Tell Me Your Story

By Charmaine Fuller, MC, LPC, NCC

In the pursuit of processing trauma and improving mental, telling your story is a vital component. It’s so important we have a name for it: Narrative Therapy.

The tale of telling my story began in childhood. The earliest story I remember writing was around age ten. It was a story about my friends and me. It wasn’t factual, but rather the stories and scenarios I made up. I gave myself a different name because I had often been teased about my name. It was a way for that childhood version of myself to begin to explore who I was and who I wanted to be. That story has been lost to time, but I think of it periodically.

Early in my childhood, I was also given a journal. I spent years dutifully and regularly journaling. Most of those early entries were the accountings of day-to-day life of an adolescent me. I’ve gone back and read through some of those journals. For the most part, there are stories of interacting with friends and family. Sometimes, I find stories about my dreams and hopes for my life; occasionally, I find entries full of the kind of righteous indignation that only an angsty teenager can produce. And other times, there are entries filled with the heartache and trauma of fighting to be seen, heard, and understood.

As technology and information exchange evolved, the kind of story telling I engaged in also evolved. The early 2000’s was filled with blogging about being a wife and mother and my stories became tailored for public reading. While I wasn’t quite so raw and vulnerable, those stories are archived and still continue to be cherished.

Around 15 years ago, I experienced trauma and heartache like I had not experienced previously, and I found my story telling evolved again. I started my own therapeutic journey and discovered a safe place in the therapeutic relationship with my counselor to tell the stories I had never been able to tell before. Through the different courses of therapy, I found a strength and relief of sharing the most vulnerable parts of myself. Soon after, I started sharing my story more publicly. I told parts of my story to trusted friends and family. Sometimes, my story was honored and cherished. Sometimes, it wasn’t. In the times that my people sat with me and held space for my grief and pain, I found soul-deep connection and healing that I didn’t know was possible.

I began writing again and this time, it was to tell the deepest and darkest parts of my story. I didn’t know who would read it or if anyone even wanted to read my story. But I wrote it, and people did read it, and then, they began telling me their stories. I discovered a human experience that writers have expressed over and over again. Carl Rogers (the father of person-centered therapy) described it in his book, On Becoming a Person as such: “what is most personal and unique in each one of us is probably the very element which would, if it were shared or expressed, speak most deeply to others.”

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love expressed in her book Big Magic, that storytelling is both an act of creativity and survival, and quoted the Gospel of Thomas when she said, “Not expressing creativity turns people crazy… ‘If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you don’t bring forth what is within you, what you don’t bring forth will destroy you.’”

Audre Lorde, in her essay The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action told us, “I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.” Natalie Goldberg, in Writing Down the Bones, said, “In knowing who you are and writing from it, you will help the world by giving it understanding.” I fully believe that there is no human experience so unique that there is not at least one person out there who can understand, empathize, and truly see you. We find those people by telling our stories.

And Sue Monk Kidd in Dance of the Dissident Daughter shared her experience of finding community through stories: “…we began to meet regularly to talk about our lives as women… It became a mutual process of self-discovery… Together, over time, we named our lives as women, named our wounds, named our sacred realities. To say it simply, we helped each other.”

When I began the last year of my undergraduate degree, I was faced with the decision of what to do post-graduation. Prior to my experiences with devastating trauma, I had been considering getting a PhD in social psychology. After experiencing trauma though, I decided that getting a PhD was no longer an option for the time being. It wasn’t an easy decision to make, but I had seen over and over how short and fragile life was, and I needed to consider the time and energy of commitments in a way that I had not needed to before. I had to mourn the loss of that future though, the one in which people called me “Dr.” This was in addition to the many other losses I was facing and had faced. I considered many different education options including teaching, law, art and design, and more. Somewhere along the decision-making process it occurred to me that I had spent so much of my life focused on stories. I had fallen in love with the human experience and all the stories that make up who and what we are.

I had embedded deep within my own personal theory on happiness and fulfillment the idea that all of these people had described: Our stories are important. The answer for what I wanted to do with my life, what I would be good at, and what I would enjoy day in and day out, was facilitating others in telling their stories. The therapeutic process can look so many different ways. What I have experienced myself and seen over and over again, is that healing and strength happen through the process of telling your story – whatever that story may be.

Black History Month 2024

By Charmaine Fuller

Writing about Black History Month as a White woman is a daunting task. How do I use my privilege and position to talk about the struggles of Black people and honor their amazing contributions to the fields of psychology and therapy?

