Book Club: Meaning and Affect in Your Written Stories
This science is so powerful because it shows that how we tell our stories matters to our well-being. AND, if we don’t like the stories we tell ourselves, we can change them. Empowerment!
Narrative Identity:
Researchers read the stories the study participants have written for the study. Researchers come up with themes within the stories. The researchers also
Motivation and Affect are related to well-being.
How can our writing bring us greater well-being.
Gives us the opportunity to rewrite old stories, especially in the event that you have negative themes within your written stories. If the tone is pessimistic - we can notice it, consider why it’s there, and think about re-writing.
Affect - the emotion of your writing. What would someone say about the emotional feeling of your piece?
Motivation - what are the goals of this person? Where are they going with their life?
Within motivation and affect - how are these related to well-being?
Contamination - within a written piece it goes from positive to negative ending. Someone gets a raise at work and then they realize that their raise came at the expense of a colleague losing their job. The story ends with the bad news, the negative event. When a story has contamination this is related to poorer outcomes. If we have contamination sequences, how can we look at them in a new way?
Tone - overall emotion of the written piece. If a piece of writing is negative (glass half empty), that’s a low score on tone. A written piece with an optimistic tone is related to well-being.
Agency - all about autonomy within the protagonist (us in our stories!). High scores on agency mean that the protagnoist feels empowered, she has some sense of control, owndership over her lofe. Low scores on agency, the protagonist feels powerless. There is nothing she can do to change her circumstance.
Communion - all about interpersonal connection, belonging, unity, togetherness are high scores on communion. Low scores are disconnection, maybe the protagonist has been rejected from their community. Feeling like an outside, alone.
How can we rewrite these stories? Find new sense of belonging.
Based on the paper: The Empirical Structure of Narrative Identity: The Initial Big Three
Self-connection is the bridge to your story. Ready to finally start your self-care practice and get over being stuck? Click here to sign up to get my free, on demand webinar to walk you through the steps 💌.