I’ve been trying to do that for years, and I think I’m quite successful at it. I explain that genuine mental health issues, including trauma, are absolutely the domain of therapists, whilst we focus more on everyday life, where mental struggles naturally occur regularly. When it comes to our work, I’m not talking about mental health issues but about mental wellbeing and resilience. I also always emphasise that what we do is more about self-help, within which we can offer a method to work through your own story. Of course, I realise better than anyone what creating and sharing your story can do to someone emotionally. I experience that almost daily and I delved into it to write about it. And yet, that question would sometimes pop into my head too. What is the real difference?

Sometimes an insight comes from an unexpected source. In this case, from my friend Chat, also known to some as ChatGPT. I’m not quite sure what to make of all these AI developments yet, but in the meantime, I’m using it too to make my life a bit easier. After I’d entered some findings from workshops as part of a European project (on the mental resilience of refugees with an Arab background), Chat came up with a lovely piece of text containing this sentence:

Storytelling strengthens mental resilience not by forcing recovery, but by creating a space in which recovery can take place.

Do you know that feeling, when you think you see a ‘eureka’ light above your head? These are the words I’ve been searching for for a few years! This expresses exactly how I view the creation and sharing of stories in a social and therapeutic context. Or rather, outside a (formal) therapeutic context. It immediately makes clear what the difference is and also how the two can complement each other for people in emotional distress. 

I’m going to memorise this sentence and I’m already saying ahead of every future training session or presentation: bring on that question!