Difficult Seasons

Story Telling

All of us tell stories.

What’s interesting is why, out of the tens of thousands of stories we each have stored in our brains, that we choose to tell a specific story at a point in time.

We don’t even think about it.  We don’t do an intentional search of all the stories to find just the right one.  Something someone says or something we smell or something we’re doing or something we’re experiencing triggers bringing the story to consciousness.  So we tell it.

We don’t usually give why we’re telling a specific story a thought.

But the interesting thing is that we’re telling the story because it has something to do with what’s going on in our life right now.

When you’re visiting with someone and they begin telling you stories, listen to them carefully.  If you take the story literally, you’ll probably miss what the person is really telling you.

Here are a couple of examples.

1.  A elderly man was hospitalized who was suffering from advanced cancer.  He told a visitor a story about an old tree in his back yard that was rotting from the inside out, and that he just didn’t know what to do with it.  If you as the listener took that story literally, you might want to suggest he engage a tree expert to help him.  But if you were listening for the story behind the story, you might ask the man if he perhaps was talking actually talking about his situation, and not about the tree.  (This story is from the book cited below)

2.  An older woman tells relatives a story about her youth, when her great uncle lost his mind and her parents had to build a cage around his bed to keep him from wandering off.  If you accepted the story at face value, you might just respond by saying, “I’m glad we have facilities now for helping families deal with relatives with dimentia.”  But if you knew that the woman telling the story was suffering from short-term memory loss, as her relative you might more appropriately respond, “I know you’re having some memory problems.  Is is possible you’re telling me this story because you’re afraid of what may happen to you?”  (This story is from my personal experience.)

The person telling the story hasn’t thought about why they’re telling it.  If you have a sufficient relationship with a person telling a story like this, and if you think you have some insight into why they might be telling it, and you’re comfortable doing so, you might help them consider what’s behind the story.  Doing so can be helpful to the person in processing what’s happening in his life, and can make him feel truly listened to.

To learn more about story listening, I recommend the book Listening and Caring Skills in Ministry: A Guide for Pastors, Counselors, and Small Groups by John Savage. The book also covers listening from a broader perspective, so will be a valuable addition to your library.

Photo credit:  Dave Gilbert

Tags: hospital visits, story listening

This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 4:15 am and is filed under hospital visits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.