Abstract
People experiencing homelessness are commonly required to recount their life stories when accessing services. These biographies, often replete with trauma, disruption and the pains of survival, can be difficult to recount in linear narratives, which can engender feelings of epistemic injustice and self-stigmatisation, with assumptions of disbelief stemming from both the ‘unbelievability’ of the trauma and they ways in which the stories are told. This paper analyses the research interviews of 23 people who have experienced homelessness, not for the events recounted, but for the ways in which storytelling devices may illuminate meaning. Four storytelling devices – described as evental, cyclical, metaphorical and ‘messy’ storytelling were identified. We argue that, while these devices and tropes may complexify understanding, the fractured and idiosyncratic ways in which the stories are told hold as much potential to understand the participants as the lived experiences they share. Fractured narratives and sense checking in stories of trauma reflect and illuminate the meaning and ongoing impacts of trauma itself. Conceptualising fractured narratives as rhizomatic biographies allows for new ways of listening that may facilitate deeper understandings of trauma in people who have experienced homelessness.
Introduction
People experiencing homelessness (PEH) are often required to explain their circumstances and relay their histories when accessing services. In much of the work of recounting stories of homelessness, something of a paradox emerges. The opportunity to tell one’s story is often viewed as ostensibly positive, echoing the principle outlined by Schneider et al. that ‘the act of telling one’s story, and the story itself, would be a form of social justice, prompting others to consider not only the oppression of homelessness, but also the embedded presence of resilience’ (Schneider et al., 2019:317, cf. Young et al., 2017:80). The storytelling process may even ‘reduce symptoms of depression and build feelings of resilience, self-esteem, and community connectedness’ (Bishop & Jabour, 2022:3). However, the practicalities of telling stories are often frustrating at best and re-traumatising at worst, marking a distinction between ‘storytelling’ in a free, unstructured manner and (having to) ‘tell your story’ in structured settings for the purpose of receiving a service.
As Lee and Van Puymbrouck observe, stories told by PEH are often ‘thick with descriptions of physical and emotional traumas experienced when homeless… The participants described how experiences continued to impact their behaviours, including lack of trust, blaming themselves, and low self-confidence’ (Lee & VanPuymbrouck, 2024:8-9). This illustrates not only that stories contain trauma, with long-standing impacts on mental health, but also that the moment of ‘telling your story’ in care contexts can be (re)traumatising, especially if that story must be retold numerous times at numerous points of contact. The over-focussing on traumas in the story, highlighting again well-defined needs and issues can, as Williams and Stickley observe, negatively impact people’s sense of self: While it might be considered normal for people’s identities to relate to families and occupation, homeless people construct identities around illness, drugs and exclusion. Experiences of homelessness negatively affect people’s sense of identity to destructive proportions. (Williams & Stickley, 2011:432)
Here, traumatic pasts have a perpetual impact on identity development; finding ‘ontological security’ that stable housing should bring ‘constitutes an ongoing subjective struggle’ (Stonehouse et al., 2021: 1049). Stories that are dynamic, still ‘on-going’ or ‘becoming’ (Barad, 2007), in the sense that they do not reflect a ‘character’s struggles to overcome obstacles and reach an important goal’ (Haven, 2007:79, in Bublitz et al., 2016:238), reaching a satisfactory conclusion, illustrate the frustration with not fitting into both the conventional narrative structure of a life story, as well as not fitting into the meta narrative of societal expectations (having a goal, ‘getting better’, ‘fitting in’).
While fractured narratives are a staple of creative and fictional writing – a hook to draw the audience into a tale that might be tall, misleading, looping – ‘embodying elements of contingency, subversion, and randomness’ (Yang, 2023: 2), the real-life stories that are too messy to ‘fit in’ to linear narrative structures understood by services can further exacerbate feelings of self-stigmatisation. Champion et al.’s (2023) systematic review of fractured narratives found in disability research and literature demonstrated that people’s perceived inabilities in telling coherent stories equated with societal perceptions of the tellers living incoherent stories. They simply note that the rejection of fractured stories is ableist: it is not the role of the storyteller to always check that meaning is always conveyed in a manner acceptable to the listener. Equally, in stories that contain a multitude of traumas, and when linear narratives are hard (often impossible) to recount, stories, especially those told multiple times, might be reduced down to metonymic ‘events’; moments that come to signify something ‘evental’ (Badiou, 2005:175), moments that demarcate a ‘before’ and ‘after’. Though often these events are significant, their perpetual re-telling, as discussed below, can remove them from linear narratives and position them in an ‘unbelievable’ space, further compounding the messiness of narrative structure.
