Telling each other stories of what happens in our lives brings connection and belonging. In this blog, I’m going to break down the term Story Swapping from the autism community and how all of us doing it can bring us together.
What is “Story Swapping”?
When I say Story Swapping, this is when we share a similar experience we may have had to someone else. Say you’re having a conversation with a friend and they’ve just told you about an encounter that didn’t go to plan. Instinctively as an autistic person, to try and show you were listening you share a similar experience you’ve had.
Sadly, this kind of gesture can be misinterpreted as us trying to take the attention away from the friend and put it on ourselves. This isn’t what we’re trying to do at all. In Dr Megan A Neff’s book Self-Care For Autistic People, she says “Within Autistic culture, story swapping serves as a means of connecting, relating, and expressing empathy.”
How To Join In
When we understand what Story Swapping is, it gives us a new light as to how we communicate with one another. As human beings we love stories. So, how can we spread that love with one another?
The easiest way we can do that is to twist how we swap our stories. When someone tells us about something that happened that we have experience of, when they’ve finished we can tell ours and play on the relatability. Ask the person/people you’ve told the story to that when that happened to you, it made you feel a certain emotion and ask if it was the same for them.
Alternatively, you can share how it made you feel and how did they handle the situation. This gives the friend the opportunity to positively start a back and forth conversation with you as to what happened and how you both got through it, especially if it was really stressful.
Not only does this kind of response show you were listening, but you were also asking them a question that shows it too. This gives you the opportunity to make a deeper connection with your friend. Don’t worry if it takes you a bit of time to build up your confidence to be able to interact this way. Don’t worry either if the conversation carries on past their story. It happens and you shouldn’t feel pressured to react to absolutely everything in the conversation. It’s exhausting trying to do that in every conversation.
In Summary…
So I hope my little blog post is insightful on what Story Swapping is and how we can all twist how we share personal stories in our interactions with one another. We love our stories, so finding new ways to gain a deeper connection with our fellow humans isn’t a bad thing. Just remember not to push yourself too hard to keep up. Look after yourselves.
For more information on autism, you can check out my other blogs on celebrating autism, books to read and how to write diverse characters.