The Power of Storytelling in Healing from Incest
Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash
After repressing my brother’s incest abuse for 14 years, I told my story to a therapist for the first time. Although I’d been molested between the ages of 7 and 10, I excelled academically and musically and strived for perfection throughout high school and college. Giving my account aloud during graduate school began a long journey of recovery.
Complex trauma, unlike single-incident trauma (like a car accident or tornado), involves repeated, prolonged exposure to harmful or distressing events, and usually occurs within a context of abuse. 1 Survivors of this type of trauma often suffer from chronic feelings of shame, relationship difficulties, dissociation, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction, and/or physical illness. (Please consider reading The Effects of Incest on Adult Life)
For thousands of years human beings have shared stories and experiences as a means of making sense of our lives and building connections with others. Incest survivors can process their abuse experiences through storytelling in safe environments as one step in moving from a feeling of victimhood to empowerment.
Psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk writes that trauma survivors often experience their memories in disjointed, non-linear fragments, making it difficult for them to comprehend the full scope of their experiences. 2 Telling their stories in counseling or in a survivor’s group can help them organize their memories into a logical narrative.
In narrative therapy, clients are encouraged to retell their stories with an emphasis on identifying patterns, exploring meanings, and reframing their trauma in ways that reflect growth and resilience. This allows survivors to integrate their memories, giving them a greater sense of control over their past. 3
Incest survivors often feel shame, powerless, and blame themselves for the abuse. Telling their stories, especially in a therapeutic setting, can help them view their trauma as something they have endured rather than something that defines them. This attitude shift can reduce feelings of shame or inadequacy and increase one’s sense of agency, resiliency, self-compassion and growth. (How to Find Your Voice After Surviving Incest offers guidance to this end.)
Each time I shared the account of my incest abuse, either in therapy, a survivor’s group, or in writing my memoir, Peeling Away the Façade: The Long Shadow of Child Abuse, I released pent-up grief, pain and anger. In telling my story, I confronted, then let go of emotions which no longer served me. Those exhausting feelings were replaced with relief and healing.
Creating Community
One of the most distressing effects of incest is a sense of isolation, an inability to relate to people who haven’t suffered sexual abuse. But sharing your story in counseling, a support group, or a creative outlet, can result in connection and community. During a Saprea retreat I attended in 2022, survivors listened to and empathized with each other. In that safe setting, we felt understood and whole. It was a truly restorative experience. My group of 9 women has a private Facebook page where we stay in touch and celebrate our progress and collective resilience. Additionally, Saprea offers myriad materials and videos to further recovery.
Author Barbara Kyle recently wrote that neuroscientists found that hearing or reading stories increases the brain’s secretion of oxytocin, a hormone that plays a key role in social bonding. They also learned that imagining the lives of other people activates nerve cells in the brain (mirror neurons) that allow us to empathize. She concluded that by telling our stories and “by empathizing with the eternal human condition—we are changed for good.” 4
More than one perspective
“Everybody, including children, has a story to tell that can break your heart. People record their life experiences, both pleasant and painful, in story form. People’s stories are not neutral but partial, told from the angle of vision of the owner of the story.” 4
In Narrative Therapy a therapist helps to elicit elements of the story from each family member, then helps to integrate the pieces into a cohesive whole that includes perspectives from each person. For example, if my adult family gathered to discuss the incest abuse, I would share my experience of being bribed into ever more exploitative sexual behavior. I would disclose that I never considered telling my volatile parents who valued males more than females. My sister might share that she was not molested but punched and shot in the legs with a b-b gun by our brother. Perhaps our brother would admit to hurting both of us and add that he was molested by a teen neighbor. Our parents would probably be stunned and express remorse for being unaware of the unhealthy behavior in their household and for giving the message that only males counted.
The therapist would encourage the family to appreciate that each member is a “partial knower,” and in the giving-and-taking turns between telling the story and listening to others, family members would grow in appreciation for their multiple viewpoints. This storytelling could foster making amends, help weave the family together, and allow space for individual recovery and development. 5
Lantz and Raiz take this approach a step further, writing, “Through telling the story of the trauma, an individual or family can gain a sense of mastery over the traumatic event(s) by talking out alternative endings, what they wished had happened or what they would have like to have done differently.” 6
A family who had lost a daughter, sister, and mother to domestic violence sought therapy due to overwhelming feelings of guilt. The mother fantasized that she’d known of the domestic abuse and was able to convince her daughter to leave the relationship. The sister imagined she had visited that fateful night and prevented the couple’s argument from getting out of hand. The victim’s children speculated that calling 911 sooner could have saved their mother.
Hearing alternative endings allowed the children to discuss how helpless they felt during their parents’ fights. All family members realized how much they wished they could have prevented their loved one’s death and were able to support each other in laying down that burden of regret. An additional benefit of this kind of storytelling is the development of problem-solving skills or new coping strategies for difficult situations.
Reclaiming Our Agency and Empowerment
Complex trauma frequently leaves survivors feeling powerless and trapped. A crucial aspect of healing is regaining a sense of agency and control over our lives. Sharing stories of trauma in a way that emphasizes strength and resilience allows us to reclaim our voices and our ability to make choices. It is often cathartic, promotes recovery, and helps us move toward a hopeful future. 1
I hope incest survivors will contemplate how telling their story might be one element of their healing journey. Each of us is unique, strong, and deserves serenity and joy in our lives.
1 Center for Trauma and Embodiment. (2025). Storytelling and complex trauma healing: the power of narrative in recovery.
2 B van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma: (New York: Penguin, 2014).
3 M White & D. Epston, Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends: (New York: Norton, 1990).
4 Kyle, B. (2025). Your brain on writing. A Mentoring Message, July 17.
5 Nwoye, A. (2006). A narrative approach to child and family therapy in Africa. Contemporary Family Therapy, 28(1), 1-23.
6 Morgan, A. (2000). What is narrative therapy? Retrieved from http://dulwichcentre.com.aw/alicearticle.html
7 Lantz, J. & Raiz, L. (2003). Play and art in existential trauma therapy with children and their parents. Contemporary Family Therapy: An International Journal. 25(2): 165-177.