This paper examines interviews conducted with people who have experienced homelessness, not for their content, but for the ways in which these stories are told. Through reflective thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2021, 2023), where common phrases were identified and shared ways of discussing aspects of lived experience, were drawn together from the data, we identify aspects of the narratives that, though initially difficult to analyse, when read in a different manner, become crucial to understanding the events, their continued and nuanced impacts, and their meanings to the storyteller.
Though the data is drawn from a relatively small geographical space and focusses specifically on the recounting of stories with traumatic elements from one particular group (those with lived experience of homelessness), we hope that the story-telling tropes advanced below are apposite for examining other story-telling in other trauma-informed practices. Though the language used to frame stories in the collected data might be specific to the groups interviewed, 1 we hope future research might comment on similarities (and differences) in story types from other places and other groups.
Methods
The data discussed herein was collected during phase one of a wider research project aiming to develop and evidence an integrated creative care model for people with experience of homelessness. As part of this phase, exploring the role of trauma in experiences of homelessness (see Cooper & Lhussier, 2025) the research team conducted semi-structured interviews with 23 people with lived experience of homelessness. 2 Recruitment was operationalised through a housing association and extensive regional contacts in Northeast England. Consideration of participant wellbeing went ‘beyond the necessary ethics approvals’ (McGrath & Lhussier, 2025; p. 1). In all cases, the research team liaised with support staff at partner organisations to ensure that participants were currently engaging with a partner organisation, and that a robust plan for support was in place, including opportunities to debrief with interviewers, to opt out of having their data analysed, and that organisation staff were aware of the research project, should participants have any questions following their participation. As discussed below, all participants were offered a debrief, and all felt positive following their interviews.
Semi-structured interviews lasting between 25 and 90 minutes focused on the impacts of childhood trauma on schooling, employment, relationships, mental health, addictions, and accessing services as well as the delivery of trauma-informed care. Participants were also asked a series of questions relating to executive functioning, which includes emotional and impulse control, flexible thinking, working memory, planning and prioritising, and timekeeping. All interviews were anonymised, transcribed and analysed thematically to examine impacts of trauma on executive function.
The analysis of data was done collectively, in which the research team met to discuss themes emerging from participant interviews. The team regularly discussed, in both analysis and debriefing meetings, some of the more ethnographic aspects of interviews such as how participants spoke, the idiosyncrasies of each interview, and their ways of engaging before, during and after the interviews. The team had often remarked on the ‘everyday poetry’ in the ways in with PEH discussed their lived experiences, and it is through the collation of such ‘poetry’ that the importance on how stories were told began to emerge. During analysis, the research team began to use these ‘poetic’ descriptions to analyse the narratives offered by participants not only for their content, but for the ways in which these narratives were relayed, using the reflective thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2021, 2023). This narrative analysis is presented here, articulated around different ways to tell unbelievable, or complex stories. Verbatim quotes from 11 of the 23 participants are provided here as they illustrate each of the four themes, but each of these themes was supported by evidence from all participant interviews. These quotes are often representative of similar quotes from other participants which, in the interests of space, have not been included here, but were vital in determining each of the themes.
Findings and Discussion
The ‘Unbelievable’ Story
Everything that happened is chaotic and unbelievable, as well, a lot of the time…. Absolutely unbelievable. (professional 12)
Participants’ stories commonly expressed anxieties around ‘not fitting in’, beginning in childhood, and carried over throughout their lives. These multiple anxieties often emerged through stories that were ‘fractured’ and did fit in with linear narrative structures. In the narratives relayed by participants discussing trauma – especially those occurring in childhood – the events have ruptured narratives so that the stories are rendered ‘unbelievable’ because they sit outside of ‘societal norms’ (as perceived by the story tellers themselves). Adding to the anxiety is the fact that people are often asked to fit their stories into a neat and simplistic narrative structure incapable of holding them. This affects both the storyteller’s agency, but also a substantial aspect of the story’s significance – the way in which the stories are told is part of the story. It is this issue with ‘unbelievability’ – in both content and structure – that connects many of the stories recounted.
