How Personal Storytelling Connects With People

I think personal storytelling is a powerful way to connect with others and inspire change, because I believe that Stories Change the Brain:

Paul Zak wrote:We have identified oxytocin as the neurochemical responsible for empathy and narrative transportation. My lab pioneered the behavioral study of oxytocin and has proven that when the brain synthesizes oxytocin, people are more trustworthy, generous, charitable, and compassionate. I have dubbed oxytocin the “moral molecule,” and others call it the love hormone. What we know is that oxytocin makes us more sensitive to social cues around us. In many situations, social cues motivate us to engage to help others, particularly if the other person seems to need our help. .

Your Brain on Storytelling (with subtitles)



From the video description:
"What happens when you listen to a good story? Listening to a good story lights up the same part of the brain as does pleasure. Stories excite neurons that make dopamine. Stories stimulate the creation of oxytocin, a hormone known as the love drug. It enhances feelings of trust, empathy and generosity... exactly what you'd want at the start of job interview, sales presentation keynote speech, team meeting, address-of-the-nation, or company-wide presentation. "

I think personal and collective stories are important for social transformation, because they create empathy between other people:

The audience can respond with empathy because the storytellers openly share their emotions. When these stories concern issues of injustice, exclusion, democracy and human rights, different insights are generated – much more powerfully than when the same questions are presented in the abstract. The audience can feel the different dimensions of the issue through the head and heart of another person, and put themselves in their position, at least for a moment. Creative forms of expression can help illuminate deeper democratic truths.

The Empathetic Power of Storytelling | Vi Tran | TEDxWyandotte



From the video description:
"Vi Tran is passionate about arts advocacy and spreading art’s role in the community to affect social change. Through music and personal stories about his family’s refugee journey, Tran demonstrates what he calls “the empathetic power of storytelling.”


In what other ways does storytelling build and establish connections with people?

looks like another interesting book for my reading list.

Big presentation that keeps mouth shut for answering. So complete already!

I just went thinking about when I had tried to tell a story, in the hope to connect.... and came a not pleasant memory at all.

So i thought I might share.... or else, how to create a personal story about the topic, so that we can connect?

My permies project is actually stopped for years because of neighbours issues and bad building work issues. Of course I have a story about it! I remember being in full problems with caterpillar etc, and I met a new neighbour. Cool girl, social person involved in theater, nature lover and more. I opened about part of the story, just hoping for some sort of support. just hoping some emotional reaction would help me to stand my ground and regain the strength that was starting to be missing!

You know this, when you tell a story that is not a happy one. You do not want the person to be sad and "fall in the pit" with you do you? You want the person to stay outside of the story but react and tell you that it is not fair, and how much you certainly are angry, and what a shame that people act like this! And you would expect a person who is an actor to know how to embody an amotional reaction and make it looks even more grandiose through art!

Nope.
She just told me "Ho, as long as I do not know the other point of view, I cannot take side. " !!!

In personal story telling, I connect with the teller, and I help the emotions to come out and be integrated. Actually, when TWO persons have been involved in a story and are in a fight about it, I can speak with both independently, and give SUPPORT TO BOTH, I mean with the same heart. I don't give a damn if one is right or not! I just know that they speak up because they have some emotional charge about it, and the one that might be wrong and responsible and even guilty ALSO NEEDS support to get out of the emotional pit!

Of course if there is no emotion and I can feel that somebody is just trying to make me have an opinion, I will step back on the thinking level.