A friend shared an infographic about how stories affect the brain. It includes physiology like the fact that stories lead to neural coupling, which enables the listener to apply the message to his or her own life. Storytelling engages mirroring, a neat way to connect with one another. A tale with vivid details involving smell, sounds, textures, and colors ignites a number of areas of the brain such as the motor, sensory and frontal cortices. Plus dopamine shows up to charge the whole experience with feeling. 

 

When my kids were little I told them stories at bedtime. These were often made up on the spot, involving fairies in the woods, or monkeys that climb up a giraffe's neck in order to wash the second story windows. One time I arrived home to a confused babysitter.

 

"Your daughter kept asking me to dummy dory. I don't know what that means." Ah yes. "Tell me a story" in two year old speak. 

 

There was a period when the main characters in an extended stretch of adventures were named Phillip-and-Anna. The babysitter that week puzzled to me about what the kids had begged for. 

 

"Fill-a-banana!" She had no idea how to do that. 

 

Hearing the narrative of someone else's life can break through the impasse that divides us when we are hyper focused on our own. A speaker at a workshop I attended told about how he had a knee jerk reaction when his wife said four simple words. "We need to talk."

 

He flew into a rage, which made no sense to her. Then one day he was able to untangle the memories around his father. He was a gruff man, and when he announced that edict to his son, it was a prelude to stern punishment. Simply hearing that  background opened his wife up to compassion.

 

It can help to tell one another the stories of our lives. It is a small door into what lives beneath the surface.