Has this ever happened to you?
You’re reading—or watching or listening to—a story and something happens?
I’m sure you have, otherwise it would be a pretty lousy story. But what I want to know more is if anything happened in you?
Has a story ever made you feel like crying? Dancing? Has a TV show ever made you feel seen? Utterly alone? Has a movie ever made you feel love for your family? Passion for justice? Devotion to the underdog?
The media industry wouldn’t be doing its job well if it didn’t make us something, at least some of the time. However, sometimes that feeling hits us on a whole other level. It strikes a nerve we never knew we had. Or it leaves us feeling numb, unable to press on in the story (*cough* Mufasa’s death *cough*).
Regardless of your genre of choice, stories can move us in ways few things can. Just take a quick scan of social media and you’ll find reaction influencers emoting to stories (even reality TV) in ways the greatest acting coaches couldn’t fabricate.
But what if I told you that there might be something more behind the tears, sweaty palms, and flutters in our stomachs? What if these stories held hidden insight for the stories we live each and every day?
In recent years, a number of therapies have popped up focused on the power of storytelling. Narrative therapy uses the client’s own story, retold, to solve persistent problems. Bibliotherapy and cinematherapy use books and film, respectively, to allow clients to journey alongside characters dealing with similar issues and experience the psychological healing these characters find themselves.
For artists, the power of storytelling has been an open secret for inner healing since the dawn of the practice (Vogler, The Writer’s Journey, 356-7). In his groundbreaking work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell explores the psychological journeys found in myths across the world. You can thank Campbell for influencing the likes of Dan Harmon (Community, Rick and Morty), Jon Favreau (Elf, Ironman, The Mandalorian), and George Lucas (Star Wars).
The stories that move us deeply are often the ones with a critical eye toward the psychological journey of the main character, or as Campbell and others call, the Hero. The Hero in any story goes on an adventure in a strange world, whether that is in a galaxy far, far away, Middle Earth, or Brooklyn.
As the Hero progresses on his or her journey, their need for change becomes more and more apparent. The adventure culminates in the Hero changing—for better or worse—in some significant way. (For the hopeful storyteller, you can find a breakdown of common storylines, emotional journeys, and example breakdowns at savethecat.com). When we feel something deeply in a story, most likely we experience what scientists and storytellers alike call identification. Contrary to what it sounds like, identification isn’t seeing yourself in the Hero, it’s seeing yourself with the character. Instead of putting yourself in the Hero’s shoes, you merge yourself with the Hero, for a time (Huang & Fung 2024). It’s in the same realm as how we “identify” with loved ones in our lives—which explains why Ted Lasso feels like my best friend.
The greater we identify with a Hero, the more likely his or her emotional journey will leave us on the brink of overwhelming emotion, the slightest touch catapulting us over the edge.
This may sound like good news for some and terrible news for others. For many of us, our greatest fear is anyone seeing the tears on our cheeks as the lights come up in the theater (thank you, Inside Out 2).
But regardless of your public emotional comfort level, I’d like to suggest that identification can be a good thing.
Who we find our insides reacting to—either in identification or, the opposite, rejection—gives us insight into what might be going on.
Why do so many people resonate with Luke Skywalker? Because so many of us feel as though there’s a
bigger story than the little lives we’ve found ourselves in.
What about Frodo Baggins? Who doesn’t feel small and frail, tasked with far more than we can handle sometimes?
Who identifies with Katniss Everdeen? Those of us who just want to feel like we have the power to fight back against systems set up to put people down.
Can you tell what genres are my favorites?
Bibliotherapy and Cinematherapy work when we can explore why and how we identify with Heroes. Through identification, we journey with them and experience parts of their psychological healing. But there’s a catch.
If we don’t recognize why we identify with a character, our potential for healing plummets.
I’m not saying that you can’t gain anything from mindlessly consuming stories (we’ve got subconsciouses, after all). But, if we fail to stop and explore the connection to the Hero or Heroes, then we short circuit the opportunity for healing to occur.
Our healing is dependent on our ability to recognize and explore we feel what we feel about a character.
When that happens, we strike psychological gold.
Reflections and revelations about our inner world rush to the surface like a geyser. When we sit with why a Hero resonates with us, a new world of questions and considerations opens up.
Does this character remind me of my past? Do I want to become a person like this? Does he or she remind me of an important person? Is this a reflection of who I am becoming? Can I be like this?
These are great questions to pose to those close to you. They might have some insights in helping you make sense of things! But the only person who can really answer the questions connected to identifying with the Hero is you.
The next time a story strikes a nerve, what will you do?
Will you opt for the next suggested episode or recommendation?
Or will you pause and explore why you’re identifying so deeply with a Hero?
Like all good stories, our own healing journeys begin with a call to adventure. The next time a story does something to you, will you heed yours?
Further resources:
Your Life Story: Using Story Structure to Navigate Crisis | Yuri Lowenthal & Tara Platt | TEDxUCSD (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKs3ZPgsd0I)
Bibliotherapy (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapy-types/bibliotherapy)
The Moth – NPR (Large collection of stories on particular topics) (https://themoth.org/)
One Clinician’s Experience in Using Cinematherapy in Clinican Practice (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sex-life-of-the-american-male/202212/cinema-and-therapy-the-use-of-film-in-clinical-practice)
References
Campbell, J. (2008).The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New World Library.
Huang, K. Y., & Fung, H. H. (2024). Measuring identification with narrative characters: The development and validation of a new scale. Current Psychology(30), 24835–24849. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-06191-2
Vogler, C. (2020).The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. Michael Wiese Productions.
To learn more about Tyler, please visit his bio page. He is currently accepting new clients and sees clients both in person in Evanston and virtually via telehealth.