Well, first, I think it is important to acknowledge that as a white woman, the privilege I was born into makes it so that I will never know what it is like to live as a Black person in our country. And as such, I will likely make mistakes as I try to engage in empathy and understanding. I invite others to correct me or point out when I am blinded by my privilege.

In the same beat though, it is my responsibility to be informed. It absolutely is not the responsibility of my clients, friends, or colleagues to educate me. As a licensed professional, I am literally responsible to seek out education and resources pertaining to multicultural competency as a part of my licensure. And as such, I wanted to highlight a few of the things I have learned from Black people.

Who Was Audrey Lorde?

Audre Lorde was a feminist during the second wave of feminism and a lesbian who spoke often about the plight of queer women in America. In a letter she wrote to the author of Gyn/Ecology in May of 1979, she explained her frustration in attempting to teach white women about racism: “I had decided never again to speak to white women about racism. I felt it was wasted energy because of destructive guilt and defensiveness, and because whatever I had to say might better be said by white women to one another at far less emotional cost to the speaker, and probably with better hearing.”

Throughout my career I have been reminded in several ways that if I want to be an advocate and an ally, I have to know how to use my privilege appropriately. One way is by speaking up about how racism manifests at both micro and macro levels. Black people face unique difficulties when it comes to mental health. We know that they are less likely to have access to healthcare and less likely to seek out services.

When they do seek that care, they are less likely to receive appropriate help, accurate diagnoses, or enough care. Black people are overrepresented in schizophrenia diagnoses and underrepresented in neurodiversity and PTSD diagnoses. As mental health professionals, it is our job to be aware of these disparities. Our work is to understand how cultural differences, history of trauma, and abuse all impact psychological well-being . As an advocate for my minority clients and ally of movements like Black Lives Matter, I want to be aware of these things and know how to speak to others about them.

Who is Luvvie Ajayi Jones?

Luvvie Ajayi Jones is a Nigerian American writer who, in her TEDtalk, spoke about being a “professional troublemaker.” She gave us a simple guide for having difficult conversations. I’ve used and taught her questions countless times. She offers these three questions to ask yourself before saying difficult things or having uncomfortable conversations: Did you mean it? Can you defend it? And, did you say it with love? These three questions are a brilliant start to open conversations for deeper understanding, appreciation, and care.

Generational trauma is one area that is getting more and more attention in the mental health field. Every one of us has trauma that has been passed down through actions and behaviors in our family systems, and genetically. Resmaa Menakem, a leader in the field of psychotherapy, has spoken and written about generational trauma often. He says, “The answer to why so many of us have difficulties is because our ancestors spent centuries here under unrelentingly brutal conditions.

Generation after generation, our bodies stored trauma and intense survival energy, and passed these on to our children and grandchildren.” Understanding that everyone carries around the trauma passed on to them is imperative as a mental health provider. Which means, it’s also important for us, as mental health professionals, to be curious. I can learn and read about the systems of oppression for my Black clients, but it’s also important to be curious about the individual’s experiences: of their history, their family, and their family’s history. Resmaa Menakem has also stressed this when he said,

“Trauma in a person, decontextualized over time, looks like personality. Trauma in a family, decontextualized over time, looks like family traits. Trauma in a people, decontextualized over time, looks like culture. ” Context matters, and curiosity gets us more context.

Being Multiculturally Informed

So, how do we, as White people, in a field where Whiteness is overrepresented, build context so that we can be more multiculturally informed? Seek out Black creators in all the places you look for content. Read poetry from people that look different from you. Listen to the music and seek art from artists of all backgrounds and cultures. Follow Black creators on social media. And most importantly, be quiet and curious. What do I mean when I say, “be quiet?” I mean don’t take up space that isn’t meant for you.

As White people we have privilege and take up more space than we always need to. If the space is specific or particular to Black individuals, be quiet and curious. One blogger, Flavia Dzoden, wrote “My feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit.” I am reminded repeatedly that my privilege often blinds me to the plight of those less privileged than I am. Being quiet and curious when people speak and write about their experiences, which are different my own, helps to remind me that being an intersectional feminist means doing the work of diversity, equality, and inclusion of everyone.

Happy Black History Month!

1. When I Dare to Be Powerful

2. My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies

3. Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso (Podcast), Episode 200

   My Feminism Will Be Intersectional or it Will Be Bullshit, published Oct 10,

4. 2011, on Tigerbeatdown.com