Social change—or, more precisely, social improvement, whether on a personal level or within the broader fabric of society—has remained a fundamental aspiration throughout the ages.
Today, the idea of self-improvement has been integrated into the public discourse as an almost self-evident obligation. Yet, despite living in an environment where information is immediate, continuous, and almost unlimited—and although knowledge has never been more accessible— meaningful change still seems very hard to achieve.
“People know more, but do not act accordingly. They understand, but do not easily change. They listen, but are not substantially transformed,” Psychiatrist Professor Antonios Dakanalis told TO BHMA International Edition.
Perhaps this is because change is not primarily a cognitive process. It does not begin with what we understand, but with what we recognize—and, to some extent, identify with, he added.
A participant in KETHEA (Greece’s Therapeutic Center for Dependent Individuals), Michalis S., a young man struggling with drug addiction, described how transformative the storytelling sessions in the support groups he attended were for his recovery.
“Hearing the other ‘friends’ speak about the same dark and painful experiences I was going through made me wake up, relate to them, and realize that I needed to stop,” he said. “Even though I already knew I was destroying my life, the experiences of others proved decisive in my difficult journey toward self-improvement.”
Dakanalis argues that people know they “should set boundaries.” They have read it, heard it, and understood it. They may even have advised others on what is morally correct.
“And yet, they do not change—until the moment they hear a story,” he notes.
Then, without instruction or advice, something begins to shift—not because they have learned something new, but because they have recognized something familiar.
Nafsika, a student in the Department of Psychology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, confirms Dakanalis’s claims.
“When I was in the second year of senior high school a few years ago, I took part in a school project about bullying. As part of the workshops and sessions we attended, the school social worker asked us to share our personal experiences with bullying.
“One girl, who was constantly treated badly by her classmates, agreed to speak about what she had been through. She talked about how she felt every time people made fun of her for speaking more slowly than the others, or when they pushed her to the sidelines because she struggled to socialize due to her Asperger’s syndrome.
“Listening to her story changed something inside me. I saw myself in her—not because I was the victim of cruel behavior, but because I realized that I had also bullied others,” Nafsika admitted.
“Advice speaks to logic. Story speaks to experience,” the psychiatrist emphasizes. “It activates not only thought, but memory, emotion, and embodied representation.”
That is where the critical shift occurs: identification—the moment when something belonging to another person ceases to feel foreign and becomes personally meaningful.
That was exactly how that other student’s experience moved Nafsika so deeply. She made it her own, identified with it completely, and changed the way she viewed difference and diversity as a result, while also becoming more critical of herself.
“I put myself in the other girl’s shoes and I felt really awful about myself and about my classmates. Until that moment, all the advice and warnings from our teachers had had no impact at all. It took hearing that story to change me completely,” she said.
In this case, storytelling had a truly profound impact; as Nafsika relates, it was one of the reasons she decided to study Psychology at university.
“It suddenly became clear to me that I wanted to help people experiencing such difficult situations and bring about change—to make society better,” she says.
Contemporary behavioral sciences increasingly converge on this insight: people do not readily change their attitudes because they are persuaded by arguments, but because they recognize themselves within an experience. And this recognition emerges through narrative, Dakanalis points out.
He also emphasizes that, despite the expanded public discourse on mental health, many experiences remain beyond the reach of language: loss, betrayal, ambivalence, abandonment, rejection, shame, existential anxiety, despair, doubt, and inner conflict. This is not because these experiences do not exist, but because they do not find a framework within which they can be spoken about.
Michalis says that if he had not joined the KETHEA groups, it would have been very difficult for him to find a place where he could connect with and relate to other people’s experiences.
“People like me don’t tend to open up easily,” he emphasizes.
The stories of Nafsika and Michalis are powerful examples of how sharing personal experiences can profoundly affect people’s lives, leading not only to personal growth and self-improvement, but also to broader collective change.
In today’s digital era, Dakanalis stresses, images have largely replaced narrative. Lives are presented as moments rather than trajectories. Success is visible, but the inner path behind it remains unseen.
Research shows a consistent pattern: people speak more easily about difficulties when they first see others doing so. Identification reduces stigma. It creates space. This is why initiatives that shift the public discourse from image to experience are becoming increasingly significant, the professor emphasizes.
Storytelling—whether through digital platforms or direct, community-based interaction—has the power to connect people through shared experiences across different backgrounds. Personal stories of poverty, discrimination, or social marginalization, for example, can help others view these social issues from a different perspective. This may foster empathy and advocacy, potentially leading to collective action and, ultimately, to social change.
Professor Dakanalis says that storytelling is not only a personal act; it is a social mechanism, too.
“When a story is told, it can be recognized. And when it is recognized, it ceases to be purely private. It becomes shared experience.”
In this way, the distance between the personal and the collective diminishes—and stigma with it.
The professor’s initiative to create a platform where well-known personalities—and others—can share their personal stories and experiences through the YouTube channel UNTOLD aims to make social change both more achievable and more empowering.
