The Power of Storytelling with Michelle Auerbach

In this episode, Michelle Auerbach talks about the power of storytelling as a trauma aware technology for change. We discuss how storytelling can be used as a tool for highly sensitive people to help us co-regulate, calm our nervous systems and take away the difficulties of change. 

Michelle and I met when our books were published alongside each other in the Resilience Series – a series of books to support people through the COVID-19 Crisis. We dive into her latest book, 'The Life Saving Skill of Story.'

 Michelle Auerbach is an author, speaker and storyteller and she holds a Masters of Fine Arts in prose writing from Naropa University. She is completing her PhD with her dissertation on story as a technology for trauma aware change for individuals, organisations and communities. She has published two novels, Alice Modern and The Third Kind of Horse along with her recently published, ‘The Life Saving Skill of Story’ as part of the Resilience Series. She writes for the New York Times and The London Guardian.


Stay in Touch with Michelle...

https://michelleauerbach.com/

Resilience: The Life-Saving Skill of Story

More about your host, Jules De Vitto...

Jules is a transpersonal orientated coach and educator who is experienced at helping Highly Sensitive People overcome anxiety, stress and burnout. Jules is Highly Sensitive herself and is passionate about helping Highly Sensitive People to step into their authentic power. She lived in Asia for eleven years before moving to London and integrates Eastern practises and modern-day mindfulness into her work.

She has a degree in Psychology, an MA in Education and an MSc in Transpersonal Psychology, Consciousness and Spirituality. She’s a published author through Changemaker Books and John Hunt Publishers and wrote Resilience: Navigating Loss in a Time of Crisis to help people through the Covid-19 Pandemic available here.

You can stay connected with Jules through her....
 
 Website: https://www.highlysensitivehumans.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/highly.sensitive.humans/
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/highlysensitivehumans/
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/highlysensitivehumans
Meetup Group (London, UK): https://www.meetup.com/Highly-Sensitive-Humans/

Join the 8-week course, 'Step into your Authentic Power as a Highly Sensitive Person' starts October 4th 2021, and is limited to 20 people! Join now!

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome, I'm your host, Jules Davito, and you're listening to the Highly Sensitive Human Podcast, the show that offers an insight into the world of the highly sensitive person. And helps those who identify with the traits of high sensitivity to feel more empowered and resilient without denying their authentic gifts. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Prose Writing from Naropa University, and she is completing her PhD with her dissertation on story as a technology for trauma aware change for individuals, organisations, and communities. She's published two novels, Alice Modern and The Third Kind of Horse, along with her recently published book, The Life-Saving Skill of Story, which is part of the Resilience Series. She also writes for the New York Times and the London Guardian. So in today's episode, Michelle talks about the power of storytelling as a trauma-aware technology for change. And we discuss how storytelling can be used as a tool for highly sensitive people to help them co-regulate, calm their nervous system, and take away the difficulties of change. And we dive into her latest book, The Life-Saving Skill of Story. So welcome, Michelle, and thank you so much for being on the podcast today. Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

I'm very excited to talk to you.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

So obviously, this podcast is about the highly sensitive person. So I'm just wondering: do you consider yourself to be a highly sensitive person? And if so, what would you say your story is in relation to being highly sensitive?

SPEAKER_01 2:09

Wow. I was so happy when I heard that designation existed that I couldn't believe it. I and I think we're going to talk a lot in this conversation about story, but I think it gave me an anchor and a way to tell the story about my experience of the world that previous to that designation existing or me knowing about it, I didn't have. So yes, I very much consider myself a highly sensitive person. And I remember as a child feeling like having this question in my brain: do other people experience the world like I do? Or am I in some way different? And I assumed as a kid that everybody else was just handling it better or expressing it less. And I grew up in the Midwestern part of the United States, which is a particularly emotionally buttoned-down region of the country, and the acceptable behavior and emotion is very limited. And I just thought everybody else faked it better than I did. And was able to be those people on the outside when they were experiencing what I was experiencing on the inside. I figured out that was not true. And so the designation of highly sensitive person helped me realize that that it wasn't really even a fault or a flaw, that it was, it was in some ways a gift to be the person who notices more, is attuned, you know, experiences more, was amazing. The journey was really in learning to process it, deal with it.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Yeah, thank you for sharing that. And I can definitely relate. Um, I also had a similar experience when I was younger, when I was a child, I would have the same question, questions, wondering if other people experienced the world in the same way that I did. And again, it was only when I came across this label that it really helped to give me that framework and realize that I wasn't alone in how I experienced the world. And you mentioned the gifts, the gifts of sensitivity. Um, I'm wondering if you could maybe say a bit more about that. What do you consider those gifts to be in relation to your life?

