Storytelling is Medicine
The neuroscience of narrative, memories and how they evolved to help us flourish.
Hi there,
Katina here, Daydreamers Co-founder and Chief Science Officer. If you’re new here, welcome! For the past four months, we’ve been writing this newsletter as a space to explore the science of Creative Health - and what it really means to feel creatively fulfilled in a world that’s increasingly uncertain, lonely, and, frankly, exhausting.
But, we’ve been building Daydreamers - and our Creative Health movement - for much longer.
Years ago, we started the early innings of Daydreamers because we wanted to feel alive again. We wanted to stop feeling like machines, trapped on this endless, repetitive hamster wheel of work, errands and productivity.
And lately, that idea - so central to our original ethos - has been top of mind for me again: How do we make sure we don’t become machines?
This question isn’t symbolic or funny anymore. It’s not just that our work leaves us burned out. That we keep chasing productivity hacks to get more done in less time. That we scroll, refresh and repeat - pulling the dopamine lever over and over again, hoping for something more than a temporary hit.
What scares me is something quieter and more insidious: We’re losing access to the stories we tell about our own lives.
More and more, our inner world - our thoughts, our memories, our sense of self - is being outsourced to technology. AI summarizes our learnings. Our camera rolls tell us what’s worth remembering. Our identities, once shaped through reflection and expression, are being flattened into a neat little gigabyte.
So, where do we draw the line? And most importantly, how do we really return to the core essence of our humanity - the stuff technology, capitalism and “progress” can’t take away?
As a Creative Health Scientist, I think the answer lies in exactly what we’ve tried to replicate in machine-form: The beauty and magic of our creative, storytelling brain.
Our brains were built to tell stories - not just to entertain people, but to make sense of life. To process pain, connect with ourselves and others more deeply, and imagine a new future. And when we disconnect from that inner narrator, research shows it can lead to mental fragmentation, emotional dysregulation, chronic stress and even physical symptoms.
Despite what we’ve been taught, our personal narratives aren’t set in stone. Our memories aren’t a hard drive. They’re actually living and breathing stories with the capacity to be re-edited every time you recall them.
Whether you realize it or not, your inner narrator is shaping your identity, relationships, and experience of the world every single day. And when we consciously shape our own story, rather than passively reacting to it, we don’t just feel more in control - ultimately, we feel more alive.
So today, we’re diving into the neuroscience of narrative - and why reclaiming your story might just be the most powerful creative act you can take right now.
The Neuroscience of Narrative: How It Shapes Memory, Our Lives And The World
Roughly 70,000 years ago, the human brain made what scientists call a genetic “mistake.”
But, this wasn’t a malfunction. It was actually an evolutionary leap - a small biological shift that completely transformed the trajectory of our species: We got the unique ability to imagine futures that didn’t yet exist.
That tiny little genetic blip became the foundation of what anthropologists call the Cognitive Revolution - and marked the birth of storytelling: the most creative, human tool we have.
At first, stories helped us survive. They allowed us to warn, teach, bond, and collaborate. But soon, they became the architecture of entire civilizations. Stories helped us build religions, laws, economies, and heck, even brands. They still do - AI is fundamentally an effort to replicate the narrative capacity of the human mind. Wild, right?
But somewhere along the way, we forgot that storytelling isn’t just cultural. It’s a biological superpower.
Our brain is wired to think in story. Not occasionally - but constantly. Think of it this way: Every memory you retrieve, every plan you make, every version of yourself you construct - it’s all narrative.
At the center of our storytelling brain is the Default Mode Network (our favorite here at Daydreamers). The DMN is a network of brain regions that activates when we’re not focused on the outside world - basically, when we’re daydreaming, imagining, reflecting or remembering. In other words, when we’re doing the most you things. The things that modern life tries to squeeze out.
We’ve talked quite a bit about the DMN in past newsletters before, but we haven’t explored the crucial role it plays in constructing your narrative identity. One of its main functions is integrating your past, present, and future into a cohesive self. It’s what helps make sense of life events, simulate potential outcomes, and assign an emotional weight to experience.
Think of it as your brain’s inner storytelling engine - the neurological foundation of your inner life.
And, when we consciously connect with our narrative capacity it’s not just creative; it’s deeply healing. Studies show that people who are able to craft coherent life stories with a sense of growth, agency, or even redemption experience significantly greater psychological well-being, specifically related to resilience, purpose, and self-esteem.
Some of the earliest research in this space showed that narrating your life experiences - even for just 15 minutes a day - can reduce anxiety, improve immune function, and strengthen cognitive processing.
How powerful is that? Just turning your life experiences into story is one of the most powerful tools for mental and even physical health.
But, in a time when we’re outsourcing our reflection to algorithms, replacing memory with camera rolls, and rarely making time to think in solitude - our storytelling muscles begin to atrophy.
And, when narrative breaks down - or even more, when it turns in on itself - it can trap us inside our own head. Think of it this way:
Rumination is a story on loop
Depression is often a story of stuckness and hopelessness
Anxiety is a future-focused story spiraling out of control
Here’s the good news: Your narrative isn’t set in stone. It’s living, editable, and completely yours to shape.
Even more, our creative, storytelling brain never disappears. It just goes quiet. And when we return to it - not to perform, but to express - we begin to reclaim something vital. We reconnect with the very thing that makes us human.
So, if you feel stuck, burned out, or like you’re living a life that doesn’t feel like your own - the answer isn’t more productivity. It’s to remember how to tell your story again.
