Last post, I began looking at why story is so important to me as I emerge from extensive trauma and health problems to find that hearing, reading and watching stories profoundly affect me, physically and emotionally. This is, in itself, a clue that story is deeply meaningful, and an impetus for me to put the necessary sweat and tears into arranging a story idea I’ve been working to make coherent and meaningful.

In that last post, I considered how story can offer a vicarious sense of control over out-of-control circumstances. In so doing, story offers models for behavior adjustment to help us figure out how to get what we want, as well as an opportunity to immerse in characters’ imagined socially unacceptable behaviors. These provide a cathartic release as if having tried dangerous experiments without any real danger, as well as to bring comfort for our own mistakes and hope for a better future in overcoming negative consequences.

This post, I’ll look more at that experience of immersing in story and having discernment along the way as I consume stories and slog through this process of learning to shape mine.

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A 2012 New York Times article discusses the nature of immersing in story:

The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life; in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated.

—“Your Brain on Fiction” by Annie Murphy Paul

The writer cites novelist and professor of cognitive psychology, Keith Oakley (University of Toronto), who proposed that “reading produces a vivid simulation of reality, one that ‘runs on minds of readers just as computer simulations run on computers.’” It’s an “experience unavailable off the page: the opportunity to enter fully into other people’s thoughts and feelings.”

I find it interesting that reading a story is like a computer simulation, like a video game, which incidentally is also a story. Hearing or reading a story would demand a particular kind of imagination and its associated creativity, which connects with arguments for continuing to read and listen to stories and not just watch on a screen. Even stage productions demand the creativity of imagination. But on-screen stories do wield their own power of simulated experience, obviously so as I avoid certain on-screen stories because of the effects they have on my body.

Ever binge-watched shows and movie series? Or had an audiobook or podcast or music on every moment of the waking, non-working day? Or snatched up the next book in a series? I can’t handle binge-watching TV anymore, but when I could I found it to have a physical effect like having eaten too much desert or drank too much alcohol: my body didn’t feel healthy but I also didn’t want to stop.

Addiction.

Such immersion as intentional escapism to an alternate life allowed me to avoid facing painful realities, a sort of false sense of control by giving reality the silent treatment. Was I unconsciously hoping these stories will help me figure out how to restore control in reality? They didn’t, partly because I hardly knew how to glean help from stories, and partly because I was simply dreading returning to reality afterward. I better value, now, stories in tempered doses and understanding how to distill their lessons.

The NY Times article reminds me that my brain interprets stories as actual experiences. This connects with how my now-over-sensitized body physically responds to story even in restrained doses, with emotions and physical sensations similar to those I feel in real-life stress or relief. It’s that relief I really crave.

When I’m not feeling well, I can’t handle certain genres and writing styles when they don’t allow for much rest or resolution to bring relief. However, if I have a few days of feeling well, my sense of adventure returns and I’m eager to bring on stresses that facilitate that relief, of having conquered stressors alongside the story characters. There’s scattered talk of this being a (but not definitively the) reason people enjoy the horror genre, to conjure a massive cascade of happy hormones that comes from having conquered worst fears, unscathed. I can’t handle horror even on a good day.

I know from experience that undiscerning immersion in just any story can mess with my ability to navigate reality. As Shawn Coyne says, stories “serve society as certifiers of our values” (The Story Grid, 138). This intersects with how a story interprets reality in specific ways depending on the writer’s own values. A well-told story can wield a great deal of authority such that undiscerning hearers/readers/viewers are unconsciously swayed to affirm the story’s interwoven values. Indiscriminately and uncritically absorbing any and every story would be like consulting a mass of conflicting maps: it messes with the mind and heart.

Cue someone’s rant on princess and romance stories and movies where a woman is rewarded for acting passively/helpless/etc. They had real effects on child/teenage me. Any story where characters don’t have to change—don’t grow up, take responsibility, learn to wield agency rather than nurture passivity, etc.—feeds unhealthy escapism and allows the reader/listener/viewer to avoid maturing through the story such that they emerge no less able to address reality than before.

Incidentally, this is how I read the Bible before I learned to discern, thinking every story must be affirming good values. God must be telling this story to show me what he approves. And thus was born Christian manifestations of slavery, just war, racism, genocide, etc.

Feel the disgust. Own it. It sharpens discernment.

And then learn the next level of discernment by immersing in an ancient story in such a way as sees how the ancient soul would have a clean or sullied conscience about something where ours would not.

JK Rowling touches on aspects of immersing in story by observing that “what young people found in the Potter books are the very same things they seek online: escape, excitement and agency” (“J.K. Rowling explains how she came to write her first 
Christmas story—for children”). “Escape, excitement and agency” are a fantastic way to describe a positive, fruitful immersive experience.

Especially agency: it encompasses that restored control we seek through story, the relief of having overcome, the ability to navigate reality.

Rowling goes on to say, that “the great thing about a book as opposed to a social media platform is that it puts no pressure on its reader to perform or conform. Like a friendly common room, it’s there to retreat to, but it doesn’t judge. It makes no crushing demands.” No doubt, she’s talking about a safe immersion experience in which to reflect on life. It can take discernment to find the right story for such a safe retreat because not all stories allow for it. This connects back to the first Why Story post in getting an opportunity to try risky behaviour without the danger.

Because if our brains experience story like real experience, stories can traumatize. I’ve been there too. Meaning that I’ve needed to heal even from traumatizing stories as much as real life experiences.

And with that, healing will be the next topic I hit for “Why Story”.

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Holy Spirit, give us discernment to fruitfully navigate stories.