SPEAKER_01 4:35

So I would divide it into two areas. The first one is that I'm a writer and I write novels and I write nonfiction essays and uh you know books. And for me, the ability to feel things really strongly, because when you're trying to describe a scene or bring something to life, those are all things that rely on the ability to notice nuance and detail and gradations of things very specifically. And so I felt as though growing up and just going through the world as a highly sensitive person gave me access to more information to use in that way. And often when I tell people, you know, people say, Oh, you're a writer, you know, and they talk about it like it's something external to me that I that I chose to do. And I always laugh because I feel as though it's the thing that allows me to make sense of all the input that comes into my life, whether it's emotional or experiential or sensate, you know, in all the ways that that highly sensitive people are very sensitive, um, inner interpersonal dynamic, it all makes sense when I use it there. And I think, you know, my working theory is I wonder if most writers are like this. And and either they know it or they don't, but that that that the access to detail, specificity, feeling, all of that stuff is so crucial to being good at it. And I don't claim to be great at it, but I do know that without that stuff I would be way worse, right? So so that's that's half of it. The other half is I I also feel as though I do a lot of work in the world and facilitating organizations and groups around communication, and that I finally realized that I was able to notice things earlier between people and and intra and interpersonally, I just get the early signals where other folks, it may have to get much louder for them to hear it. And so for me, that means in personal relationships, in in my relationship with myself, and also when I'm working with organizations or communities, I can call out stuff that that as it's as it's beginning to happen that other people don't necessarily feel right away. But when I say it, they go, Oh, yeah, that's what's going on. You know, so as I've gotten older, I've gotten more comfortable in saying things like, hey, I'm super uncomfortable in this moment. Is everybody else feeling that way? You know, when I'm with a group of people and people look at me like, how'd you know that? You know, and I think, well, you would have gotten it too in a minute. It's just that because of going through life, having this attunement to all of this information, I feel as though those weaker signals out there are louder to me. And so that sometimes it's a little crazy making, as I'm sure everyone can appreciate who's listening to this. But the gift of it is that if you for me, getting older and developing the guts to call it out was actually of service to the people around me.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Right, yeah, and that's really interesting. And as you were sharing just now, I I was going to ask you, yeah, do you think that has taken you time and and courage to get to that point of being able to call those details or that information out? Um, I feel a lot of highly sensitive people can struggle with being able to like like they can identify things in their environment or they can pick up on those subtleties that are going on in groups, but maybe they struggle to actually articulate it or present it into the space. So, would you say that's taken you some time to get to that point of being able to do that?

SPEAKER_01 8:32

Oh, you know, just 50 years or so.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

Yeah, not not too long then. No.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

But I think I think that as we know more as a as a human culture and and society, the more we know about difference and how great it is to actually have difference in our world, the the more likely I think it is for that process to get easier. Because we're talking now a lot in the world about different different ways that people's brains are wired and different ways that they work and how valuable that is. And that was definitely not true 50 years ago. And so I think both age and practice and seeing it be useful helps to mature that skill. And then also, I think doing things like this podcast and helping people to see the ways in which the culture can change also makes it easier. So I think it's it's a two-way street, and and both things are necessary in order for people to feel more comfortable articulating what they know is actually going on inside them.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

Yeah, absolutely. And so, with that being said, I'm wondering because you've shared how your gifts as a highly sensitive person can um support you in the work that you do. Now, I'm wondering if you could maybe share a bit more about what the work is that you do and how that could support highly sensitive people.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

