How to Tell Stories that Heal (Instead of Entrenching & Antagonizing)

How we tell stories—to ourselves and others—matters deeply.

At this moment in history, I see folks left and right telling stories that often assign other individuals these awful, evil intentions. Accusations of hatred, greed, power hunger, fear, callousness, etc. are rampant on social and mainstream media alike. And while those psychological drivers often are simmering in our subconscious, those are not the emotions we typically experience in the moment. So when others accuse us of those things and it doesn’t match our personal experience, we get defensive. Shut down. Decide they’re the ones with evil intentions. Start justifying our anger and violence toward them. Become further entrenched in our own way of seeing the world.

But there’s a better way, a more healing way, to tell stories.

For example, here’s a small, nonpolarizing story from my childhood that captures this disconnect and shows how easily stories can be told in a way that villainizes one side or the other:

One morning in the 5th grade, I got in trouble in Sunday school. I was sitting in my usual spot in the back row when the teacher told us to close our eyes to pray. I obediently did, but when the prayer dragged on for more than 10 seconds, I lost interest and opened my eyes to look around. A watchful teacher caught me with my eyes open, gave me a stern look, and motioned for me to close my eyes again. 

As someone who has always struggled to follow rules if I don’t see the point of them, I did not comply. Instead, I looked the other way. When the prayer ended a few seconds later the teacher pulled me aside and reprimanded me for being disrespectful—to the teacher who was praying, God, and him—by opening my eyes and refusing to close them. 

In response, I deflected and made one true, albeit snarky, observation:

“Your eyes were open too,” I said. 

As you can imagine, this observation did not go over well. 

The problem was, we were both telling ourselves this story in a way that assigned the other person horrible intentions. In the story he was telling himself, I was intentionally disrespecting him, the church, and God. In the story I was telling myself, he was intentionally trying to bully me into obedience by enforcing stupid rules that somehow only applied to me and not to him. 

Neither story matched the other’s felt intention which is why we ended up talking past each other, unable to hear the other person’s experience. (Also, I was a child.) And if either of us went on to tell this story to others, we’d likely be tempted to tell it in a way that villainized the other and made ourselves look like either the victim or the hero.

In one version, I could make Mr. Sunday School Teacher come across as a jerk and use his behavior to condemn the church as a whole. I could talk about how he forced me to conform to patriarchal behavioral standards, describe how he shamed me into obedience, and I could draw a direct line from those concepts to the unquestioned submission so often required by religion as a whole. 

Since I can still taste the shame of that conversation 27 years later, there may be some truth to those things. But in the moment, he wasn’t trying to uphold the patriarchy or oppress little girls or anything of the sort. His felt intention was much simpler and much more benign: To teach kids about God. So when I called him out for what I perceived to be hypocrisy, he couldn’t hear me because it didn’t match his experience of the situation.

In another version, Mr. Sunday School Teacher could tell this story in a way that makes me look like a jerk. He could talk about “kids these days” and how they don’t respect God, church, or their elders. He could rail against modern feminism and the rebellious spirit it fosters in young girls in order to break down traditional family structures. 

And full disclosure: I was an extremely strong-willed child. I don’t envy anyone in charge of me back then (or now, for that matter.) But my intention was not to disrespect the church or sass him or assert control. I was just a bored, 10-year-old pastor’s kid who knew all the church norms and really didn’t see why it was a big deal that my eyes were open. So when he called me out for being disrespectful, I couldn’t hear him because his accusation did not match my experience of the situation. 

The point is, this story could be told in ways that villainize both sides. And neither version would be totally wrong. 

But also… neither version would be the slightest bit helpful. Because when we tell stories in a way that assigns evil intentions to people, it makes it nearly impossible for them to accept the pain or harm they’ve caused. It just makes them feel attacked and then it fuels their own angry, accusatory stories about us.

I want to make two quick points of clarification: 

1) I am speaking to other white people like myself who are looking for more effective ways to interact with each other about important issues. I am not talking about being nicer in the midst of abusive situations and this is not an effort to tone police people of color for their justified anger and frustration regarding racism. 

2) The answer is not to let everything go, never call people out, or accept injustice. I’ll never advocate for neutrality in the face of injustice, abuse, or harm.

The answer is to talk to people about their actions (and the effects of their actions) in a way that allows them to see themselves in the story so they can hear you. 

For example, if the teacher had said: “Hey, when you open your eyes it distracts you and potentially distracts others from listening to the prayer,” I might have been able to hear the feedback. Maybe I could’ve apologized. Worked harder to keep my eyes closed the next time. But because he accused me of being disrespectful (an intention that didn’t match my internal experience) I couldn’t hear him.

And if I said: “When you spoke to me, I felt a huge amount of shame for this small thing and I don’t think that was necessary given the situation,” maybe he could hear it. Maybe he could reconsider the way he approached it with the next kid. Maybe he could apologize. But because I accused him of hypocrisy he couldn’t hear me.

In the stories we tell ourselves and others, we must be more careful in assigning evil intentions to people who more often than not are simply operating out of habit and/or base human emotion. 

Yes, when their actions have harmful consequences they need to be called out, corrected, and/or stopped. 

Yes, we all need to more thoroughly examine what we do and why. 

But our first attempt to bring their attention to the consequences of their behavior ought to be in a way they can hear us. If we do that and they still can’t hear us, we can move on to the next option (a topic for another article.)

At every step, we must relentlessly humanize the people around us. To consider how they experienced the situation and start the conversation there in order to address problematic behavior. I understand this is hard. It’s far easier to jump straight to how we experienced or perceived their actions and assume that’s how they intended their behavior to be experienced. But often, it isn’t.

So let’s do the hard thing and speak in ways that people can hear. Let’s have hard conversations that don’t dehumanize each other. Let’s use words that push ourselves toward growth and pave the way for others to follow.

The road we’re currently on doesn’t lead anywhere good. So let’s do the hard work to course-correct toward relentless humanization.