Your Favorite TV Show Could Be Your Key to Survival
Written by Manny Cantu, LPC-A, Licensed Therapist
Before I became a counselor, I graduated from UT Film School and was determined to be either a cinematographer or a screenwriter. Little did I know, life ironically had some plot twists and surprises ahead that eventually forced me to “reframe” (photo pun intended) how I saw myself. While I do still daydream about living out my artistic passion, I am confident that I found my true calling as a professional counselor.
Luckily, I found a way to blend my love of storytelling with a therapeutic approach built upon critical parts of media and literature: universal themes, character building, symbolism, metaphor, and interpretation.
We All Have a Story…But Who is Telling It?
Narrative therapy is a counseling orientation that believes healing occurs from first telling one’s story and then rewriting it. It aims to help clients identify what stories they tell themselves about themselves and how these beliefs are affecting them. Moreover, it works to understand where these narratives came from – oftentimes our own families, cultures, and communities.
Once you isolate your struggles (depression and anxiety, for example) as things that exist outside of yourself – again, deciding who you “are” and rewriting that story – you can feel empowered to change by envisioning a new version of yourself. Too often, we let dehumanizing and oppressive narratives infiltrate our own sense of self. Take for instance, the systemic and cultural oppression that results from racial stereotypes and political propaganda that aims to demonize the “other.” This can lead to debilitating self-narratives built on internalized racism, homophobia, and myriad forms of self-hatred.
If I am working with a client who frequently brings up the media and literature they consume, whether it’s television, film, or books, I will invite them to do an exercise. I believe there are clues to our healing embedded right in the stories we find ourselves constantly drawn to. We can't control the stories that are told about us and our communities by oppressive systems, but we can take back and rewrite those narratives. This is a necessary component of liberation and why I love narrative therapy so much. Social justice is built into it.
Looking for the Self in Characters Real and Imagined
There’s a reason people idolize movie and television stars, why we can often name celebrities or characters who we look to for style inspiration or quotes we live by. Art has been our way of understanding our world for centuries. Many communities are only just starting to see their stories told in responsible and affirming ways, and the effects of being invisible on screens and in literature has ripple effects that lead to low self-esteem and a self-image that views anything outside of heteronormative Eurocentric standards as less-than.
I had a client who loved to talk about film, so one day I asked them to list their top five favorite films. Once we had the titles, I asked them to tell me who their favorite character was. Not surprisingly, the protagonist in each film was always an anti-hero, or a lead character who is neither entirely good or bad, but exists in some moral gray area we can all relate to. My client often dealt with feelings of shame and low self-worth, which these characters were normally grappling with themselves. When I asked this client to tell me which character they most related to, however, it was often a side character or someone who wasn’t driving the story. This spoke to their general feeling of powerlessness and ambivalence about their life.
It’s worth looking at the people we are drawn to and what they say about us. Are they a reflection or a foil? Do they represent a stark contrast to who we are and therefore embody who we want to be? Do they feel like a version of ourselves, like the writer took everything in our brain and fashioned a character around it? Perhaps these characters help clarify our values or remind us of an influential person in our life. These personalities, real or imagined, can speak to us in many ways.
Haunted Houses and Fantastic Lands… Which Worlds Are You Inhabiting?
There is a theory that people with high levels of anxiety are drawn to horror films. It seems like a paradox, doesn’t it? Jump scares, grotesque images, and unsettling sequences – why on earth would someone with anxiety willingly subject themselves to this? Precisely because it’s a choice. The horror genre can be its own form of exposure therapy, which allows people to practice coping with anxiety in a controlled environment and experience release in a safe setting.
My client loved the fantasy genre, specifically stories in which an outsider is exploring a world completely unknown to them. Not surprisingly, a topic that kept coming up before we did this exercise was their feeling that no one understood them. They often felt like they were navigating a world they didn’t understand – the values, the ways people treated each other, all felt foreign to them. Also present in these particular fantastic tales were themes of power and control, fighting against an oppressive system or ruler. My client found comfort in the characters fighting for the greater good and validated by the fact that it wasn’t so easy for them either. Imagine, too, the catharsis any minoritized person might feel in accompanying heroes who are treated as outsiders and persist in spite of that.
The Exciting Thing About Story-Telling
What do we do with this brand new knowledge of the self-narratives we have been believing (sometimes mistakenly) our whole lives? We start rewriting our history. Telling our story from our point of view, free from the opinions and prejudices of society, free from the hurtful voices of those who robbed us of our self worth. Why don’t we like ourselves? Is it because homophobic, racist or sexist values told us we were nothing? If that’s the case, do those values line up with our own personal view of the world? If not, why keep being governed by them?
We can examine our history and retell it from our own perspective, with more accurate fact-checking and acknowledgement of the roles trauma, mistreatment, and manipulation played. We give ourselves compassion and look at our past selves as people who deserve our kindness and understanding. We tell their story and heal the splintered parts of our identity.
A story can have so many interpretations and endings. One sentence can branch out into a thousand possible journeys. Where do you want your own journey to go? What happens in the next chapter, episode, act of your life? You have more power than you know to author your own destiny. With higher levels of hope, you can live a fantastic story!
