How Story Shapes Our Identity

We tell stories about our lives all the time. We obviously do not share every single one of them publicly, keeping many of them to ourselves, but we use story to make autobiographical sense of our own lives.

We begin forming these stories as soon as we’re born and continue to write and rewrite them throughout our lives. What we’re doing through these narratives is attempting to create a coherent narrative of who we are, how our world works, and our place within it.

If we imagine our life is like a journey, our autobiographical story tells us about the land we’re walking through, and how the various developments, experiences, firsts, people, and influences within our journey have shaped who we are, the direction we’ve travelled in, and the direction we’re hoping to head in.

When we experience disloyalty, betrayal, or abuse we are left we little to no choice in what happens next. The person who wrongs us therefore rewrites our story in ways we have no control over. This powerlessness leaves us stranded. We look around us and no longer recognise our surroundings.

Such experiences force a new, unknown identity upon us, which can even leave us having to relive some or all of the challenges of childhood and adolescent identity formation. To move on, we might need to redevelop a positive sense of autonomy, belonging, competence, initiative, security, self-worth, significance, and/or trust. 

It’s no wonder God begins our healing by calling out our true self.

The Empathy Museum’s Clare Patey says, “Stories have a transformative power to allow us to see the world in a different way than we do if we just encounter it on our own. Stories are an entry point to understanding a different experience of the world.”

By setting a new story before us, God offers us an entry point to experience the world in a way undetermined by the trauma of our past.

Endnote:

Clare Patey quote from https://www.health.org.uk/newsletter-feature/power-of-storytelling. Accessed November 2020.