Blog 2

Stories used in Culture, Medicine and Life

Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end,
after he plundered the stronghold
on the proud height of Troy.
- The Odessey

Homer

 

Once upon a time my mother went shopping in a thrift store near were we live on a very cold winter day. There she found an old rabbit fur coat that she decided to buy. It was fury all inside and soft to the touch. All the way home from the store after my mother had bought it, my older sister was lecturing my mom about how wrong it was to have that coat and so on. the very next day I stole it and wore it to school. My mother loves to tell this story about me and my sister to show how different we are. It’s comical, she always gets people to laugh at it. It’s very popular to be told to the parents of our current boyfriends.

Stories bring people closer together. We tell stories of past experiences or of our friends and family’s past experiences to bring ourselves closer to people. We make the people in our lives the heroes or villains of our stories. In this story my sister is the selfless activist and I’m a spoiled, selfish princess. That’s what we are in the story, but that’s not the point of the story. It’s to show people how different we are in a comical way. She could tell them a thousand other stories about us that reveal all different aspects of our personalities. But she likes this one because it has a 98% success rate.

“When you tell a story to a friend, you can transfer experiences directly to their brain.  They feel what you feel.  They empathize.  What's more, when communicating most effectively, you can get a group of people's brains to synchronize their activity.  As you relate someone's desires through a story, they become the desires of the audience.  When trouble develops, they gasp in unison, and when desires are fulfilled they smile together.”(1) that is why we tell stories, to relate to people. When your friends or family are going through a difficult time you tell them a story of when you went through a difficult time as a way to offer comfort or disperse advice. When you first meet someone you search for a common interest, say rock climbing, and exchange stories related to the topic, mountains you have climbed or injuries you have had. 

Stories are used all over the world for a variety of reasons. We tell stories to children to try and get them to go to sleep, for entertainment, or to calm them down after a bad dream. Besides entertaining, many stories were used to frighten children into behaving. ‘If your not good, Daddy and Mommy will leave you and your brother in the woods where you will find a house made of candy (AWESOME!) and inside a witch will try and eat you (significantly less awesome).’

The Native Americans used stories to explain things to children and teach them about their history. “Each time a story was told, it breathed life into the culture, cultivated their verbal language, gave meaning to the tribe’s history, and also taught life lessons about things like love, leadership, and honor, as well as their symbiotic connection to the earth and intimate relationships with the animals they depended on.”(2)

Storytelling is also used in a variety of therapy techniques, specifically with children, such as theatrical therapy and the Mustual Steoytelling technique. “Storytelling communicates with children on multiple levels. Stories serve as models, teach values and skills, and can provide insight on both a conscious and unconscious level. The Mutual Storytelling technique uses the child’s language to introduce mature responses and healthier resolutions to the child’s difficulties, as they are communicated in the child’s spontaneously produced stories.”(3)

Next time!

I will be interviewing several people at random about the stories they were told or read as children and how it impacted their life choices and experiences.

Sources

1. Joshua, Gowin. "Why Sharing Stories Brings People Together." You, Illuminated . Psychology Today, 2011. Web. 14 Feb 2012. <http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/you-illuminated/201106/why-sharing-stories-brings-people-together>.

2. Tracey, . "Native American Stories: A Tradition of Storytelling." Tribe Scribe. N.p., 2011. Web. 20 Feb 2012. <http://www.prairieedge.com/tribe-scribe/native-american-tradition-storytelling/>.

3. Gardner, Richard. "The Mutual Storytelling Technique in the Treatment of Psychogenic Problems Secondary to Minimal Brain Dysfunction." Sage Journals. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Feb 2012. <http://ldx.sagepub.com/content/7/3/135.abstract>.

Blog 1

Once Upon A Time…

            Hey guys, my name is Monica Siegenthaler and I’m going to be talking about Family, particularly storytelling in families. I chose to study family because I work with families and children. Everyone has a family weather its one you have lived with your whole life or if it’s one that you made yourself. Our society, every society, the entire human race is made up of families.  

I am really excited to talk about storytelling. I’m a theatre major so storytelling is a big part of my life. As far back as I can remember stories have been a big part of my life and a part of my family. My mother use to tell my sister, two brothers and me stories since we were very small. These stories were told to her by my grandmother, who was told them by her mother and so on as far back as we know. She told stories from all over the world about magic sticks in sacks, donkeys that could spit gold, giants with golden hair, bears that stared wars with birds and three brothers always searching for the greatest wonder in the world. My mother told us the stories tell us how to live and why. I have no idea how I will bring up my children but I know I will tell them stories.

            Storytelling is a huge part of our society, it doesn’t stop when we are young. We watch movies, read books, and talk about our own stories.  If someone said to you today “This one time me…” (or one of the other many ways we start) then you heard a story. A story, a legend, a myth starts with an event that you or someone else witness. You tell someone about it, then they tell someone else but they tell it differently then you did. They emphasize on different details and parts. The person they told it to tells someone else and so on until a month, a week, a day, a few hours later someone tells you the same story, so changed that you don’t even recognize it.