Story Work
When we experience pain or heartache, we can find ourselves moved beyond it by the current of life, before we have sufficient time to sit with the reality of what has happened. We are used to being wounded and left to care for those wounds alone as life moves forward.
These wounds begin to happen when we’re children and don’t yet have the vocabulary to express our hurt. If we cry, we may be met with care, and the wound might receive the attention it needs to heal then and there.
Sometimes, though, we don’t receive that care, for any number of reasons. When this happens, the current moves us along, and we accumulate wounds that create a need to protect them, since we can’t heal them on our own. We develop ways of coping with these untended wounds that can disconnect us from ourselves and others, also trying to distance us from the pain. This is true of us all, spanning the full range of human experience and across all ages. From those who feel they have had “a good life” or “a happy childhood” to those who have borne severe wounds of abuse, trauma or neglect. No one passes through life without some experience of hurt and disappointment in how others have responded.
Story Work offers a unique opportunity to approach an experience or event in your life that holds pain. It invites you to write a story, which you then share with a reader who is experienced in receiving such stories with kindness and care.
Story Work is not therapy as it does not offer diagnosis or treatment of mental health diagnoses.
If you’re experiencing acute mental health symptoms impairing your ability to function in daily life, are suffering active addiction, or are seeking treatment for a mental health diagnosis, you need to see a therapist. In this case, Story Work can provide additional benefit to the therapy you receive.