The concept of the ‘unbelievable story’ encapsulates an interconnected set of concerns, lived experiences, and continued barriers to negotiating trauma in the present day encountered by people experiencing homelessness. Recounting traumatic events, from a (self-stigmatised) position outside of ‘normal’ discourses, participants reflected on the feeling that the events themselves take on an almost unbelievable aspect. Trying to describe acts of violence encountered by a child in a strictly narrative context becomes incongruous. Professional 12 reflected on this: They’re asking me questions – I’m going. You can’t believe what happened, can you? Do you know what I mean? It was so. My abuse was so out there. It was like. Really? No, you’re making this up, mate. Do you know what I mean? And you would get a lot of that in the service. They don’t say it. They don’t. And whether they actually think it. But you feel it. Because you’re processing it yourself. You’re going. No, that can’t have happened. That can’t have happened. (professional 12)
There is an anxiety that past events are ‘so out there’ as to be scarcely visible from the perspective of ‘normal’ societal experiences and expectations. This unbelievability provokes question in the storyteller over the believability of the events and the believability of the narrator. The sense that even when disbelief is not communicated by the listener, the story is not, and cannot be, believed. This (perceived) disbelief and unbelievability of trauma impact upon the self-esteem and self-trust of the storyteller, leading them to questions the veracity of their own memories (Davis, 2023). Participant 6 reflected on this: An abuser can split a victim’s brain into two. It doesn’t matter whether it’s violence, sexual, verbal. And, basically, a perpetrator can split a victim’s brain into two boxes - one box for secrets, and one box for lies. And both boxes protect the abuser. Like, box of lies - that tells you no-one will believe you. You know, just keep quiet. And the box of secrets - that works in the abuser’s favour as well, because that says, basically, you know, you’re not going to be believed, but if you don’t say anything everything will be alright. You know what I mean? And I think my head was like those two boxes, you know. (participant 6)
The bifurcation – lies and secrets – recognises the always-ongoing nature of unbelievability in the nature of trauma. The impact of traumatic events is compounded by having the concept of unbelievability imposed onto them. In the present-day recounting, then, the story has these coterminous layers of ‘unbelievability’ – both that the storyteller ‘won’t be believed’, but that the events themselves are ‘unbelievable’ – making the telling of the story more complex.
The unbelievability of the story is compounded by the unbelievable resilience required to have come through those events and be able to speak about them as an adult. The ‘not-telling’ of unbelievable stories often creates a rupture in linear narratives, as expressed by participant 7, between ‘cause’ and ‘effect’; between ‘past’ and ‘present’, a rupture that further exacerbates the unbelievability of the narrative: Do you know what it is? I’m not really sure. You know, because. I think. I think they just thought I was a naughty-behaved kid. You know, the life I was going through and stuff, and I wasn’t being. I wasn’t being like. I wasn’t going on, like, a normal kid should’ve went on at that age - because of what I was going through. And then. I couldn’t tell anybody about it and stuff. So, nobody knew - it just sort of stuck on with me. They just thought I was a naughty kid. Which I probably. In their eyes, I probably was - do you know what I mean? But I couldn’t. Like, I couldn’t bring myself to say it - tell anybody what was actually happening. So. That was it. I just got on with life. And I ended up like this. (participant 7)
Compounding the issues with having to recount traumatic events are concerns with dialogical understanding. Participants expressed worries, frustrations and barriers around not having the vocabulary to express narratives coherently, and not being able to understand responses. Further, with traumatic events happening in childhood affecting memory, constructing chronological narratives can be not only difficult, but inaccurate in recounting the impact of the story, rather than just the narrative structure. In reflecting on story-telling itself, participants discussed the exacerbating factor of linguistic uncertainty, an inability to fully encapsulate and tell of the scope and impact of early trauma, as well as confusion over chronology, as discussed in the following reflections: I did have problems with language. Where I feel it’s… Obviously it’s in your head to just think that. It’s, like, a mind thing. Where people don’t understand what I’m trying to say, and I don’t understand what people are saying to me. (participant 11) I kind of just like… I know it’s happened, but I don’t know which came first. Like, did this happen first or did that happen first or like…? (participant 16)
Understanding of traumatic circumstances that are perceived ‘outside’ of societal norms, of having difficulties with language and chronological narrative, and difficulties in encapsulating the impact of the story on the teller in the present, all comprise facets of the ‘unbelievable story’. Being compelled to tell and re-tell this story in care settings can, as many participants reflected upon, can be a traumatic process in itself, presenting moments in which participants feel unable to ‘fit in’ to a system that is not flexible enough to accommodate their narratives.
