In his own medical practice, this doctor-author has witnessed first-hand the power that stories have to heal us. Here are the seven reasons why stories are effective and powerful medicine.

1. Stories interpret our sensory experiences of the world in an unbroken chain of experiences that connect past events to the present, as well as to an imagined or desired future. These stories “summarize” our experiences to make them manageable to remember, tell others, and tell ourselves. Without stories, life would be an unbroken stream of sensory impressions without separation, organization, or editing. We have to make stories to organize experience into discrete packets that we can handle.

2. People tell stories to show others who they are. Families tell stories that define their family–which manifest at weddings and funerals as, “Remember the time when. . .” Communities tell stories to construct identity, as in stories about the town’s founder or the great chief for whom the reservation was named. Countries tell stories that come to be known as the history of that country (Paul Revere’s ride, George Washington’s cherry tree). Stories simulate identity in each conversation in which they are told.

3. Stories pull together observations, experiences, sensations, and perceptions into a unified whole that has plot, characters, meaning, action, beginning and end.

4. These stories tell us what we need to know to interpret the world. They tell us what we need to know to classify and interpret new experiences. They tell us how to make sense out of what is happening around us. With out these stories we would be lost.

5. Culture arises from the synthesis of all the stories lived by a group of people in a particular time and place.

6. Stories offer us way to speak eloquently and directly about concepts that are otherwise hard to define and communicate, like self and identity. Stories give us a fluidity of expression, an opportunity for improvisation, and a way to design alternatives.

7. The stories we tell inform our audience of how we want to be understood.

When we reconnect with our stories, our lives are enhanced. Stories can transform people, inspiring and motivating change and healing. When we become conscious of the negative stories we are telling about ourselves, we can look instead for more life-affirming and self-loving ways of telling those stories that will lead to more healed ways of being in the world.