Oh, that's a great question. So I do work around storytelling as a trauma, and I would actually say sensitivity also, aware technology for change for individuals in organizations and in communities and community activism, and that in the 21st century, just about anywhere in the world, it's very hard for that to be completely free of trauma. And yet when we get together to do things, to make change, to grow, it's it's the trauma and the discomfort and the stress that speaks really loudly and gets in our way. And so I work a lot with ways that story has played out over time across cultures for us as humans as a skill and a technology that allows people to calm their bodies down, co-regulate with each other, share information, and and take the difficulty in a lot of ways out of change. So for folks who are highly sensitive, story, there's something about story that's very calming. And I noticed this when I was a little kid that often if I felt overwhelmed or I felt, you know, too much input, that stopping and reading a book was something that helped me to downregulate my system, right? That helped me to turn off certain functions or focus better on certain functions. And it took me until I was in my 30s, and the psychologist actually said to me, you know, can you pay attention to your surroundings? Can you tell me what color the carpet is? Can you tell me, you know, what what what you know, find three blue things in the room as ways to start to focus internally and to and to deal with anxiety or a lot of input? And I was like, oh, that's what stories do. Because you're focusing on the detail, you're looking for patterns, you're experiencing something at a at a at a healthy distance, right? There's a thing called narrative distance where you, as the observer, the reader, the watcher are not experiencing it physically yourself, but you can, but you have this this lovely transportation into somebody else's story, and it's much easier to regulate. So the work that I do is to use all of that to help people in groups to make change. And for highly sensitive people, I'm I can always pick folks out. Like I'll go into a community organization and we'll we'll be talking about some activist thing, and I can kind of pick out the folks in the room who, like me, are even already in that moment slightly overwhelmed, or you know, just a lot of input or are you know experiencing a lot. And when we start to approach the context of whatever it is, you know, be it that we want to create a race justice task force and or or we want to do, you know, whatever it is that the organization is doing, that once you start to do that through story, people are able to help each other regulate and they're able to focus in ways that make it very easy to talk about things that might otherwise be really hard to talk about. And suddenly the information that highly sensitive folks have becomes extremely contextually important. And there's a part of, at least for me, being highly sensitive where if the information that I have actually is useful in a group, I feel a little less outside or a little less like I'm an observer getting more information than everybody else. So, so yeah, so the work I do really revolves around regulation and regulation and situations that somewhere fit on that range from like, you know, stress, discomfort, um, you know, moderate to sort of extreme discomfort to actual trauma, but anywhere on that spectrum that that we find ourselves in any given day, storytelling and working with story helps our systems regulate themselves, become coherent, you know, and and then we're able to share that with each other.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Yeah, that is so fascinating. And again, as you're talking, what's coming to me is that highly sensitive people do tend to be drawn towards uh being writers or being uh very creative. So it seems that it's also a very natural connection that those who identify with being very sensitive towards their environment would probably benefit even more so from storytelling and that ability to um use their creativity as well to heal from trauma. Would you say that's correct?

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that one of the things I've I'm also a trained chaplain, and you know, trained interfaith chaplain, and one of the things that you're taught immediately in chaplaincy training is this concept of normalize and stabilize. So you're generally meeting folks on a terrible day, right? There, somebody's in the hospital, they're in the hospital, something's happened. Um, or I do some disaster work too, so it's like you know, the fires here in Colorado that just happened. And you need to first normalize that what people are experiencing is is normal. Like in a disaster, it really does feel that way. Or in a fire, or you know, when when someone in your family is dying, it really does feel like that. And and those skills of normalizing the experience, especially for highly sensitive people, like it's yes, what you're experiencing is completely normal under the circumstances. And let's let's ground ourselves in that fact so that you can use the information that you're getting, right, to do what you need to do, right? To take the next step, to just do the next small thing that you need to do and to stabilize the situation. So this concept of normalize and stabilize, I think is something that that highly sensitive people actually have a skill at already. And and right, that they just know this is my they, we, just know, like this is my experience. Now, how do I move from here? And and that that to me is really crucial for folks to be able to do to heal themselves and and each other, you know, when you come across another person who you realize you share this gift with, that you can say, um, you can say to them, Oh, yeah, no, I feel that way too. And we're in the middle of a rather tense moment in the United States right now because the election has happened, but there are no results. And I get 10 texts a day from various people I know saying, I I feel fill in the blank. I feel, I feel, you know, depressed, I feel anxious, I can't stop shopping. These are all texts I've gotten in the last 24 hours. Is it is it normal to feel that way? And I just keep saying, are you kidding? Under these circumstances, of course it's normal to feel that way. And and I feel like that's part of the gift of being highly sensitive, is that you know, you understand the range of normal pretty is pretty wide. But but also that the the that starts the process of being able to heal yourself of trauma is to say, oh, it's okay to feel this way.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

Yeah, that is huge. Um, definitely, like you mentioned, that normalization. And you know, you've mentioned um the feeling of overwhelm that you often experience. And again, I can relate to that becoming very overwhelmed, and especially right now with the tensions that we're experiencing globally. Um, I would say that sense of overwhelm and anxiety is pretty high right now. So I'm wondering, of course, you've spoken about the power of story and storytelling to heal trauma, but do you have a specific resource or tool that you could um share and to help the listeners? Something um quite tangible that maybe they could use as a resource?

