifer Griggs.

This season focuses on healing from past hurts through forgiveness and its alternatives.

Today’s episode is a dose of dignity, a solo, bite-sized episode that focuses on living and leading with dignity.

Hello, and welcome to the Dignity Lab and this special season on forgiveness and its alternatives in healing after harm. In this episode, I'll be talking about the importance of telling our stories of harm. I'll share the purpose of telling your story, a different way to tell your story, a way that allows you to detach, not as a way to dissociate from the harm, but in a way to start down the path of healing. If you haven't listened to the other episodes in this season, I would encourage you to do so.

It's possible you've told many people what happened. Perhaps you've done so repeatedly to the point where you and your listeners are frankly tired of it, yet it doesn't seem to work. It's also possible that you've never told your story to anyone. 

So why tell the story of your hurt in the first place? Storytelling can be a part of truth telling. In the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, storytelling was essential for people who had been hurt. To be witnessed, to be seen. If kept in the dark, our stories can take on a disproportionate amount of energy and space, sapping us of joy and living, trapping us in that darkness. I think of it like a wound that needs to be drained. Opening to tell our stories lets the infection out. Opening to tell our stories lets the infection out and the light in and is the first step toward healing. 

You may be thinking, I've told my story over and over and wish I hadn't or it hasn't helped me feel better. You may feel vulnerable or ashamed and have found no relief in telling this story at all. You may have documented over and over what happened in a ruminative way, formatting and reformatting the evidence that either lays out what they did or defends your own behavior or both. Can you tell I've been there? 

I'm going to invite you to tell your story in a new way. First of all, I'm going to invite you to write it down, but not the way you've been telling it. Rather, you're going to write it down as if you're writing a report, just the facts. No interpretation, no labeling, no judgment. As if writing a screenplay. You're going to avoid words like betrayal, emotional words like fury, labels like horrible, sentences like, “Can you believe they did that?” (Yes, yes I can.)

What's the value of doing this? Writing our story in a coherent and organized way can engage our thinking and discernment. It can help us detangle what may be a story fraught with sadness, rage, doubt, shame, and resentment. Writing our stories down can also help us detach from them. This is part of what's been called “collapsing the story,” removing some of the charge and heat from our hurt. It can help you inquire about the assumptions and conclusions you've made and have been wedded to, many of which have been hurting you more than the actual events. 

The other thing this exercise does is help you see your part, if any, in what happened. You may be able to see things from another person's point of view, perhaps for the first time. I've worked with people who were able to see how their actions affected the other person and maybe set them up for their own hurt by taking this bird's eye view. 

I'd love to invite you to try this. If you choose to do so, it's best if you try writing out the story when you are fully resourced. That is, when you're well rested, you've eaten, and you're not feeling raw or vulnerable.

I also recommend that you start with something smaller than the nuclear level hurt that brought you to this episode or to this podcast as a whole. Think of something like maybe somebody spoke rudely to you on the phone or interrupted you when you really wanted to be heard. Start with a sunburn, not a third degree burn. Starting small helps you practice this exercise before jumping into the more challenging or most challenging hurts. 

And what if you have dozens of stories from, for example, a longer term relationship with someone such as a parent, a sibling, an in-law, a partner, a friend? What works in this situation is to break the harms from the relationship into smaller stories. You'll then work through one story at a time like beads on a string. And trust me, you won't need to work on every single small story. You'll get the hang of it and your disposition and awareness will shift in a bigger way. 

What if you have nuclear level pain? If you've been abandoned, if you've suffered violence, if no matter what the hurt is, it's too painful to write about on paper? If this is the case for you, consider writing the story in the second or third person. 

Writing in the second person perspective would go like this. You were just a child. You needed safety and love. Once when you came home with a fever, your mother did not smile at you. She said to you, “I'm not sure how I'm going to get my work done” and exhaled loudly. When you asked for a glass of juice, she spoke with one word answers. You were in your bedroom feeling sick and she did not come back to check on you.

Writing in the third person perspective would go like this, and you'll want to use your name here. The child, meaning your name, had a fever while at school and needed to be picked up and taken home. The child's mother furrowed her brows at the child and said, “I'm not sure how I'm going to get my work done now,” exhaling loudly. The child asked for a glass of juice and the mother brought it to the child saying just “Here” as she did so. The mother did not come back to the child's bedroom for the rest of the day. The mother did not come. The mother did not come back to the child's bedroom for the rest of the day. 

Writing in this way from the second or third person point of view can further help extract some of the heat and in doing so can give you the ability to see the story almost as if you're watching it on a screen. While we don't want to dissociate from the pain, being less attached to the pain can be helpful.

We'll be getting into the work of feeling the feelings fully in another episode. So what do you do after you've written out this story? that it? The first thing to do is to ask yourself a few questions. Here are some. 

What level of intensity is in this story? 

Where do I feel it in my body? 

And what do I feel?

What is the message my feeling is trying to give me? 

Do I notice anything new or different in writing out the story? 

Was I able to find a little bit of detachment? 

The next thing to do is to identify and name the elements of dignity that were violated. If you need a refresher on the elements of dignity, I'd love to invite you to go back to our episode in Season 1 called “Dignity Defined” or the episode in Season 4 called “Start Here: Dignity from Definition to Reclamation.” Our website also has a downloadable version of the Elements of Dignity.

Finally, if you haven't shared your story, I would invite you to find someone safe, someone whom you trust, with whom you can share this story. It's helpful to give them guidance about what you need from them after you've read this story. You might tell them that you just want them to listen, or that you just need them to say something like, “Wow, that was really messed up.” You don't need advice and you don't need to be fixed and maybe you don't need sympathy. Just be really clear on what you need. 

And if you've done that, what was it like to have someone listen to you in that way? What has telling your story, writing it down in this new way done for you? What have you learned? What elements of dignity were violated? Is it helpful even to name those elements of dignity? 

I hope this has been helpful. And if it has been helpful, consider sharing it with one or two people in your life. Maybe you can share your stories with one another, and and please take this opportunity to subscribe and to rate and review our podcast. 

Thanks and we'll see you next time.

This has been The Dignity Lab with Dr. Jennifer Griggs.

If you have experienced a dignity violation or have a dignity dilemma and want to be a guest on our show, contact us through our website, www.thedignitylab.com. Guests may remain anonymous. 

And If you’re a leader wanting to up level your leadership with a small community of like-minded people, visit our website thedignitylab.com to learn more about the Dignity Lab (yes, the same name), our group program for leaders.

Our website and the show notes have downloadable resources that you can access from anywhere.

More information about any of our guests can be found in show notes for that episode. 

This season of The Dignity Lab is produced by me, Vanessa Aron. Pete Carty is our audio engineer and sound designer. Chase Miller composed our theme music.

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The content discussed is intended to explore and raise awareness about dignity. Sensitive topics may be discussed that could evoke strong emotions; discretion is advised, and listeners are encouraged to engage with the material with empathy."

Remember, “...be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the Universe, no less than the trees and the stars.”