In these busy times, it’s a rare treat to sit down with someone who’s just there to listen, with compassion and common sense. The examined life is a life worth living! The personal history process helps us reflect more deeply about what we have accomplished and inspired in others. Instead of someone who has undergone an experience, we become someone who engages actively, shapes that experience, and takes what’s valuable from it. When we tell our own stories, we take control of them. Writing it down can allow us to let it go. Sometimes we can get stuck thinking too much about a particular event, playing and replaying it in our heads.
She can also help with difficult decisions about what to include and not include in our written narrative. A professional personal historian can help us express a difficult event, reducing its emotional power. Releasing a secret or trauma that’s been bottled up can normalize it and make it seem less overwhelming. Telling our experiences to a compassionate, non-judgmental listener can allow us to see things in new ways, giving us insight we may never have reached on our own. Recording our stories creates a linear timeline, where it’s easier to see the threads that run throughout our lives, and feel more confident in what we have accomplished. She’s found that telling our stories and organizing them into a coherent narrative helps improve our sense of well-being in tangible ways. Teri Friedman, PhD, a counseling psychologist and former personal historian, shared her experience on the therapeutic benefits of personal history at a recent PHNW meeting. Teri Friedman is a psychologist in Rye Brook, NY, and a strong believer in the therapeutic effects of writing.
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