SPEAKER_01 19:13

Sure. So um I recently wrote a book called Resilience, the life-saving skill of story, which is basically a compilation of many chapters of tangible, very, very, very, very tangible resources. So um so I'll give you two from here that I think are particularly useful, um, especially in this moment. So the first one, um, the first one is just the story equation. And this what what the story equation is, is it's a way to tell stories that allows people to do a few really important things. The first one is you want to be able to feel empathy and attention. And all the research on story and going back to Aristotle, you know, several thousand years ago, says that that story creates that focus and attention, and it creates it because you care about the characters. And in caring, you begin to focus your attention. So that that's really useful. The the second thing that it does, though, is it allows you to have a loop where you go into the story and you come out of the story changed and better. And I think we all know from living in our own experience as highly sensitive folks, that oftentimes you get caught in the loop and there isn't a way to get to emerge from the other side of it because what you're experiencing feels pretty raw and pretty intense. And so, what the story equation does is it allows you to both language it and then and then it emerge from the other side with a nugget of wisdom for yourself. And it's a very simple thing. So, in any story, and you can ask yourself these questions if you were trying to elicit a story from somebody else, you can ask them these questions, and they work every time. So the first part is what's going on. So you ask them to describe the current world, um, and then the thing that happened that that created the story in the first place. So um, you know, that that there's always that inciting moment when you're you were everything, you were going about your business and something happened, right? So that's that question. What I did about it is really the next useful question. So um so I was minding my business yesterday, trying to cook dinner, and my husband turned on um the the turned on the CNN on his computer. Right? So that's you we can all imagine, everybody listen to this. Podcast can imagine whatever it is that's going to bug them about that moment and be uncomfortable, right? For me, it was I don't want to hear the noise, I don't want to have the heightened tension. When I cook, I really like to be able to lose myself in the physical sensations of it because they're really strong and it's great, right? So that's that question. What I did about it, I said, sweetie, I need you to turn that off right now because the election is going to drive my mind, right? So, and then what happened, right? The last part of the story equation is what happened. Well, what happened was that he said, Okay, I'll I'll turn the sound off and keep you posted if anything, anything new develops, right? And that's that's basically a little teeny story. But within that, it wasn't that I got caught in the drama of not wanting to hear the sound of the election, and it isn't like, you know, I just kept going back to, oh my God, that moment was so awful. It was so awful, it was so awful. I can actually give you something I did, which which for folks who've experienced trauma or extreme stress or who are highly sensitive, being able to say, I did this, I I had agency, helps you just leapfrog out of the cycle of repetition. And then what happened is a good takeaway. So you know, it could have not gone well. He could have stormed upstairs and and been kind of pissed at me, and that would have been fine too, right? I mean, he's his own anxiety, but but then there would be a different nugget, which is like, oh, I gotta find a different way to phrase that, right? But either way, whether it's sort of a happy ending or a sad ending, you I learned something, right? In that case, I learned I could, I could, I could vocalize that to him, and then he could get his needs met without the sound down, and and and I would actually get to know something if anything happened, which by the way, nothing happened, right? We have no idea. So, so that that just that story equation of what's going on, what I did about it, and what happened is is a great way for you to talk about your own experience or to ask people questions. And you'll find, and I think we're gonna talk about this in a little bit, but I have you know, one of my three children is also highly sensitive. And I what I discovered from parenting her was if I didn't ask the what did you do about it and what happened part, she got very stuck in the what's going on part. Can you believe it? And then that happened, and I just thought it was so awful, and I don't know, you know, and so I realized as a parent that I had to help her find a way out of that repetitive loop. And so if you find yourself in a situation with somebody where you hear them doing that, again, it's totally normal, right? Let's normal that's exactly how it feels, but you can actually help them out of it in a way that gives them a gift by asking those questions. So that's the first one. Do you want do you want to ask me anything about that? Because it was a lot of talking.

SPEAKER_00 24:48

Yeah, I absolutely love it. I mean, as you're sharing, I'm thinking, oh, it's so it's so simple in a way. Just that very question of what did you do about it, you know, reframes the um the problem and helps us realize that there is always a solution, right? Um, but I know, I know how easy it is when we're in the problem to get stuck in the problem. And I know for myself, um, I do have a tendency to ruminate or get get lost in the the challenges and the difficulties. So I think, yeah, just that very um understanding that we can there there is always movement through the challenges is in itself just really, really powerful.

SPEAKER_01 25:40

Yeah. And it's it's we have the skill anyway. Like we all know what it feels like to hear those stories. And I think it's it lives in us anyway. So it's it's not a hard thing to do for anybody. It's sometimes hard to remember to do it. Let's put it that way. It's much more difficult to remember to do it than it is to actually once you remember, that's 99% of the issue. And and once you've had it explained to you, and you kind of go, Oh, oh yeah, of course, right? So the trick is just to remember.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

Yeah, absolutely. And so you just mentioned your daughter, and um, you mentioned she is highly sensitive, and so what would you say your experience is of um how what you've just shared in terms of the um the questioning and the storytelling, how does that um how has that helped people you know personally?