Narrative Devices in Telling Unbelievable Stories
Further data analysis led to the identification of four common ways in which stories are told, which are further detailed below. Some stories are formed around an ‘event’ – a moment which serves both as a synecdoche for the trauma, repeated as a single moment that can be told (and retold) as a metonym for the trauma, and which can also be held as an explanation. We refer to those as evental stories (1). Others are more cyclical (2), with moments, places, anecdotes and people returned to continually in something of a perpetual loop. Another story-telling strategy sees participants utilise poetic, often prolonged and idiosyncratic, metaphor (3) to elucidate their thoughts and feelings, their sense of self, and the impact of the ‘unbelievable’ aspects of their narratives. Finally, where narratives do not fit into a chronological or linear pattern, stories might be more ‘messy’ (4), and links between action and consequence, cause and effect, before and after are blurry. These four narrative strategies – evental, cyclical, metaphorical, and messy – are not exclusive, but are in turn illustrated below for clarity.
Evental Storytelling
Often, participant stories demarcate a sense of ‘before and after’ in their narratives, with an event as the fulcrum: I had a good childhood, really. Well, I had a one until my dad started being an alcoholic. He’d been an alcoholic all his life. He died at the age of 45. I was 16 years of age when he died in my arms. So… Ever since then, it’s just… It’s just everything feels like it’s just. Just going. One. From a day to another. (participant 14) I loved my nanna. My nanna was my world. She just… She held the family together – everything. She was like a Mother to like… And when she died, just everything went to fuck, you know what I mean? (participant 1)
The death of a relative is a significant rupture, and the impact of losing a loved one is profound. For Hyden and Brockmeier (2008 as cited in Champion et al., 2023:3137) grief is one of the key elements that emphasises ‘problematic, precarious, and damaged narratives’. Evidenced in both these quotes is the sense that what is being recounted are not just, in their telling, significant moments of affect, but moments that promulgate, and require, change. They are not just events, but ‘evental’. The term recognises that trauma, especially as experienced in childhood, represents something akin to Badiou’s ‘event’ (Badiou, 2005; Bistoen et al., 2014; Frank, 2013; Pour et al., 2024); a moment ‘on the edge of a void, or foundational’ (Badiou, 2005:175), on the other side of which, a new way of being needs to be constructed. In the case of childhood trauma, the event is often experienced as a rupture; a break that deviates the person from a sense of ‘normal life’. This evental rupture is described by a professional with lived experience of childhood trauma, reflecting both on their own experiences and those of service users they work with: Because your life breaks. The day… The first time you’re abused, you aren’t going down that normal path anymore. Because you can’t go down the normal path anymore, you aren’t ever going to… You know… Yes, there’s all sorts of stories and outcomes and everything else. But we all cope with it differently. You know, some process it differently. And the minute you… Let’s look at the sexual abuse or physical abuse alone – once that happens to you, your world is different. Your life… What should’ve been going that way, suddenly goes this way. It’s going all over the place. Because you can’t process it. Don’t forget, I use this term a lot – but they were the people that were supposed to care for, nurture and protect us. And they didn’t. They were our abusers. So, as soon as that happens, you’ve got no-one else to turn to. Who do you turn to? (professional 12)
On the other side of this ‘event’ (recognising that childhood trauma often encompasses a sustained and multifarious series of actions and moments), is often a self-stigmatised narrative – the unbelievable story – of not being able to ‘fit in’ to an ableist telling of lives lived. Though the stigmatised self may often be a response to multiple moments, developing over time, the re-telling of the event as a singular moment that encapsulates multiple becomes a way to make sense of the unbelievability. It becomes a fulcrum around which, because of which, this self-stigmatising narrative makes sense and is made sense of.
Cyclical Storytelling
Where Badiou’s (2005) notion of the event demarcating a ‘before’ and ‘after’ might be seen in chronological linearity, many of the narratives were told in cyclical stories. The evental was continually returned to in narratives – as explanation, as justification, as a point that could not be ‘moved on from’. Very often, narratives continue to return, in a sequence of different questions or prompts, to single issues – such as mental health – or to memories of institutions (such as school), even to geographical places. In many of these stories, then, the ‘evental’ sits as a moment of intense explanation, or as a point of synecdoche, in a story that is otherwise cyclical.
