storyteller types: the self-healer
weekly story work exercise
If you’re new here, Story Work is the name of my current book-in-progress. It describes a process of reflecting, reclaiming, and reimagining the stories of our lives. It involves looking at your life experiences as creative material that you have the power to shape.
The weekly story work topics cover universal life themes with references from literature, philosophy, science, and spirituality; offering perspectives that spark ideas for personal growth and creative expression.
Paid subscribers receive Story Work exercises every Sunday night at 8 pm et.
This week’s story work exercise is open to all subscribers.
I’ve always kept a diary or journal, but I only wrote in it sporadically, mostly when I was sad or angry and needed somewhere to vent. I would pour out my pain and forget about it until the next time I needed to release the pressure. When I was coming of age, I wasn’t consciously journaling to heal, but I was using it as a way to feel. My mind was so disconnected from my body that I often didn’t understand what I was feeling unless I wrote it down.
When I started blogging as a creative outlet in my late twenties, I felt a dormant part of me come alive, a spark I’d been missing for a long time. Writing became a tool for self-discovery, and sharing became a practice in self-expression. Two things I deeply needed after years of hiding precious parts of myself. I didn’t think of myself as a storyteller at the time, but I did notice that surrendering to my urge to be vulnerable and sharing my experiences had a positive impact on my life and the lives of others.
It gave me a deep sense of purpose and satisfaction to join the universal conversation about healing by offering up my slice of human experience. Since then self-healing has been the foundation of my motivation to write.
For the next few weeks, we will be walking through eight archetypes for storytelling to discover insights about our motivations for writing and how they inform what and how we write. There is not just one type for each person. As we go through each one, keep an open mind and reflect on which aspects resonate with you. The archetypes are Self-Healer, Survivor, Gamechanger, Teacher, Observer, Scribe, Explorer, and Entertainer—and we will do writing exercises from each perspective.
This week we are starting with the Self-Healer. Self-healing is a term that is thrown around quite a bit and may mean different things to different people.
In this storytelling context, a Self-Healer’s writing is motivated by a craving for inner connection and a deeper understanding of life and self. It's not about satisfying any external expectations. It is all about investing in your well-being.
According to science, writing is physiologically healing when it is used as a tool to confront challenging experiences and emotions and find meaning.
Without this search for meaning, writing can become a place where we get stuck in negative emotions and limiting beliefs. Research says that venting emotions without the intention of learning from them is not enough to reap the health benefits like lowering blood pressure, strengthening the immune system, and improving mental health.
The coach part of me celebrates the research and I have my own evidence that supports it. (I have a workshop on this topic here that is available to paid subscribers. You can scroll down to the Writing to Heal workshop for the video and guide.) But as a writer, I am resistant to rules and I’m not here to dictate to anyone what is healing for them!
With that said, a self-healer has a desire to grow and evolve beyond their initial feelings.
You might think you are doing just fine with writing only when you need to vent negative emotions or writing only when you want to channel gratitude. But as a self-healer, you don’t bypass your painful feelings and immediately jump to healing words. You write your way through the emotional journey from venting to meaning.
According to Sandra Marinella, author of The Story You Need to Tell, there are five stages to writing and healing:
Experiencing pain and grief. Sitting with the emotions.
Breaking the silence. Venting and pouring out painful emotions.
Accepting and piecing together a shattered story. Acknowledging and accepting the facts and your feelings.
Finding meaning or making sense of a story. Zooming out to the big picture of your life and the world around you.
Rewriting our story and moving forward. Integrating the life lessons and wisdom from the experience.
What you learn about yourself through this process is a great feeding ground that you can source to share publicly if/when you’re ready, but as a self-healer, you are your own audience, your own unbiased witness.
I chose to share this archetype first because my creative practice and approach to coaching are centered in self-healing as the foundation that supports everything else.
Let’s do an exercise that channels the self-healer inside of you.
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Exercise
A self-healer asks themselves: How can I channel my raw emotions and experiences into constructive creative growth? What can I learn about life and myself from my experiences?
For our exercise this week, let’s use gap statements to identify areas of our lives where we can benefit from this reframing. These questions were inspired by The Story You Need to Tell by Sandra Marinella.
Step One
Complete the following statement as many times as you can filling in the blanks with your personal thoughts and beliefs.
I want to…
But I can’t because…
For example:
I want to be in a relationship, but I can’t because I always find something wrong with everyone I meet.
I want to start a new career, but I can’t because I’m too old.
Step Two
Choose the statement you most want to explore further and ask yourself the following questions.
What is unique about your statement?
What is painful and/or limiting about your statement?
Where can you make room for joy, hope, or possibility? What other perspectives could reframe your statement?
What is universal about your situation? In what ways does your personal story connect to the human condition?
What can you learn from your initial statement and the effort to reframe it?