SPEAKER_01 26:42

So I can I actually have permission from my daughter to talk about her on the podcast. I sent her, you know, she she's now living out of the country, and so we we WhatsApped back and forth quite a bit about the this question, and she was excited to to be able to share her experience of of what worked and what didn't, you know, um, as as the kid being raised. Um but one of the things that I noticed with this this particular hands-on thing was that she did need to decompress and share information with somebody who cared. That part of what made things manageable for her was needing to process it externally. So, which I find really interesting because I'm not an external processor of information, and so I kind of had to grow into that as a parent. But once I realized like she she could come home from school and she needed decompression time, in which she shared with me, or her one of her siblings, but in general it was me, share the information of what had happened to her that day. Um, that then she could she it flushed it out of her system. And so I learned that she couldn't get stuck in the loop though, because that just made it worse and reactivated and reactivated and reactivated the discomfort. So one of the crucial things, at least for me in dealing with other highly sensitive folks, and is to figure out are they an internal or an external processor of information? Meaning, do they need to, do you need to give them the skill to ask themselves these questions and then leave them alone? Or do you need to be the person who's actively engaged in listening and helping them process it because that's how they work? So making that designation was really important, and then allowing them the space to do it with those little prods of, oh, and then what did you do about it? Right. And I'd ask, I asked her the same exact question every day after school from the time she was in kindergarten until the time she went away to college. And um, and it never failed to work, right? And then what did you do? Well, what did you do about it? Well, what happened? What you know, what was your takeaway from that? Right? Those questions allowed her to process through it a lot faster so she could actually tell me more things that had gone uncomfortably during the day if we could do it that way. She got she got more out. The other thing we used to do is we had a little egg timer, and we would set the egg timer for a very specific amount of time. She knew she had the same amount of time every day to just get it all out there, and then we would go about our business, doing whatever the next thing was, homework, having a snack, you know, but but that that that that processing time existed, and I now do that for myself. But because I'm an internal processor, I give myself a very specific amount of time to do that processing of information, story, experience, and I ask myself the same questions. I just write about it because that works better for me than talking to somebody. I find talking about it is distracting and whatever, it's just not how I do things. So, yeah, so that that ability to use those questions and also to figure out what somebody needs and how they need to do it is really a useful combination.

SPEAKER_00 30:07

Yeah, that is really, really useful. I think just having that and being able to distinguish between the internal and the external, because I realize that in a way I think I can relate very much to your daughter's experience that I um yeah, as a child definitely had this really strong need to share my story, and I think I'm quite introverted and I like to go inwards a lot, but what I realize is that my need to actually share my story outwardly is really where I find the healing, and I think that that need to be heard by someone else and to be understood as well is really significant. So I think that's going to be really helpful for highly sensitive people to be able to distinguish between whether, yeah, they need to sit down and write about it or whether they need to go out and and find that person to share their story with.

SPEAKER_01 31:06

I think that's a really good point, too, that that the healing happens there for people and that you can advocate for yourself. Whatever, whichever of those two things it is you need, you can advocate for yourself. And if you know the story questions, you can cultivate a good listener, right? You it's all it's possible to make most people out there into very good listeners, and and that's something that highly sensitive people are particularly qualified to do, because listening really happens in your body. This is one of the things you wrote the book. I did a lot of research on listening because I didn't just want to talk about telling stories, because listening to stories is actually another way to heal yourself. And listening to the stories of other highly sensitive people is probably why people are here listening to the podcast, right? So they know that that works. But sometimes people are terrible listeners, um, just terrible listeners, and particularly terrible listeners to highly sensitive people, right? Because we are able to notice all kinds of things that are going on that other folks may not catch. So I did a lot of research on talking to folk to people who were extremely good listeners. Um, I talked to several uh somatic psychologists, I talked to neuro, I talked to neurobiologists, I talked to folks who do biology work, I talked to people who do attachment work around attachment. And what they all said was that that listening happens in your body, like somatically. And for highly sensitive people, you already know all the cues. Like you out there know all the cues. And being able to help people translate that into good listening is actually another gift of being a highly sensitive person. So, for instance, uh, one of the psychologists I interviewed, whose name is Carmen Koole, um here in Boulder, Colorado, she said in order to help someone tell a better story, as a psychologist, that she pays very close attention to the ways in which the story is impacting her inside of her body. So where she feels discomfort, where she feels relaxation, however those things show up for her. And then she's able to ask the questions that lead in the direction that is most enlivening and engaging for her, and that brings a certain kind of story out of the out of this the storyteller. And that's a real gift, right? Because you you can call out the discomfort. Wow, you telling me that. Like I can feel you telling me that and how bad that feels, right? And and normalize it for somebody, but you can also say that part got me. Whatever that part was, tell me more about that. That was really like brought my body to life. And those skills are really, you know, internal capacity sensitivity skills, which highly sensitive people already have. And so you can teach people to be better listeners to you by by helping them be aware of those things. So, you know, I my husband is not a highly sensitive person in any way. And I will share something with him, and then I realize I'm feeling uncomfortable, you know, because I don't, I don't think he's actually taking it in. And so I'll I'll say to him, Where'd you feel that in your body? or how did that feel to you? And then I get the response I need, right? Which is that he'll say, Oh, that that made me feel weird. And I'm like, Yeah, doesn't it? Right? Like it made me feel weird too. And just by being able to ask him those really simple questions, where did you feel that in your body? How did that feel to you? You can actually get them to give you a lot of emotional information that that over time they become pretty good then at being a listener because they they internalize those questions. So I I think the gift of storytelling exists better in some ways for highly sensitive people, and also the gift of listening and being able to encourage other people to be good listeners comes out of that same highly sensitive array of experiences.