Participant 2 began his story by defining himself as being ‘born and raised’ in one of the more socially deprived wards in the local city. He described himself as a ‘rough and ready lad from [name of town]’, the two epithets – self and place – dovetailing to offer an explanation that incorporated both self- and territorial-stigma (Wacquant, 2007). Participant two discussed numerous aspects of his life (in a non-chronological manner), but kept returning to his place of birth. In one quote, the link between physical place and the cyclical, returning affects of trauma were made explicit: But it’s an area like… It’s the area that makes you do things with you mental health as well. Just… Not blanking, as I say, just get out of it. Just get away from the area of where you’re from and you’ll probably be alright, but… Like… Aye, like I said, you’re never going to get rid of it. You’re born and bred there, so you’re never going to get rid of it, you know. But like… In other words – born in [name of town], live in [name of town]. You know, but you just… Just move if you can. Just move. (participant 2)
This feeling of cyclicality and/as inescapable trauma was illustrated in a number of nuanced ways in other stories, and was not always tethered to a geographical place or chronological moment. Very often the repetition becomes an engrained sense of self-identity, which is cyclically returned to as a cause/effect. This is often exacerbated by engagement with services, where stories are made to be told repeatedly, and where the cycle of crisis and support can seem perpetual. Participant 14’s frustrations with professional support services recognises, in emphatic terms, the feeling of cyclicality that is imposed on the storyteller by ineffective support: It doesn’t matter how much you talk about it, or how much professional help you get… I’ve had professional help since the age I was eight. When it happened to me. But then ever since – I was only eight years old… I didn’t understand things that were going on properly. And when I was getting older and older, it’s building and building. It’s like… Now – I’m still having nightmares now from it. And I’ve been having these nightmares since the age I was eight. Going… Coming back from a teenager – going off the rails, not caring… Thinking of, fucking, everybody else who’s just given up on me. Why do I not just give up on myself. Blaming myself for what happened. And it doesn’t happen… Things like that. It’s a proper nightmare. I’m still not having any proper sleep to this day, man. I’m 33 years of age, man. Do you know what I mean? I’ve tried professional help before – I’ve been let down off them all the time. It’s just… That’s why I just keep it to myself. Do you know what I mean? (participant 14)
Here, participant 14 illustrates that ways in which trauma is experienced cyclically, ‘going…coming back from’ and returning in nightmares, with the cyclical nature of professional intervention – of trauma/‘going off the rails’/self-stigmatisation/getting support/support failing is made apparent The ways in which this cyclical narrative can impact on ways of thinking about the self is also alluded to, and is referenced throughout participant five’s story: But, as I say, instead of just walking away from it, I just sort of… I’m not… Fight or flight – I’m not flight. But I’m having to be now. Because I’m getting old. (participant five)
This description of being ‘fight, not flight’ was repeated several times throughout the interview in relation to different scenarios. It became the reflexive bookend/starting point/explanation/outcome of different moments which needed to be ‘moved on from’, but which the inability to move on from was the cause/effect of the cyclicality it represents. The term becomes something of a self-synecdoche; being in constant perceived ‘fight or flight’ situations, and persistently opting for ‘fight, not flight’ had become part of the participant’s identity, strengthened through repeated telling, to become almost a metaphorical description of themselves, a small part of themselves that they have come to see almost as the whole.
In the case of traumatic stories, the cyclicality of storytelling might be usefully seen as not a barrier to comprehending the events described, but as part of the traumatic story in itself. Cyclical aspects of self (place, temperament, identity, mental health) are positioned as cause and effect of traumatic events, and so there is necessarily a cyclicality to their telling. When events manage to rupture that cyclical perception of self, they become symbolic, evental, promulgating a move, a shift, a change (often negative, but with potential for positive as well).
Metaphorical Story Telling
Another common story-telling device was the use of poetic, sometimes quite dramatic metaphors to both describe their own sense of self, and the events that have happened to them. Very often, these metaphors will stand out from the narratives as powerful, non-conventional, descriptions. MacLure notes that these are point of wonder in the data, while explaining that:
Wonder is not necessarily a safe, comforting, or uncomplicatedly positive affect. It shades into curiosity, horror, fascination, disgust, and monstrosity. And the particular hue or tenor that it will assume is never entirely within our control. (MacLure, 2013:229).
