Narrative And Storytelling In Narrative

Narrative and storytelling is an important way that allows for one to make sense of themself and their experiences. Both Leslie Bell and Martha Stout deal with patients who have been through some sort of trauma and both of them help their patients to work through their traumas through reviewing and recounting their experiences. Both Bell’s and Stout’s patients tell their stories and explain what has happened to them and why they are seeking help. In Bell’s work Hard to Get: Twenty Something Women and the Paradox of Sexual Freedom she talks about two of her patients who are twenty something females who struggle with their identities and what and will happen in their lives. Stout’s work When I Woke Up Tuesday Morning, It Was Friday she talks

Storytelling is a key component of both Bell’s and Stout’s patients therapy and recovery because it allows them to understand better what has happened in their life and what is happening in their brain. Storytelling and reviewing past experiences is key in making sense and understand personal experiences and their effects on a person. Storytelling of one's experiences helps them understand who they are and it helps them to create their personal identity. Janaythi in Leslie Bell’ work is an example of one who uses storytelling to help create an identity for themself. An example of Jayanthi using storytelling to create her identity is shown in Bell’s work when she says “ So I ended up really going crazy …. I was just like, “I don’t want to be the poster child, so the other extreme it is.”” (Bell 33). Jayanthi tells her story to Bell and she tells the story to create an identity as a “Bad Girl”. Bell describes this idea of a “Bad Girl” as rebelling against what is expected of them, as in Jayanthi’s cases this was by having sex, coming from a traditional Indian family she was expected to have an arranged marriage and to remain a virgin until that marriage. Jayanthi uses her story to portray herself to others as her own person who has a

Storytelling helps to work out what is going on in one's life. In Bell’s work Jayanti tells her story and through telling her story is able to better understand who she is and the effects that her experiences truly had on her. By telling one's story they are also reexamining the story and viewing it in ways that they have not before. Jayanthi made a major realization while work with Bell as seen in this quote “That’s the powerlessness I felt..... It was only recently, literally recently, Leslie that I thought back on it, and I was like, “Oh, my God, that actually happened to me.” (Bell 36). Jayanthi realized that she was put in a very dangerous situation and was forced to have sex with three men she did not want to. Through Jayanthi storytelling she was able to reexamine what happened to her that night and she realized how dangerous and wrong the situation she was forced into truly was. It is important that Jayanthi was able to look back at the situation and realize what really happened because it helped her and Bell work out why she felt she could not be in a relationship and why she had issues being close with anyone. Jayanthi’s storytelling allowed her to understand better why she thinks and acts the way she does and it helped her to be able to make sense of her life and improve her quality of life. Reexamining her