SPEAKER_00 35:21

Yeah, definitely. And um yeah, I would say being highly sensitive myself, I've always considered myself to be a really good listener. It's just something that comes really naturally to me and to to sense into my body and yeah, feel like I really feel the emotions of other people and what's going on around me. But yeah, it's amazing that again, in a way, maybe um that's something I in the past took for granted and not realizing that there's many people out there who don't um experience the world in that way. So I think what you said about you know, helping to teach others how to be good listeners is is really, really powerful. And so you've spoken a little bit about your book, um, The Life-Saving Skill of Story. And I know the book very well. Obviously, this is how we connect it through the resilience series that was written to support people through the current pandemic that we're still going through. So I'm wondering, could you share a little bit more about the book and perhaps how the book can help those who are listening today, those who identify with being highly sensitive?

SPEAKER_01 36:38

Sure. So the you know, that was a great story. So I had I Tim Ward, who's the editor at Changemakers Press, who asked both of us to write the books that we wrote for that series, called me up and he was like, Hey, um, do you think that in the next month you could write a book based on your dissertation research on storytelling and how and how it's a survival skill? And I was like, sure, how hard could that be? She says, like, that's a normal thing to do, which by the way, it's not. But what I realized was I'd done all this research, I'd done all this research on people who were great story practitioners, meaning they used story in all these really cool ways around the world. And I had this wish list of other people I wanted to talk to who were story practitioners. And knowing it was going in a book, I was able to call all kinds of people all over the world. I have a chef in Ghana who uses food storytelling in order to create community change, an organization in New York City where they use storytelling to create media all over the world in order to create behavior change around health outcomes. Um, a woman who works with uh queer folks around body and and you know, not and stopping dieting. Like I just got to call everyone I ever wanted to know how they did it. And I interviewed, gosh, I think it was about 50 people. No, I'll make it into the book, but about how they used story in their community and in their world. And I gotta tell you that as a highly sensitive person, I got to get on the phone with each of these people and talk to them for like an hour, an hour and a half, and totally immerse myself in what it felt like to be in their world. And I felt so much better after every single one of those conversations. It was a gift to me to be able to do that. And so I gathered as much as I could from those conversations and put them in the book. So there are all of a lot of those people's stories and a lot of their how-to's on how to enact that right away in your world. I didn't want it to be something where people who are other people can do it, but you can't do it, right? There shouldn't be anything in there that you personally couldn't do right away. So that's how I put it together. And I think for highly sensitive folks, there are two sides to it. The first is that there's this concept called transportation or transportability, which I think is linked to your level of sensitivity, but it's your ability to put yourself in the other person's story. So when you uh we're talking about being a really great listener and being able to really feel it in your body, you are describing the sense of being able to be transported into their story. So, in reading this book, for folks who are highly sensitive, you get to experience what I experienced, which is all these people's unbelievably beautiful stories that will help you feel more integrated. But the flip side of it is all of those skills are skills to translate your highly sensitive experience into change, whether it's for yourself in terms of just changing your affective experience or your your circumstance for a minute, or whether it's changing your community or changing the world. And I I my secret belief is that highly sensitive folks will change the world because we are the bravest storytellers. We are the people who live with the discomfort of other of how the world works, and that discomfort translates into a lot of empathy for people who are experiencing systemic oppression, you know, long-term intergenerational or epigenetic trauma. You know, when we talk about, I personally can't have conversations in with folks at this point where they're talking about, like, say, defunding the police without being able to physically experience the things they're describing and the kinds of violence they're describing. And I think it brings out a higher level of empathy. And that empathy really will allow people to build coalitions and work on systemic oppression and change things in ways that highly sensitive people are particularly geared for. So all of that stuff is in the book. And for me, it it's it's a little bit of a trip, like a little journey into where you can take your highly sensitive experience in ways that are super productive that will make you feel better, but will also change the world.