Participant five’s self-description makes for a compelling example: The ADHD I think has probably kicked in maybe because of a trauma. And I think from an early age, I’ve… Because I’ve never… I’ve never been able to… Well, that’s what I was saying to you –
This self-reflection makes a number of interconnected reflections. Firstly, there is a deep insight into the impact of childhood trauma on symptoms presenting as neurodivergence in adult life (Cooper & Lhussier, 2025), and a reflection that ripples backwards (from adult diagnosis to childhood cause). But there is also, in the phrase ‘head full of broken biscuits’, a poetic recognition of the ruptures, reconnections and fractured aspects of traumatic stories: the broken biscuits here explaining both the fragmented stories and the difficulties in recounting them (Champion et al., 2023). The use of metaphorical language seemed to be used in these interviews as a way to circumvent clinical/confusing language, the poetry within these turns of phrase is an integral part of the stories being told. In a few examples recounted below, what might be seen as odd turns of phrase, malapropisms or humorous descriptions, offer profound insight into the lived experiences being recounted: Yeah, so I live my life on cold cups of tea. (participant 4) I haven’t really got many friends, like. The friends I’ve got who are, like, proper friends – I could count them on one finger. (participant 7) But when my anger hits… Most people go ‘Oh, I see red’ – I don’t… My vision goes – I go past red – I see black. (participant 8) My dad was… He was functional – to a point. But he was only functional by the skin of his teeth. (participant 4) That’s a little bit why I’m a bit like… Like a space kid, because I’m in the ___. Which would be, like, sort of… Sort of like… A crystal palace of, like, the mind, if you like. Like Crystal Palace football… Astro mind. (participant 11)
The use of metaphor to explain and explore aspects of story also offer unique insight into the character of the storyteller, their creativity in communication and in describing more accurately the thoughts, feelings, incidents and events they are recounting. These metaphorical accounts might be seen as accounts that reveal both practical and emotional impacts. Participant four, rather than reflecting on issues with short-term memory, reveals the impact of having to drink cold cups of tea; participant eight provides a poetic account of the feeling of loss of emotional control in the paradox of ‘seeing black’. Rather than being perceived as inaccurate approximations, these types of metaphorical reflection might be usefully seen as poetry; providing information and emotion.
Messy Story Telling
The story-telling components discussed above – use of metaphor, cyclical and evental narratives – are by no means mutually exclusive, tending to be used in conjunction with one another. These idiosyncratic narrative tropes, as means to relay an ‘unbelievable story’, can produce narratives that are difficult to follow. Achronological, repetitive, poetic descriptions, connections between disparate places, people, times and events – all methods that might be said to accurately explain and explore the emotional impact of their respective lived experiences – often make participant stories appear ‘messy’. This ‘messiness’ is hard to capture in discrete quotes, as narratives examples might be compiled from separated moments in an interview across several minutes. But the below example from participant 11 of the difficulties in engaging with clinical mental health support gives an example of this kind of ‘messy narrative’: People like this could also have mental health problems. That… And, like… Grasping on to the… Sort of the route to the doctor is what I got. Like, and sort of the experience of, like, cared for in a clinical, sort of, mental health team. Support team. So, with that, I’ve got support to keep me in housing. But some people, when they take drugs, just fall out of it. I take drugs myself, you know. So, like, I know… You do become a different, sort of, mindset of people. You become a different mindset of… Like, thinking and getting on with life. To thinking, like… Like going to work wouldn’t be my path. But, like… Because I have the doctors there, I’m lucky. But, like, you can… You can look at like the clicks and clocks of, like, keeping together with that. It’s a bit… It’s hard to keep hold of, if you like. (participant 11)
We use ‘messy narrative’ to describe both the content (the events of the stories) and the narrative structure. There is a thread to follow, information to glean something from, but the two are tangled, entwined. In these cases, the stories being recounted are sometimes rambling. They have unfinished ideas, they have tangents, they connect from one idea to another in ways that don’t immediately make sense. Sentences are unfinished or repeated, filler words, ellipses, false starts, missing words (‘thingy’ as a place-holder word is a common example). McGrath and Lhussier (2025), in describing stories told without narrative structure, use Frank’s (2013) term ‘chaos narratives’:
Stories described in non-linear ways, are described by Frank (2013) as ‘chaos narratives’ which arise when serious threats to the self arise and there is no clear solution. These stories can be difficult for the listener to make sense of, but as Frank suggests, lacking the words to express stories does not imply that there is no story to tell (McGrath & Lhussier, 2025:7).
