by Jennifer Shipp

Created on: June 19, 2009   Last Updated: July 19, 2009

While studying for my master's degree in family psychology and working at the same time on writing people's biographies, I read a book that claimed that stories are the basic unit of human understanding. At first, I was skeptical, but as my work on clients life stories progressed, I started to realize the importance of storytelling and stories in general on the human psyche. People make sense out of their lives by the stories they tell others and the stories they tell themselves. But stories are the by-product of past human experience. Try telling a story about the future and see if anyone will listen to you. Then, try out an ongoing present-tense commentary and see how long friends stick around. Life stories captivate and good life stories are told again and again. Indeed, the greatest life stories that people tell are very well-rehearsed as other people naturally want to listen.

But no one likes to hear the same story twice. Even great stories can be boring the second time around.

Life is like a really well-written story. There is a setting, characters, and a plot as well as a beginning, middle, and an end. Some people have truly great life-stories, while others, in fact most people, have life stories that resemble Little Golden Book tales like, Bunny Finds a Home or The Wait-for-Me Kitten. They replay the same plot over and over again in their lives, sometimes commissioning different people to play different characters their life story or moving to different locations to mix up the setting a bit. But ultimately, people do tend to dwell on the same plot over and over again. They live in the past repeating the same storyline because the past feels safe, the past is predictable, and the past is quite comfortable compared to the alternative.

But what about people who have had unpleasant past plots play out in their lives? It seems like those people would want to move on, leave the past behind, and go forward. Often, people with an unpleasant past do want to leave it behind, but with the mistaken belief that the future will come and sweep them off their feet if they happen to be standing in the right place at the right time. I mean, they say they want to leave the past behind, but really, they just want to talk about the past without people thinking they're dwelling in the past. There's a part of each of us that knows that dwelling on the past does not help us progress toward bigger better plots in our life stories. Yet, we find ourselves, as humans gravitating

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