SPEAKER_00 41:18

Yeah, that is brilliant, and I love, I'm going to quote you on that highly sensitive people will change the world, because you're right that um it's the empathy we have, that deep empathy and the transportation that you mentioned, which I think is why many highly sensitive people struggle so much, why there's so much struggle and they experience a lot of deep emotions, anxiety, depression, those things can be quite common, but it's actually that struggle and that ability to be able to identify and see the pain and the struggle that exists in the world. That I think what you're saying is that that's what will bring about the change. It's only through going through that, right, that we can then um have enough empathy to want to make change, right? If we didn't feel it, then there wouldn't be that desire. Yeah. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 42:19

Yeah, it's one of the things, you know, every every once in a while I feel like I actually agree a great sentence. And, you know, one of the things that I realized that that I was able to articulate, which and I'm actually gonna quote myself, which I I think is somewhat tactical that I'm about to do it anyway, that one of the things that I was able to crystallize in the book was stories become the gift we give the world, the beauty that can grow out of what has wounded us are brokenness and the world shattering. And as highly sensitive people, we really know those things. That that the the the pain, the the real brokenness, sometimes the discomfort of the human experience, um, what it feels like to have the world intrude so much. And the fact that that can be turned into a gift through through just how we how we go about our daily lives is something we know we know really well.

SPEAKER_00 43:16

Yeah, absolutely. Um, and it's interesting because again, um I can relate to that just by doing this very podcast. I'm having I'm living that experience, right? Because every time I speak to someone or interview someone like yourself and the other people I have spoken to, I'm I'm learning through their stories. And um it's yeah, all of the stories or all of the people that I have interviewed um identify some type of struggle or difficulty or challenge, but it's the the the learning that came from that. So, this is definitely a shared experience. And actually, I have one more question that's um coming to me in relation to this. Um, I'm a big fan of um Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey, and it's actually something I've been uh looking at this week. And I was wondering is that something that inspires the work you do, or something which comes into this um the art of storytelling.

SPEAKER_01 44:30

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Um my mom is a Jungian analyst and trains other Jungian analysts. So I got just I got Joseph Campbell with my cereal in the morning. Yeah. But you know, uh I have several things to say about that, but Joseph Campbell's heroes journey is a just a beautiful way to conceptualize our own lives and experience. And I use actually um when they're trying to figure out who they are, what their culture is, or or or even strategy, because that sense of being called into something greater that exists in Campbell, right? And one of the first steps of the hero's journey is the hero receives a call. In general, then the hero or or the heroine says no, and then they're drawn into it anyway. And I think that the experience that we all receive these calls, sometimes they're lifelong calls, sometimes they're situational calls, that um, that we are compelled, sometimes beyond our you know, resistance to follow is I think in this day and age, something we all need to pay really close attention to. And that the journey changes us in ways that sometimes the world isn't ready for, so the beginning is the call and the end is the return. And often when heroes come back from their journey, there we are deeply changed by what's happened to us, and the world seems to be the same and doesn't accept that. And holding on to the fact that that experience is normal too, right? As highly sensitive people, sometimes that's a day for us, you know, where we're called into something in the morning, and by the end of the day, we've actually changed rather dramatically because that ability to change comes from so much input and so much information, and we can end the day different than we started it, and the world around us hasn't really changed significantly. And there can be a certain amount of like, what the heck just happened and why, why is the why do I feel like nobody's noticed this or it's not important? So I really love those two parts of the hero's journey, and I think you know, we're experiencing it in America right now, which is that all of us who have become very aware over the course of our lives of racism and white supremacy and systemic oppression and maybe the unfairness of the way that our system has been working, we really were looking for a big change this week, right? Like I wanted the outside world to reflect the change I know is happening. And that's a very Joseph Campbell moment to realize sometimes the outside world isn't going to reflect that back to you, but it doesn't mean that number one, it's not real, because it is real. Those changes are real. We are making changes in our society, and I think led often by the highly sensitive people, and the changes are real, and the outside world doesn't always need to reflect it back to you to make it valuable and important and crucial. So I just love those two parts of Campbell. You're called in the morning when you wake up to go live your destiny, you know, and and you and whether you want to do it or not, it's gonna happen, and that you will be changed by it every day, and it doesn't need to be reflected back to you, you know it.

SPEAKER_00 47:57

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's um really interesting as you shared that can happen in a day. You know, I think often we think of the the journey taking a lifetime or even many lifetimes, but actually it's something that's happening over and over again on a daily basis. Um, so I think that's a really good reminder for people as well. So um we've mentioned a couple of books and your book being one of them, and I will put the details um in the show notes so people can access that book easily. I'm wondering, do you have any other books or even a quote that you'd be able to share with the listeners today? Something which has inspired you in the past.

