Before I get into this, know there is a lot more where this story came from. I was with my entire family for winter break. After enjoying a wonderful Christmas day, I had the holiday bliss and warm-loving feeling ripped right out from under me a few days later. Here’s the gist: (1) my credit card information was stolen, (2) as I was talking to my bank on the phone to figure everything out the call dropped and I was locked out of my phone… turns out I was talking to hackers and not my actual bank, (3) my Apple ID was hacked, (4) my bank account was drained, (5) I was locked out of all my accounts and couldn’t change anything, and (5) I found out a week after all this terrible stuff that my car was broken into. Let’s just say it wasn’t a very happy New Year for me. After going through the cycle of shock, utter distress, mourning, anger, and hopelessness, I was left with the empty feeling of shame. Even though getting scammed was not inherently my fault, I felt so foolish. I should’ve known what was happening, I should’ve noticed the signs, etc. This rumination of not being able to forgive myself or the hackers who had done this to me was weighing on me heavily.
The Positive Power of Storytelling
Through storytelling, there is so much that we can learn about overcoming the challenges we all face in life. We get to know the characters we love on a deep level by relating to what they are going through. You will likely never find yourself in a situation where you need to overthrow an evil government ran by the Sith, but by seeing Luke Skywalker overcome his challenges to become a Jedi (Kershner, 1980), we can gain the courage to face our own challenges and stay true to our own values. When I talk about storytelling from a positive psychology perspective, I am referring to the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves. Each of us has some idea of who we are that is based on our own stories. Perhaps you describe yourself as a student, a teacher, a golfer, a gamer, or a lover instead of a fighter. These titles describe things about our personalities, our interests, and how we like to spend our time, and each of them are a part of our story. The idea that we use stories to describe ourselves is nothing new, but a researcher named Dan P. McAdams was one of the first to say that our stories can also provide meaning to our lives (McAdams, 2001). Because our stories are tied to our identity, the things we tell ourselves about ourselves can have a profound impact on our mental health (Adler et al., 2007), our relationships (Dunlop et al., 2020), and our values in life (McAdams, 2001).