Purpose Creating more positive individual narratives around illness and identity is at the heart of the mental health care recovery movement. Some recovery services explicitly use personal storytelling as an intervention. The purpose of this paper is to look at individual experiences of a personal storytelling intervention, a recovery college Telling My Story (TMS) course. Design/methodology/approach Eight participants who had attended the TMS course offered at a UK recovery college were interviewed. Data were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Findings Five key themes, namely a highly emotional experience, feeling safe to disclose, renewed sense of self, two-way process and a novel opportunity, were emerged. Originality/value The findings suggest that storytelling can be a highly meaningful experience and an important part of the individual’s recovery journey. They also begin to identify elements of the storytelling process which might aid recovery, and point to pragmatic setting conditions for storytelling interventions to be helpful. More time could be dedicated to individuals telling their story within UK mental health services, and the authors can use this insight into the experience of personal storytelling to guide any future developments.