Narrative Therapy

The metaphors of storytelling and stories are the foundations of this theoretical orientation and practice. Considering events in our lives, our experiences, and relationships through the lens of stories and storytelling can sometimes offer us different (and more approachable) angles on things that are giving us trouble or have had us stuck.

In our narrative therapy and community work conversations, we sometimes use ‘mapping’, ‘rewriting’, and ‘re-membering’ or inviting others into the life we are building or nurturing.

MAPPING

In writing or living a story, it can sometimes be useful to have an idea of where we are and where we came from. This can include systemic and relational structures, ideas that we may have been recruited into that no longer (or perhaps never did) serve us, and visitors like Anxiety, Self-Doubt, Guilt, Shame, and others.

REWRITING

With our maps, we can decide how we might want to continue and begin rewriting. Perhaps that might look like laying on a patch of moss and staring into the clouds. Perhaps you have a long, uphill trek that you would like to begin. Perhaps you would like company as you move through the landscape.

RE-MEMBERING OR INVITING OTHERS

Humans are, as a whole, collective beings. We thrive in relationship to others and to the land. Who might you share this movement or landscape with? Who might you recruit into this story? Who might you learn from, and who might learn from you?

While there are often at least some similarities across therapeutic approaches, Narrative Therapy is, to our understanding, substantially different to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and shares only a few overlaps with Dialectal Behavioural Therapy (DBT).

These approaches share a common intent: to offer support to folks navigating challenges, problems, and/or hardships. However, the approaches tend to differ in their starting assumptions, focal points, strategies, and the relative roles of the counsellor and client.

In terms of ‘different tools for different jobs’, both CBT and DBT can be useful approach for many people, particularly as a coping or ‘symptom-reduction’ technique in tough times. DBT in particular tends to focus on skill-building, holding ‘opposites’ as coexisting, and prioritizes interpersonal relationships, which can be congruent with Narrative Therapy.

When it comes to Narrative approaches in tough times (and in general), we tend to focus on leveraging a person’s existing skills in living to understand what a ‘symptom’ might be indicating, then responding to the underlying cause.

Where many therapeutic approaches hold the therapist or counsellor as the “expert”, Narrative Therapy honours the skills of practitioners as well as encouraging (and supporting) them in occupying a de-centred and influential role in the conversation and working relationship.

‘De-centred’ means that the narrative therapist prioritizes the context, desires, and skills of the person they’re in conversation with over their own. A de-centred practitioner is curious, respectful, and collaborative.

‘Influential’ means that the narrative therapist is an active participant in the conversation, leveraging their skills in question-asking, community-knowledge-gathering, mapping, and further to point out or bring forward pathways, patterns, or frameworks that may not be immediately recognizable.

Essentially, the role of a Narrative Therapist is that of a respectful and curious collaborator.

For an illustration of this idea, head over to our blog for a comic drawn by Evren Salja.