Where the term ‘messy’ might align with Frank’s ‘chaos’ is in the recognition that stories might be obfuscated, but not erased, by the difficulty in communicating them. 3 Where our term ‘messy’ differs is in recognising that the difficulty in making sense is part of the meaning of this story. Messy narratives signify that some stories are not just necessarily told in these ways (by virtue of the storyteller), but that these messy narratives might be the most accurate way in which to tell them. The ways in which the stories are told are as crucial to their telling as their content, and the impact of the events. To try and parse story from telling in these cases is to misunderstand the impact and the efficacy of these hard-to-understand narratives. That they are hard to understand, hard to follow, is illustrative of the impact that these stories have had, and continue to have, on their tellers: they are ‘processes of constructing meaning as well as personhood’ (Champion et al., 2023: 3154).
Rhizomatic Stories and Rhizomatic Listening
In recounting their ‘unbelievable’ stories, participants’ use of storytelling devises expressed the deep meaning and emotion within their fractured narratives, and reflected the impact of their trauma. Chronological, causational and ‘complete’ narrative structures are not only difficult to maintain when telling traumatic stories, they may actually be detrimental to relaying the impact and significance of the events recounted (McGrath & Lhussier, 2025). Where ‘arborescent’ narratives might seek to re-attach these fragments into a single, linear narrative, a rhizomatic approach might see the brokenness, the ruptures, as a necessary part of the story itself in describing the events, but also crucially, the impacts. The concept of a rhizome having ‘no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 2004:25) becomes an apposite descriptor of stories in which narrative structures of ‘beginnings’ (lost, often, in the unbelievableness of childhood trauma), and no ‘end’ (in a clinical sense, of having recovered) mean stories are told in a perpetual ‘middle’ or ‘becoming’, in which traumatic events experienced continue to return.
This is not to claim that participant stories are necessarily incoherent, where chronology does not matter and cause does not lead to effect. Rather, participants often made deeper and more nuanced connections within and between aspects of their narratives that do not follow simple chronological branches. If these are conceptualised as stories told rhizomatically, not only is structure made messier by a rhizomatic thinking, as Deleuze and Guattari write, the rhizome necessarily complicates the descriptiveness of language too: A rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organisations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences and social struggles. A semiotic chain is like a tuber agglomerating very diverse acts, not only linguistic, but also perceptive, mimetic, gestural, and cognitive: there is no language in itself, nor are there any linguistic universals, only a throng of dialects, patois, slangs, and specialized languages. There is no ideal speaker-listener, any more than there is a homogenous linguistic community. (D&G, 2004:8)
Rhizomatic stories, therefore, require a rhizomatic way of listening and interpreting. The interpretive value of rhizomatic listening (Sermijn et al., 2008) might be in making connections between disparate parts of stories recounted, of giving significance, centrality, to utterances that might otherwise be overlooked as purely linguistic and not semantic. Listening holistically to these narratives requires listening to repetition, to confusing descriptions, to hesitation, to contradiction, but also to accent, to dialect, to slang and poetry, not as something that must be tolerated, deciphered or ignored. These rhizomatic expressions are a central part of the story’s meaning, incorporating the emotion, feeling, sentiment and lasting impact of unbelievable stories, as crucial to their understanding as the linear events themselves.
Just like fictional fractured narratives (Yang, 2023), the stories recounted in participant interviews were (un)structured, (dis)organised, replete with disruptions. When listened to rhizomatically, they challenge our perception of the content, structure and significance of stories. To listen rhizomatically is to accept feeling lost, confused by the story being heard. But feeling lost is part of the story, being engulfed in the messy narratives offers an opportunity for a more complex kind of empathy – being lost in the narrative, the ambiguity away from simplistic categories of perpetrator and victim, past and present, cause and effect. Reimagining and hearing these stories in a rhizomatic way may alleviate the epistemic injustice experienced by storytellers – that both the events and the narratives are unbelievable because they do not fit.
