Storytelling and advice: Constructing the lived experience of eating disorders online

Abstract

Online peer support groups encourage individuals to tell their stories and to find validation and emotional comfort when reading about the stories of others. Coincidently, lived experiences are the kind of knowledge applied to solicit and to deliver peer advice. This study examines the relationship between storytelling and advice in an English speaking online forum that provides support for those with an eating disorder (ED). The results revealed a range of different types of narratives within the data, from more elaborate testimonials of the ED and the process of recovery to brief personal passages responding to the first poster. The Labovian narrative structure appeared in a number of the first stories, whereas two main configurations, contingent upon the kind of response offered, emerged in second stories: parallel assessments (or snapshots) and success stories. Parallel assessments constituted self-centred stories and did not include any advice provision. Success stories, instead, became an essential component of the advice-giving act since they were remedial. The solution proposed by responders to the problem posed by the first poster was organized either to offer tips (that is, a series of practical recommendations to address a specific ED or recovery issue) or to deliver thoughtful advice through a resolutive story that introduced the state of recovery as a real possibility. Both parallel assessments and resolutive stories included contrasting resonances in relation to the first story. Resolutive stories encompassed resonating elements whose meanings were transformed and (re)signified from the positioning of a subject moving towards recovery. However, snapshots echoed specific key expressions from the initiating post. The goal was to display alignment with the first teller by describing a similar I-perspective experience. Taken together, the individual small stories contributed to the co-construction of a multiple-lived story with regard to the ED in the online community.