Shankar Vedantam

Is this something that you find in the stories that you hear from people telling the same story over and over again can change our stories themselves?

Yeah, yeah.

I think this is a great question because it invites us to think more not just about the content of the stories we tell and the themes, but how sharing stories with others helps shape them, right?

So when we tell a story, the version in our head gets shaped by the interpersonal context.

Who are we telling the story to?

What kind of audience are they?

And then the feedback that we get, both verbally and non-verbally, during the experience of storytelling will inevitably shape the way we consolidate that story in our mind and then the way we tell it the next time.

Our stories always serve a psychological function in the present.

So in addition to the impact of prior tellings, the meaning of specific stories

changes over time, leading us to tell stories differently.

That doesn't mean we're lying.

It just means we're always thinking about our past through the lens of the present.

And indeed, I did some of my clinical work at a veterans hospital, and one of the...

leading therapeutic approaches to treating post-traumatic stress disorder, essentially asks people once they're ready, once they're prepared with tools for navigating it, to tell the story of their traumatic experience over and over.

And we do find that that kind of exposure to the story of the traumatic event can help transform it for people, not just in the meaning that they make, but in the physiology of their bodies while they're telling it.

Now, narrative psychology doesn't just have to apply to individuals.

As you've indicated, Jonathan, it's also relevant to the collective stories we tell in our country, our workplaces, our families.

We heard from a listener in the United States named Debbie who writes, I'm at a fairly good place in my personal life now.

However, I find that my thinking about our country and the world is becoming increasingly pessimistic.

I'm wondering how do we create a better mindset or a better story or a more positive story in the face of what's going on in these divided states today?