Debriefing: Why Sharing Your Story Matters
About two years ago I found myself at a place of burnout. I had been working with couples, families, and kids for sixteen years doing pre-field training and debriefing. Over those years, I had the privilege of sitting down and talking with thousands of individuals, often sharing my own story of living cross-culturally as a third-culture kid (TCK). I offered my story because it was needed and beneficial to the ministry, but I was never able to explore my own story for myself. In essence, I was giving my story away without knowing my place in it. There is much I could say about how this was impacting me, my wife, and my kids, not to mention my coworkers. Due to these adverse effects, I decided to take a sabbatical, hoping this would help in my pursuit of re-owning my story. In this process, I needed to tell my story to others for myself.
What happens when we tell our story to others? As we go through life, we construct a narrative. This narrative is comprised of our implicit and explicit memories. Implicit memories are encoded into our brains and allow us to function without thinking about it. Explicit memories include both facts and the recalling of past events. Explicit memories are often what we think of when we tell our stories. What we can miss in this is that there are many other facets to those memories. These include others’ facial expressions, tone of voice used, smells, and how we felt during the experience. It also includes how others responded to us when we told our story.
This simple question gives someone the freedom to process their past and current experiences with openness and vulnerability.
Our brains are constantly accessing these memories attempting to project the future. So, our past story is affecting our present story which influences how we anticipate our future. Kurt Thompson in Anatomy of the Soul says: “The process of reflecting on and telling others your story, and the way you experience others hearing it, actually shapes the story and the very neural correlates, or networks, it represents”. In other words, hearing ourselves tell our stories and seeing how it is received shapes how we experience the present and move toward the future.
Three things happen when we share our story with others:
1. We connect with our present reality. When our stories are unprocessed, we are often unaware of how it is impacting us. We are also unaware of the potential impact on others.
2. We connect with others. As you become more aware of your own story, you will also become more aware of others’ stories. If we can tell our story to someone who is able to receive it with compassion and empathy, then it gives us a new perspective on our story.
3. We connect more deeply with God and His redemptive story. As people with an eternal future, we are transcendent beings who look for a greater purpose. We long to know that we are not alone and there is someone bigger who holds us, loves us, and is redeeming all parts of our story.
One thing I realized on my sabbatical was that I was experiencing compassion fatigue. When someone trusted me with the deepest parts of their story, it would leave me feeling flat for several days. As I slowly began to process through and discover my own story, I regained my ability to hear others’ stories on a deep level. Finding an outlet to share your story can be a powerful and transformative experience. What parts of your story are you holding back that you need to share?