Because narrative is the foundation of meaning, healing, and creative health. And, when we choose to rewrite it? That’s the most revolutionary act of all.
Photoshop Your Memory: Your Brain Thinks in Images, First
One of the biggest misconceptions about storytelling - especially in a world built on short social media captions and clickbait headlines - is that you have to be good at writing.
Even though writing is my favorite form of expression, I’ll be the first to tell you, that’s not how the brain works.
In fact, here’s something most people don’t know: Narrative isn’t even primarily verbal. It’s visual.
Research shows the brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text. Even more, our brain encodes memories and constructs meaning using images first - long before it translates those into words.
This is why dreams, flashbacks, and imagination all appear as vivid mental pictures. Jungian psychologists call this our active imagination. Neuroscientists link this capacity to the visual cortex, hippocampus, and the default mode network - the same regions involved in memory, identity, and creativity.
That’s exactly the reason why at Daydreamers, we actually focus on starting your Creative Health practice with images, not words. Before you ever write a single sentence, we give you space to express visually - through color, mood, motion, metaphor.
Because the core essence of being creatively healthy is about reclaiming authorship over your own story - not to polish it for others, but to finally be honest with yourself. It’s about learning to edit, rewrite, and remix the narratives that no longer serve you in the most foundational way.
One of our crowd favorite tools is this “deceptively simple” scratch pad (it’s also my personal favorite). It’s low-stakes, intuitive, nostalgic and immediately opens up access to your inner world through simple images. Plus it automatically looks good.
And honestly, the goal here isn’t to make “art” - it’s to help our storytelling brain remember how to find meaning.
Image-based storytelling is supported by research on expressive narrative practices, which show that visual storytelling in particular - like collage, drawing, even abstract mark-making - can help us access and reshape our emotional memory. These practices bypass our inner critic, regulate the nervous system, and restore a sense of agency - especially for people who don’t see themselves as “creative.”
When you see your story visually, you start to understand it differently. You start to notice different patterns. You feel things again.
That’s where the healing starts.
Regardless of how you do it, expression - in any form - is one of the oldest technologies we have. It’s how humans have made sense of loss, love, power, longing, even hope. That’s something you can’t outsource. You can’t automate it.
In a world constantly pulling us toward productivity and passivity, reclaiming your narrative might just be the most radical thing you do.
So, what if we stopped waiting for permission to tell a “better” story? What if, instead, we started living one - moment by moment, idea by idea?
We built Daydreamers for that exact revolution. And we’re excited you’re on this journey with us 🪐
- Katina
Daydreamers’ Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer
Your Creative Act: Share This Newsletter With Someone Who Needs It
Creative Health isn’t just a nice-to-have - it’s the missing link for our mental, emotional and collective well-being. And at Daydreamers, we’re building a movement to make sure every single person has the resources that allow them to flourish.
Because of that, we’re on a mission to reach 100,000 Creative Brains that receive this newsletter. So, if someone popped into your mind while reading this, forward it to them now. Every single forward, mention, share and recommendation counts. Creativity is about sharing, sparking conversations and taking action - so, think of this as your creative act for the day.
Creative Health Protocol 🧠
This newsletter is the what, and the Daydreamers platform is the how - your guide to turning Creative Health insights into real, tangible action. Here’s a peek.
Photoshop your Memories
What it is: How cool is this - our brain doesn’t think in paragraphs; it thinks in pictures. Before you ever attach words to an experience, your brain encodes it as an image. This is actually how memory works: it's visual, emotional, and alive. And, every time you recall a memory, you're not pulling a file from storage - you're reconstructing it, influenced by your current perspective. That means your story isn’t fixed; it’s flexible. So, through image-based creative practices, we can begin to consciously reshape the way we understand our past and reclaim the narrative we want to live into - basically, photoshopping our lives.
How you can experiment with it: My personal favorite exercise at Daydreamers is something we call “Photoshop your Memories” - based on the exact narrative and visual storytelling science we’ve explored here. One of the prompts I use on the daily is about reframing “failure” - expressing and self-editing a past mental story where I feel like I made a complete mistake, retraining my brain to see it through a more compassionate, expansive lens. Try it yourself: doodle, sketch, or even just play with color to give a “failure” memory a new shape. Let your creative brain tell a different story.
What We’re Loving This Week 🪐
We’re all about simplicity, clarity and depth - so instead of overwhelming you with a random mix of news, here’s one standout idea, read, brand or project that’s really supporting our Creative Health this week.
Visual Rituals: The Dear Data Project
You already know that not all drawing needs to be fancy or “artistic” to tell a meaningful story. But sometimes, the most powerful creative acts come from simply tracking the data of our lives. That’s why we love The Dear Data Project - a year-long analog data art exchange between two designers who sent each other hand-drawn postcards each week, visualizing personal data from their daily experiences (from how often they complained to how many doors they opened. So funny.).
To us, it’s such a beautiful reminder that visualizing even the most simple parts of our days can become a ritual of connection, creativity, and self-awareness. At Daydreamers, we’re big believers in that too - one of our member-favorite practices is Imaginary Habit-Tracking, where we turn internal patterns into playful visual expression.
We’d love to know: If you were to track something unexpected about your week -emotionally, mentally, or creatively - what would it be? How would you visualize it into a “story”?
We’re all ears—use the comments to share freely! 🧠✨
By joining Daydreamers, you’re not just unlocking your own Creative Health - you’re helping us build a world where imagination, well-being, and tools like this newsletter are accessible to all. Ready to help us make the world a more creative place?