The benefits of storytelling for our wellbeing

Storytelling is something everyone loves, whether that is telling stories or listening to family memoirs from a time gone past. Storytelling is a way of bringing up memories from the past, allowing people to share their emotions, feelings and expressing their personality.

Storytelling is also great for your wellbeing. People that struggle with their mobility or who often find themselves looking at stair lift prices can really benefit from telling their favourite stories to their family or their grandchildren. Carry on reading to find out more about how wellbeing can benefit your health and wellbeing.

Helps you feel less alone

One of the main benefits of storytelling or spending time sharing stories with others is that it helps us feel less lonely. Sharing these stories allows us to feel connected to those within the stories, and those around us.

Josie, the blogger behind Me, Them and the Others explains a little more about how storytelling can make someone feel loved and less alone: “Having worked as both a bookseller and a librarian, stories have always been a big part of my life. Whenever I have had a problem to deal with, the first thing I have done is seek out the stories of other people who’ve had the same experience.”

She continues to explain that sometimes putting our feelings into stories and words can help us feel better about situations.

“I believe that by sharing our stories, we feel less alone in our experiences. Putting our feelings into words helps us make sense of our emotions in a way that’s very hard to do when they are still inside us. One of the amazing things about being a blogger is having a platform to share stories from my life. When I shared my postnatal depression story on my blog it helped me make sense of what I’d experienced. Many other people commented with similar experiences which made me feel much less isolated. People often describe writing as free therapy, it may be a cliche, but I really do believe it’s true.”

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Boosts your mood

What better way to boost your mood than by telling stories that bring you happiness and joy as Victoria from Healthy Vix explains:

“Storytelling is a great way to boost our mood and own wellbeing, but it can also help to build our relationships with others. Telling personal stories can prove we have enough trust for a friend to confide in them, which can build their confidence in trusting us back. It helps to strengthen friendships and make connections deeper. Personal storytelling with friends enables us to empathise and understand one another through sharing experiences, whilst enabling us to inspire and empower one another. Personal storytelling is, therefore, a great tool for meaningful friendships and to aid in our own personal growth at the same time.”

Your wellbeing is often affected by your mood, so allowing yourself to share your happy emotions through storytelling is a great way to do so.

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Helps you remember the past

Another great attribute of telling stories and sharing memories is that it helps remember great times from the past. For older people, connecting to the past may be a nice way to bring back happy memories and share those with the ones they love. Corrine Collette from the blog Skinnedcartree explains how storytelling is a great way to share memories and to keep them fresh in their minds:

“Storytelling can benefit your wellbeing in so many ways. I've always found it a therapeutic process to share stories with others. When sharing with other stories of positive experiences, it gives me such wonderful feelings of nostalgia and often opens up other memories that were long forgotten. It's even more exciting when you are talking about these stories with people that were also there. Each of you is able to recount what happened and piece your stories together - it gives a great feeling of reconnecting and bonding with a friend over your fond memories. With my friends, we often find ourselves talking about the same stories from our university days each time we meet up. It's a lovely bit of escapism to look back on such a fun and exciting time where things were very simple for us as students. It brings us closer together after not seeing each other for months on end!”

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Allow us to express our emotions

Telling stories is a great way to express emotions and share your feelings with one another. Expressing how we felt in the moment through body language and speech is a great benefit of telling stories, as Jessie Shedden expressed in her quote below:

“It’s no secret that storytelling is an ancient art form, a method of passing lessons and learnings from one generation to another, but it’s not just that. It can cover anything from yarns to folklore, but for me, as an inspirational author, the vitally important stories that risk going unheard are our personal stories; these - especially where women are concerned - are not being heard anywhere near as often as they should be.”

She continues and explains more about how it allows the teller to acknowledge their stories:

“When we tell our personal stories, we give ourselves the gift of healing and permit others to acknowledge their own story. In the current generation of cycle breakers, it’s never been more important to pass this on to future generations so that our learnings don’t go with us to the grave. Additionally, they allow us to be seen, heard and understood – basic emotions that all humans long for.”

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Enables you to connect with other loved ones

As well as all the other benefits listed, storytelling can aid your well-being by allowing you to connect with your loved ones and share family stories

“Storytelling has always been a big part of human life and, before books and technology, it was how information was shared. Now it is important for other reasons – as ways to connect with people we love. We can learn so much from other people’s stories and make changes to our own lives accordingly. Storytelling itself or the listening can be very therapeutic as well so is very beneficial to our mental health,” says Petra from A Mum Reviews.

People love telling stories and these are just some of the benefits that come with expressing how we feel and sharing stories and experiences. If you want to read more articles like this then visit the news section on the Age Co Mobility website