167 StoryWork: What It Is and Why It Matters with Dan Allender and Cathy Loerzel
The Place We Find Ourselves
Adam Young
4.8 • 2.5K Ratings
🗓️ 6 January 2025
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
You have a story and that story matters. Your story in your family of origin significantly affects the way you think, feel, and act in the world today. This is why Dan Allender says, “It is time to listen to your story.” What if healing begins by listening to your story? By reflecting on the experiences in your growing up years, you can better understand why your brain has been shaped in the way that it has. If you want to experience more of the healing power of understanding your own story, join Dan, Cathy, and myself in Atlanta, GA, on Saturday February 22, 2025, for the StoryWork Conference. The conference will be live streamed if you can’t make it to Atlanta. You can register by going to adamyoungcounseling.com. CEU’s are available for therapists.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Place We Find Ourselves podcast. I'm Adam Young and it is truly a joy to be with not one but two guests today. Dan Allender and Kathy Lorsel. Dan, welcome. Thank you. Adam and Kathy, what a delight. Kathy, good to see you. Good to see you too. Good to be back. So I've invited you both to talk about something |
| 0:22.6 | very specific, which is story work. The fact that we have stories, that we are a story, that God is |
| 0:31.0 | co-authoring with us, the story of our lives. And let's just start with what do we mean, Dan, |
| 0:40.3 | by the idea that you have a story. Well, I love the thought that 70% of the B-I-B-L-E, which is the book for me, is story, |
| 0:49.9 | meaning the way God communicates, the way we communicate, the way we learn, the way we think, |
| 0:56.5 | is always wrapped up, not in mere facticity, but in stories. |
| 1:02.4 | So we encode our life, the nature of what life is, in a narrative, which always involves context, setting, place, but also characters, |
| 1:15.4 | dialogue, plot, movement. We live and breathe story. So it's often hard to define it because we are |
| 1:24.2 | in it. Kathy, when you think of story or story work or just your own experience engaging your |
| 1:30.8 | own story, like if somebody had to ask you, if they asked you, what do you mean by your story? |
| 1:36.2 | What words would come out of your mouth? |
| 1:38.6 | So I'm going to, yeah, I've been watching the West Wing over the forever since it came out. |
| 1:44.0 | And one of the things I learned on the West Wing is to answer the question you want to answer, not the one that's asked. |
| 1:49.0 | Which is a story, isn't it? |
| 1:50.7 | Which is a story? |
| 1:52.9 | No, but what I think of story, so Gertrude Miller-Nelson, I don't know if you know who she is, but she's written these great books. She's a theologian and a young and psychologist, |
| 2:07.9 | and I was just reading her work because I've been preparing for Advent. And one of the lines that she says in it is that we need story, we need myth, because sometimes if it's not true, |
| 2:14.5 | all the way true on the outside, it's true on the inside. And when I think about |
| 2:18.8 | story outside of like what happened to you, it's the idea that we understand ourselves based on |
| 2:25.5 | the combined and the individual story of what it means to be human. And so all of our stories, |
| 2:32.6 | like if you tell a good story about your life, it's both |
| 2:35.9 | true and not true. But it's always true on the inside. And so when I look at stories, and this |
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