In his article, “Hugging the Chaos” content marketing strategist, author and speaker Robert Rose addresses the inherent contradiction, and yet importance, of learning to approach and embrace that which we feel fearful or uncomfortable with. In the face of chaos, he describes how story-telling can be a powerful tool which emerges to create a new experience. Applied to a marketing context, he discusses how his grandfather’s words  ‘when you create a new experience for someone, you get to experience it – and in turn it creates new opportunity for you’ have become integral to his concept of story-telling in marketing , and in particular , creating stories and new experiences for clients.

Importantly, he suggests that these stories can be co-created by marketer and client, through engaging with the content from a stance of openness, and embracing the chaos of the unknown. In his words, he advises readers to “ find the time to not only embrace the chaos… But find the time to love it…. Use the benefit of NOT KNOWING what the answer is to summon your inspiration, your wisdom… And to tell your story…”.

While his article addresses the relationship between marketer and client , the approach he proposes has many parallels with therapy and indeed, the therapeutic alliance itself. My stance,  when I approach a client,  is hopefully always from a position of openness, where I assume I ‘know nothing’ (or very little) about their life or experiences to date and that the only way I can know more is through asking questions and listening closely while their story unfolds. I take on, not the position of an expert, but rather co-facilitator in the experience which we then collaborate on and venture through together.

On a subtler level, I also encourage clients to use the safety of the therapy space to become authors of their own life stories to date, and in particular, of events where they have experienced trauma or chaos in their pasts. As they fill in the gaps, which often occur in our life stories where something painful occurred, they begin to make more sense of their past experiences and feel a greater sense of clarity and awareness of their personal narrative to date. In their re-storying, some may experience more empathy or even forgiveness for situations where they felt previously wronged by others or even let down by themselves, which can be very empowering.  Through embracing their unknowns and anxieties embedded in the past, they learn to hug their own chaos and become storytellers capable of re-authoring how they choose to see the past and move forward in the present.

References

(1) Reference Link: “Hugging the Chaos”, by Robert Rose (2012), http://bigbluemoose.net/hugging-the-chaos