Some people don't know how to get their needs met in their relationships or with a therapist, so they bring it all to story circles.
This does not apply to every personal story. Stories of loss, grief, pain, and all difficult emotions can be riveting and fulfilling for the audience.
But perhaps we all could use a refresher on what a story is and what it isn't.
A story is a series of events leading to a conclusion, according to the dictionary.
It's not pointless meandering. It's not a crazy quilt of facts or anecdotes. That kind of self-service brings the audience to the excruciating edge of patience and physical tolerance. One method of torture is to keep someone trapped in one position for too long, so to pile story on top of story because it's "your time", to meander uncontrollably, to stack up facts without conclusion is practically criminal.
I think we need to visit the benefits of boundaries when it comes to story sharing, because if we don't we are allowing the self-serving to kill it. We're killing ourselves to be kind toward the passive-aggressive people who refuse to respect the form. We're being nice to our torturers, and we're allowing them to chip away at the very thing we love by allowing them to disrespect it.
It needs to be stated: this is a story circle, not therapy. Everyone's story matters, in equal measure. Everyone gets the same number of turns and the same amount of time-no exceptions for the greedy. And everyone is expected to tell a story.
The need we should be serving is the the need to keep story gatherings about stories.
