Experiencing Narrative Therapy

We all have our narratives – our stories about ourselves and how we see the world. I certainly have mine. Before I did this course my stories were quite rigid, felt hard and old in my body. These stories were full of judgement and I had not told them out loud for many years. Then when I did speak them, they grew more and more hard, fossilised like a tired old skeleton, unchallenged and bored to death.

This Level 1 course in Narrative Therapy brought a breath of fresh air into my experience of myself and into my body. I felt my stories soften at the edges, allowing other possibilities into my life experience and my understanding of myself. My stories had been formed without an audience, formed by me, privately, to justify my behaviour as a result of “what happened according to me”. During this course I noticed how I had modified the narrative of my story so that it was palatable to any person I might relate it to, persons who, like me, live in a particular culture with its particular social norms and controls. In this way, my life was being moderated, compressed into a certain way of being.

Narrative Therapy:

proposes that identity is a relational process, we adjust our self-talk and self-image to what is expected of us and meets approval. Our ‘problems’ can be very successful in minimising or making invisible certain valuable partnerships or histories in our lives. In my story, I realised I had chosen to emphasise the negative aspect and, through the years, I had missed out on the substance, the healthy foundations of my life, the loving care and the fun. 

observes that there are many voices to our story. The client becomes the author of their own story, and can choose an alternative version while re-membering people who are or were important in their lives, and who made valuable contributions to their experience and identity.

confirms the audience for what and who we are. We can enable and liberate ourselves, even when our stories about ourselves are negative and all about our problems. We can see that our lives are enriched and new perspectives open up when we realise that our stories about ourselves can be reviewed and changed.

is a collaboration of the client and therapist.

The therapist becomes more of a co-investgator with the client. The therapist is curious about what the client has verbalised in their story, and about what hasn’t been said.

“I don’t know what to do anymore”. Inherent in this statement is the confirmation that there was a time when the person did know what to do.

seperates the problem from the client. The client does not have an “illness”, so there is no “cure” offered. There is space between the client and the problem. We are not our behaviours. 

“Do you have a name for this feeling/problem?”

Anger.

“When does Anger come to visit you?

What does Anger want to get you to do?”

highlights and normalises strengths and values, times when the person has resisted the problem, recognising resilience and strengths.

honours cultural narratives and respects how communities make different meanings about how life should be. The client can choose to live in their full humanity.

The therapist is curious about what the client hasn’t verbalised in their story. How do we know what we know about ourselves? This is an interesting question. We live in a social world, in our families, and with our selves. Here, the therapist looks at the meaning that family members give to events that determine the behaviour. We can sometimes “inadvertently contribute to the ‘survival’ of, as well as the ‘career’ of, the problem”. (White, M., Epston, D.,1990, p.3, Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends, W.W. Norton and Company, New York, London).

Aspects of the lived experience that fall outside the dominant story provide a rich unique outcome.

Re-storying or generation of alternative stories=new meanings, new possibilities

How did you manage to resist the influence of the problem on this occasion? What does your success at resisting the problem say about you as a person?

This course had a very practical emphasis to it, with the participants interviewing each other and evaluating each other’s practice. I realised the negativity of what I re-membered and questioned why I only told myself that story. It is true that our brains and possibly our bodies respond to repetition, and if our story is in the negative where is the space for joy?

Our health can suffer. 

Now I continue to author another version of my story, one that is full of vitality and zest for life, how much I enjoyed being outdoors and what enrichment means for me now. I am re-membering some of the people who have passed on, or are not around any more, but who brought values and important conversations to my life that continue to influence me positively. I verbalise these alternative stories and in this way I honour those people I shared time with, they live on in me, they are still members of our community. I feel lighter and un-burdened and joy is free to be expressed.

I no longer need to censor my life to fit into the out-dated story I was carrying around with me.