Speaking at the 2023 Research and Creative Scholarship Colloquium hosted by the Research Office at Northwestern Qatar, Sam Meekings, associate professor in residence, examined how storytelling is used to create self-narratives and the ways they can be employed to help people process and recover from trauma.
The event began with Meekings discussing the use of narrative techniques and creative writing in trauma diagnosis and in the exposure therapy process, a form of therapy in which psychologists create a safe environment for individuals to examine the things they fear and avoid. “The exposure therapy process itself is a controlled form of storytelling,” said Meekings. “It implies that these fictionalized stories about our lives, the stories we tell to avoid telling the real stories, are representative of some kind of underlining pathology.”
To expand on the interrelations between identity, storytelling, and health, he went on to discuss his work with practicing therapists investigating links between narrative theory and neuropsychological treatment. Together, he added, they are carrying out interviews comparing how people tell their life stories after they have been through exposure therapy with how they told their doctors/therapists when they first began their suffering from symptoms.
Sharing insights from their research on Psychogenic Non-Epileptic Events (PNEE) patients, Meekings said understanding the ways patients’ life stories are written and revised and identifying dissociative storytelling markers may aid diagnosis and treatment. “In PNEE patients,” he pointed out, “the fictionality of self-narratives can cause physical disruption.” He added, "Revision and rewriting of self-histories can—in some scenarios— create narrative resolution and promote self-cohesion.”
The event began with Meekings discussing the use of narrative techniques and creative writing in trauma diagnosis and in the exposure therapy process, a form of therapy in which psychologists create a safe environment for individuals to examine the things they fear and avoid. “The exposure therapy process itself is a controlled form of storytelling,” said Meekings. “It implies that these fictionalized stories about our lives, the stories we tell to avoid telling the real stories, are representative of some kind of underlining pathology.”
To expand on the interrelations between identity, storytelling, and health, he went on to discuss his work with practicing therapists investigating links between narrative theory and neuropsychological treatment. Together, he added, they are carrying out interviews comparing how people tell their life stories after they have been through exposure therapy with how they told their doctors/therapists when they first began their suffering from symptoms.
Sharing insights from their research on Psychogenic Non-Epileptic Events (PNEE) patients, Meekings said understanding the ways patients’ life stories are written and revised and identifying dissociative storytelling markers may aid diagnosis and treatment. “In PNEE patients,” he pointed out, “the fictionality of self-narratives can cause physical disruption.” He added, "Revision and rewriting of self-histories can—in some scenarios— create narrative resolution and promote self-cohesion.”
