Could Your Life Story Have The Power To Save A Life?
We all love stories. We love them because they are powerful. We love the underdog story, identify with the characters, and allow great stories to inspire us. Whether, on stage, on the screen, or on the page, our desire to listen to and tell stories is an essential part of our humanity. Stories give us a window into the beauty and the tragedy of the human condition. They speak into our uniqueness and purpose in this world. But they also speak to the brokenness of humanity, our need to be known and loved and healed.
But your connection to stories actually goes far beyond what other people have created for your entertainment. You have a story. You are a story. Your life tells a tale that is powerful and inspirational.
Your story is not just about you. It's intertwined together in community and dependent on each other. Stories remind us we are not alone. But stories need to be told. They need to be chronicled and shared. This is especially true when it comes to our mental health. When you struggle with mental health issues, it's easy to hide, feel alone, and isolated. Yet sharing your story has a way of removing those barriers.
Share Your Story and End the Shame
There continues to be a cultural stigma surrounding mental illness and other mental health issues for various reasons. We operate every day in a world that celebrates and honors mental toughness. The result is an unwillingness to admit weakness. Rather than admit our struggles, we bury our feelings of anxiety, depression, fear, stress, etc., hoping that we can will away what haunts us with enough time and tenacity. This only makes the problem worse.
When you are willing to step out and share your story of struggle, there is another person out there waiting to hear it. When they do, they realize they are no longer alone in their struggle. Shame and fear become less of a barrier because there is another person who thinks and feels like you.
It is estimated that nearly 20% of Americans suffer from some type of mental struggle. But far too often, these struggles are kept in the dark under lock and key. Suicide is the second leading cause of death for people ages 10-34. Something as simple as making mental health conversations normal by sharing your story can drastically impact another person's life. Even save it.
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Share Your Story and Learn More About You
Have you ever taken a personality test? Maybe for a job, or just for fun? It could be a DiSC assessment, Meyers Briggs, Strengths Finder, or perhaps you're one of those who are obsessed with the Enneagram. Whichever one serves as your go-to profiling tool, they all aim to accomplish a similar goal. All of them are helping you become more self-aware. Why? Because there is power in knowing who you are, how you prefer to operate throughout your day, how you interact with others, and how your life's circumstances have impacted you.
Sharing your story does the same thing. It connects us better to ourselves, enabling a greater sense of self-awareness. When we communicate our own story, we are permitted to look back and see the lessons, the victories, the failures, and the means to process it all properly. Reflecting on your past also helps you to navigate an unknown future. Sharing your story puts you in a very comfortable position in life where you can begin to understand your strengths and your shortcomings—it helps you live comfortably in your own skin.
Share Your Story and Start the Healing
Throughout your life, every experience becomes part of your story—your own narrative. How you navigate and respond to those experiences is indicative of your state of mental wellness. In other words, you can choose how you allow your experiences to form your future.
Therapists use the idea of narrative therapy to help people put their past in its proper perspective. Using the power of story, narrative therapy helps people discover their purpose by taking a step back from themselves and seeing their experiences as if they were narrating their own lives. Its goal is to transform how a person's experiences impact them. Storytelling creates opportunities to identify life lessons (good or bad), giving you the power to write a better story for your future.
So when you struggle with mental health issues, and you choose to share your story about it, you can then identify potential root causes, follow the course of events by way of cause and effect, and begin to see how, even in difficulties, your experiences can have a very positive outcome in who you become in the future. No story is wasted. All of it can have a purpose.
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Share Story by Sharing Your Secret Struggle
The stigma people experience around mental illness can be debilitating and crippling. Holding on to and burying the impact of trauma in your life only creates more damage. We live in a broken world, and everyone suffers from its effects. We have lost paradise. But even as each of our stories is filled with brokenness, hurt, anxiety, depression, and loneliness, there is a larger story unfolding. It's a story of hope and redemption. One of renewal and restoration. One where paradise is not that far out of reach.
When you share your one small story, you are tapping into something larger. You are offering hope to yourself and anyone that resonates with your story. People love stories because they stir up something deep in us—it speaks directly to our humanity and our hope for a better world.
This is why at RemedyLIVE, we want you to understand that your secret struggles do not have the final say in your future. Sharing your story of struggle can lift the weight of shame and the feeling of being alone and give you a renewed sense of freedom to find healing. But your story can also provide that same freedom for another.
