The Power of Stories to Wound and Heal

In 2017, my friend Karletta - a marketing content specialist - started to collect and curate interesting human stories that she found on social media. She felt that the macrocosmic world views being amplified in mainstream media don't reflect what real life is - how "ordinary" people experience and navigate life; how people make a difference in their world.

She wanted to explore these granular stories through the voice of the individual, and thus was born a project that she calls Daily Inspired Life. Each story is written in the protagonist's own voice and words, and lightly edited by Karletta. Recently, Karletta posted a story about a family's loss of an unborn baby boy. To her surprise, this story received more unsubscribes than any other story she has published, and she was curious to know why. In order to understand this spike in unsubscribes, it's important to first understand who her audience is.

The Daily Inspired Life Tribe

I went through the comments and feedback on Karletta's posts, to try to uncover her audience archetypes.

The majority of the audience are women from all over the world, and a high percentage of these women are American. These users are extremely engaged with the format of the stories - which are all about "ordinary" people experiencing (and transforming through) events that many others can relate to. There is almost always an overarching, inspiring and philosophical message about life.

The key theme within the user feedback is the expression of their feelings about the content, and how relatable it is. In psychological terms, what these these empathic individuals experience is called emotional contagion.

Whoa!! Talk about goosebumps! What an empowering message. I went through an unbelievable cancer situation last summer and I had a similar mindset outcome. Thank you for sharing!

This tribe are deeply empathic and sensitive. They need to feel emotionally connected to - and uplifted by - the content. But, perhaps more importantly, there needs to be a "resolution". There needs to be a "reason" - how and why XYZ made the hero/heroine of the story a better, stronger or wiser person. If the experience had an outcome of helping others, even better! Karletta has published hard hitting stories in the past, but somehow, the story of a baby boy who died in utero touched a nerve with a segment of her audience to such a degree that they disengaged completely.

Why?

Let's look at the current backdrop for most people at this present time. The 2020 pandemic has been a game changer for so many of us. Any pressures we have been living with on a personal level prior to The Virus have been exacerbated.

On the larger world stage, there has been a lot of socio-political turmoil this year. The lockdowns, the very public murder of George Floyd, the ensuing BLM protests that have sprung up around the world, the conspiracy theories, the infiltration of politics into what is, essentially, a public health issue, and the economic consequences of a disease (for which there is no current cure) have been unsettling, to say the least.

For the empaths of the world, this has been disturbing and distressing. There are no resolutions in sight. No reason, no apparent lesson. Just a relentless stream of sad, depressing events from all over the world.

Information Fatigue

The political polarization and angry comments have returned to social media with a vengeance, after a brief, shocked hiatus at the onset of the pandemic, where I observed that people on social media were appearing to be more altruistic.

Subsequently, many, many people have experienced personal loss. There isn't much good news to be found either in mainstream media or on social media. We are literally being flooded with stories that make us feel overwhelmed, angry, isolated, despairing - or just wanting to dial out of the chatter in what can feel like an increasingly unpleasant and unfamiliar world.

For those who have personally experienced loss, hearing sad stories can reactivate feelings. The most primal human response is to avoid this, and the easiest way to do so is to unsubscribe, or mute.

If a story resonates too deeply, the emotional wound can be profound. The psychological "fullness" empathic people are feeling at this point in time is composed of layers of pain - both existential and personal.

There is a global “mood” right now, politically and socially, of uncertainty and fear.

Is Business as Usual a Myth?

We are living in extraordinary times. Like a meme, the mental health impact of The Virus has infected many people.

This pandemic has exposed fissures in political and social systems, and indeed very often in our own relationships, our jobs, our lifestyles, where we live and our personal worldview. The naked bodies of political Emperors cannot be unseen. Populism will eat itself could be a fitting mantra for the consequences of some political landscapes, as body counts rise in countries like Brazil and the USA, and politics become ever more toxic and divisive in countries like Poland, which recently took an ominous stance against the LGBTQ community and "foreigners". This is in stark contrast to leadership in New Zealand, for example, where more "feminine", inclusive values are entrenched in the politics - and the response to the pandemic.

Escapism has never had more appeal

For this particular (largely female) audience, storytelling is a potent form of escapism into the simple beauty and strength of the human spirit. A retreat into - and celebration of -"feminine" values.

So back to those unsubscribes ... I haven't been given access to the users who unsubscribed, but reading between the lines, here is my hypothesis : Given that this is a sensitive, empathic audience, who are, by degrees, collectively going through an experience that is anything but normal, it would appear that for a portion of this tribe, some content can resonate too deeply at this time. Emotions, for many, are heightened and tolerance levels are lower.

Just like the principles of homeopathic medicine - a little of what can harm you can also heal you - it's all about the dosage and timing

For a proportion of the Daily Inspired Life tribe, now is not the right time to touch raw nerves. Now is the time to deliver content that provides hope, answers and triumph.

User needs obviously change over time, and as cultural, political and technological trends impact our collective experience, we should be updating our understanding of our users and taking into account how these external factors play into their innate needs and goals. We should always be looking at all of the subtle factors that influence users of our content, product or service, and evolving and iterating our personas to reflect this. A deeper understanding of the wants, needs, feelings and drivers of behaviour within our audiences will result in more meaningful, intuitive relationships with them.

And one thing that will never change is the fact that human beings are all about relationships.