Why Stories Help Us Heal From Anxiety and Depression

Source: Unai82 / Envato Elements

"It's been impossible to move for the surprise and shock expressed on the airways at the power of drama." So said Paddy O'Connell recently, in his BBC Radio 4 programme Broadcasting House, which airs on Sunday mornings.¹

He was referring, of course, to ITV's four-part dramatization of the 20-year Post Office scandal, Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office, which generated mass outrage in a way that nothing previously revealed about it was able to do.

As classicist Mary Beard commented in the same programme, drama, right back to ancient times, has made us look at things we might have looked away from and connect with them emotionally in a way that can change our thinking. Gwyneth Hughes suggested that the impact of the ITV drama, which she wrote, was so great because even the best documentaries somehow "appeal to your head rather than to your heart."

The emotional connection to a subject that a story can create is mighty in its power. But it does also involve our "heads." Despite decades of talk about "emotional brains" and "rational brains," there are no such entities residing inside our skulls. Those qualities are intermixed.²

As neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett has pointed out, emotion is rational when we feel afraid because we are in imminent danger, whereas scrolling through social media for hours on end, certain that we are bound to come across something important eventually, is highly irrational thinking.³

It seems more likely, as former consultant psychiatrist and neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist has argued, that the different functions of the left and right hemispheres of our brain dictate how we respond to events. The left hemisphere evolved to pay close attention to detail, look at things piecemeal, categorise, and pick bits out (as birds do when they distinguish a grain of seed from the grit it is lying in.).

The right hemisphere allows open attention without preconceptions, taking in the bigger picture and wider ramifications (while looking for grain, birds also need awareness of their environment to remain vigilant for predators.). The right hemisphere sees connections, not separations, and that enables empathy. The hemispheres are meant to work in tandem. When a linear left hemisphere style of thinking predominates, tunnel vision can occur.⁴

While journalistic accounts homed in on different aspects of the Post Office debacle, such as the inadequacies of the IT system, the outcome of financial shortfalls, unwillingness to investigate with an open mind, the focus on prosecutions, etc., the drama put it all into context—the shock and terror experienced and the dire repercussions in real people's lives. Suddenly, it is crystal clear and imperative what needs to happen to put the injustice right, even if, in this case, its full impact is irreparable.

It is because a story frees up thinking and enables new clarity that it is so important in human givens training and therapy. (A therapeutic approach that helps clients identify and meet their emotional needs.) When clients are immersed in a story, they are in a trance; that means that the black-and-white thinking of the left hemisphere fades into the background (anxieties such as "I'm no good at anything," "I can't maintain a relationship," "I work so hard, yet never get anywhere") and, through the fully activated right hemisphere, they can start to connect up the dots in a different way.

In instances such as the above, a human givens therapist might tell a story that demonstrates how to build on skills they already have, which they might be dismissing; recognize their unhelpful behaviors within relationships and how to act differently; allow them to see how due rest and relaxation make their efforts more effective.

Sometimes, the impact of a story can seem almost miraculous. In Human Givens: An Empowering Approach to Emotional Health and Clear Thinking,⁵ the updated version of which is published this month, there is an account of the story told by Ivan Tyrrell, co-founder of the human givens approach, to a woman deeply depressed because her feet were covered with countless almost unbearably painful verrucas. Neither chiropody nor surgery had helped.

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Ivan relaxed her and, while she was in a trance, told her a story of a queen, the extreme south of whose kingdom was invaded by barbarians, who built ugly castles and went out from these to pillage the people, making their lives intolerable and destroying their spirits. The queen was desperate and, therefore, very ready to listen to an old warrior who proposed a solution and requested that she give him the temporary command to put it into practice. She did.

The warrior mobilised the people to form armies to attack each castle by surrounding it, showing them how to lay siege, preventing those within from getting sustenance or nutrition from the outside. Soon, the invaders were so weakened that they died off or retreated. The ugly castles were destroyed, and peace returned to the land.

This story plot contained the solution to the client's problem, which was located in the "extreme south" of her body. Her immune system needed to "mobilise itself" and "lay siege" to the verrucas. The woman had no memory of the story afterward, but through her strong connection to it, Ivan enabled her placebo response to kick in. The verrucas were all completely healed within a few weeks, and her depression was gone.

That, too, is the potential of a story.