Horror & Life: Telling a Story in Order Not to Run

Abstract

In my paper, I develop and reflect on a method that is close to writing therapy, in which writing is used to cope with difficult experiences including mental and physical illness and is partially inspired by the principles of narrative medicine. The method which I am proposing is about combining own experience with the body and with medical encounters with supernatural horror (horror movies/books/one’s own horror stories) to tell a story that can ease anxiety. More importantly, to combine own experience with the body/medical encounters with supernatural horror could be a way of telling the body’s stories to oneself and of translating the body language to oneself to reach an understanding (if ever possible), to cope with the body unknown, and to advance communication skills when faced with the medical personnel. To produce such a story does not mean giving in to the neo-liberal culture of an individual who is able to fix every problem on their own. It also does not mean that doctors should be released from the responsibilities set by their profession. In fact, such storytelling, such narrative competence has to do with the need of the embodied, embedded, relational, and multiple self to regain and/or maintain its agency in the flux of life in general and when opening the doors to the medical centres in particular.