How the Creativity of Storytelling Unlocks Our Emotions

Sometimes we can be sharing something about our lives and our throat tightens. Or tears well up in our eyes. Or a fierce anger bubbles inside of us.

And before this happens to us, we can be completely unaware it was even an issue.

Why does storytelling hold this ability to unlock our deepest emotions?

Story-telling is an act of creativity. We may be telling our own history, but it takes creativity to knit our story together in a way that makes sense to others. And when we speak, we do this knitting together at pace. What I mean by this, is that we don’t edit our words. We don’t pause after every word or sentence to carefully think through what we’re going to say next. The crafting of our story happens almost subconsciously and the rational, logical part of our brain quietens.

When someone stops to listen and offers us their full attention to what we have to say, we are then encouraged to simply let our story splurge out of us. Within our society, an act of true listening is still a rare thing for many of us, and so we find ourselves almost compelled to share through someone else’s interest. And what exits tends to be an unfiltered account of how we are feeling and what we are thinking. This is why our deepest emotions surface at such times. The creativity of story sidesteps our natural defences. As soon as we begin to consider what to say, we start rationalising and contemplating the consequences. We inadvertently or deliberately close off the emotional floodgates and prevent our masks from slipping.

But on the long road of forgiveness, we need our masks to repeatedly slip, because how else can we be fully healed if we don’t first face the true depth of our pain and shame?

Story-telling is therefore a vital aspect of our lament, helping us to access our pain, and enabling us to share and grieve and protest the unjust suffering we’ve experienced.