‘Do you know what I mean?’ as a call for epistemic equality
In listening to the interviews rhizomatically, in attempting to hear the poetry in metaphor, the meaning in messy and cyclical and recycled stories, one phrase was captured in nearly all the interviews – ‘do you know what I mean?’. The following quotation is one of many examples where this informal and almost habitual turn of phrase was used repeatedly in formulating a thought: Aye, it is. But you know what it is? It’s like… I sometimes get really, really upset and I’m in my room… Like, obviously nobody can see me crying. Do you know what I mean? I couldn’t cry in front of people, like. I have done before in the past, obviously. Loads of times. But it’s just like now I feel like it’s a shield. I’m trying to… I’m trying not to cry on purpose. Because like even though I feel dead hurt and upset – I want to give people… To see people… I don’t want people to see me, like… Sort of being upset and crying, and thinking it’s bothered me. Do you know what I mean? I just want to… It hasn’t bothered me. It’s like it’s nothing. It hasn’t hurt me in the least bit. But inside it’s actually killing me – inside. Do you know what I mean? But I don’t want people to know that. I’d rather they think I’m stronger than that. Do you know what I mean? But when I’m by myself, sometimes I can’t help it. And I just… I just break. I break down sometimes. But then… I don’t know, some… Some days… Some things just… Sometimes it’s just different. Do you know what I mean? It’s like… I can’t explain it. (participant seven, emphasis added)
In first analysing this emotive account, the phrase ‘do you know what I mean?’ may be considered a linguistic filler – something to say whilst the ‘right’ words are found, and then deleted in quotes culled from the transcript. However, rhizomatic listening can reposition ‘do you know what I mean?’ as the very crux of the issue in recounting trauma narratives. The constant uncertainty about whether the recipient of the fractured narrative – the clinician, the person in authority – knows what the person means. Whether their truth is being communicated coherently, whether they are being understood practically and emotionally, as a contextualised person. ‘Do you know what I mean’ becomes a key, an entry point, a point of contact, a resting place, a jumping-off point, in these rhizomatic stories where the teller and the listener are co-creators of meaning and understanding. They are calls for epistemic justice (Fricker, 2007) reflecting, and perhaps emerging from, the self-stigmatisation described by many participants. Their sense of disconnection, of not ‘fitting in’, of being ‘outside’ of society, of being ‘invisible’, of not being understood. Constant sense checking and fractured, rhizomatic biographies in trauma stories illuminates both the meaning and impact of the trauma itself.
Conclusion
People with lived experience of homelessness often have the kinds of ‘unbelievable’ life stories discussed here – ruptured by trauma, disrupted by chaotic circumstances, perceived incoherent by the need to survive – but in recounting that story, they are often expected to present a singular, linear narrative; an arborescent version of their story that is both impossible to construct and inadequate to accurately describe the events and their impacts. The devices and tropes used by the teller in conveying their story hold as much meaning as the events they recount. Evental, cyclical, metaphorical and ‘messy’ storytelling converge to present fractured narratives that participants deemed ‘unbelievable’. Fractures storytelling and sense checking reflect the persistent presence and impact of trauma in participants lives – the sense that no one will believe what has happened to them, and that their fractured articulation of their unbelievable narratives compounds its unbelievability.
The rhizomatic narrative allows for, accommodates, requires, this messiness and recognises the multiplicity of positions, identities and selves that are incorporated in messy narratives. This allows story tellers the space to be more than ‘victim’ or ‘perpetrator’, ‘person in need of help’, in receipt of service or refusing service, but perhaps all these positions and… and… and… It allows for the prolonged and cyclical impact of some events, for the reemergence of events as triggers, glimmers or shadows over current events. It allows for contemporary diagnoses to shed new light on past actions. It not only accommodates messy narratives, it recognises that messy narratives are the more accurate way of sharing this self-knowledge. It recognises that the imposition of coherence is the imposition of societal norms that reject difference, uncertainty and experiential truth. Read into the rhizomatic map, within an acceptance of incoherence and the meaning of self-checking, ‘do you know what I mean?’ becomes both a call for epistemic justice and an invitation for a more profound kind of empathy. To check not only that the events relayed are not just being understood, but being known. To recognise, validate and co-construct a different kind of knowledge, an act which requires taking into consideration not only their contents, but the ways in which stories are told.
Adopting a rhizomatic approach to listening to narratives containing trauma may serve as a method to more fully understand the impacts of trauma on PEH narratives. As Barry et al. note ‘TIC literature provides guiding principles for service provision, but concrete, practical information on how these principles are applied in homeless services is lacking’ (2023:418). Listening rhizomatically, hearing meaning in the mess, making connections between disparate points, hearing new information in repetition, poetry in idiosyncratic phrasing, and making meaning from the form of story as well as content may help to build the trusting relationships between service providers and service users across a wider range of trauma-informed services than discussed herein (ibid.). Listening rhizomatically to stories that are rhizomatic, in their nature and in their telling, further allows for a mutual understanding through dialogue, and may help to support the shift in emphasis espoused by trauma-informed care away from questions of ‘what is wrong with you’ and towards ‘what happened to you’ (Barry et al., 2023; Piotrowski, 2020) by recognising that ‘what happened’ affects the story-telling as well as the story teller.
Do you know what I mean?
Footnotes
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.