SPEAKER_01 48:41

Um, I have a book that I think everyone should read, like in the in the universe. And I'm not sure I can pull one quote out of it, but there's a book called Turn This World Inside Out: The Emergence of Nurturance Culture, by a woman by the name of Nora Samaran. I think I'm pronouncing her last name right. S-A-A-M-A-R-A-N. I'll send you a link to it. And it's a beautiful, beautiful book about making change in the world through creating cultures of nurturance, and I think it's highly sensitive to people. It will very much speak to the needs of the listener on the podcast, but also to the value that that level of awareness brings to creating a more nurturing culture. She became famous because she wrote an essay on um rape culture and attachment theory. And so somebody asked her to write a book. But so she does this beautiful job of talking about the ways in which our psychological development is reflected in the communities that we build and the relationships that we have and how to heal that. So I I'm not sure I have a specific quote from it, but I really, really love that book, and everybody should read it.

SPEAKER_00 49:58

Thank you for sharing. That sounds really interesting. And again, I'll put the uh link to the book in the show notes so people can check that out. So I've enjoyed this conversation so much, and there's so much more I want to ask you, but I'm aware that we're actually coming close to the end here. So I'm just wondering if there's anything else that's come up for you today through the conversation that you feel um inspired to say or share.

SPEAKER_01 50:32

Um I I think this probably goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, which is that being a highly sensitive person as a child probably feels like a burden or a difference that's not a positive one. And I think that getting to the point where it feels like a gift is a hard one journey that that is really important to to and it's important to get there. I'm not sure I'm articulating this well, but that those those very things that we we learn from storytelling, that those very things at the beginning of a story that you feel are the stumbling blocks for the hero turn out to be their greatest strengths or the places where they derive knowledge, wisdom, care, ability, you know, their superpowers. And it it sounds corny to say that, but there is not a wisdom tradition out there in the world that doesn't reflect back to us that the things that are our wounds are also our brilliance, and that we we need to carry that around with us, carry that knowledge around with us as highly sensitive people. That, you know, people can tell you to stop being so picky or you know, why are you always, you know, so whatever. And you can know secretly in yourself there there is real power to that, and and I I'm gonna own that.

SPEAKER_00 51:58

Yeah, that's such an important reminder, and again, something I can relate to so much. And I think, yeah, as children, it's extremely difficult. Um, and I'm not sure it gets much easier as we as we grow up. I mean, it it definitely does in many ways, you know. We do learn to connect with our strengths and that internal power, but it's still um, yeah, it feels like an ongoing journey, and especially in a society that I feel doesn't necessarily um nurture or um encourage those those gifts. So I think, yeah, we really need to um keep reminding ourselves of our power, of our gifts, and yeah, make make that change we want to see in the world, right?

SPEAKER_01 52:50

Right. And that it's not your fault that the society was created in such a way that your particular gifts are not valued, right? That's not you. That that's a system that was created to do a whole bunch of things which were not nurtured, which which did not involve nurturing the individual. So just be aware that when you feel those things, it's really not you. You're really actually in a system that that should be more attentive and should be more flexible and should be more supportive, and it isn't, and that's not your fault.

SPEAKER_00 53:23

Yeah, absolutely. And again, a really, really good reminder. Um so thank you so much for joining today. It's it's been so enjoyable to hear about your book, um, The Life Saving Skull of Story. And like I said, I will put a link to that for people to check out, and yeah, just to hear more about your work. So I'm just wondering, is there anywhere else listeners can go to find out about your work website, or do you have any other links that I can direct people towards?

SPEAKER_01 53:56

Sure. So all my writing is on MichelleAuerbach.com, which is easy to find. And then the the change work that I do with organizations and communities is um modika communications, and you'll put it in there so I don't need to spell it. I'm not sure why I picked a website with that long of a name, but I did. So it's modika communications, and moda is actually um a sweet, like a dessert that that one of the Hindu deities um loves, and so it's the sweet spot for communication. So you can find the change work there.

SPEAKER_00 54:29

Brilliant. I love that. Very creative. All right, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 54:35

You are so welcome. Thank you for doing this podcast. It's a real gift.

SPEAKER_00 54:43

Thanks for joining me this week on Highly Sensitive Humans. Make sure to visit my website, highly sensitivehumans.com, where you can subscribe to the show and find out more about my upcoming workshops, my online eight-week course, and where I also offer one-to-one coaching for highly sensitive people. And if you found value in the show today, I'd really appreciate a rating. Or if you'd simply share this episode with your friends or other highly sensitive people, that would help support this podcast.