The power of self-narratives in health

Abstract

Several studies have suggested that narratives play a central role in different domains of the individual’s life. People make sense of their lives by creating life stories and self-narratives which may be conceived as a set of rules that guide the construction of meanings and behaviors. In this chapter, we discuss the relevance of self-narratives in health domain, assuming that coherent, congruent and flexible narratives are a core issue in the process of adaptation to illness and promotion of well-being. On the other hand, problematic self-narratives are associated with poor health indicators. Given that the experience of chronic and/or life threatening diseases often implies a biographical disruption challenging patient’s meaning making processes, we propose a method to explore the process of narrative change in health contexts