N)+Narrative+Therapy

** Narrative Therapy **

Narrative therapy is a collaborative and respectful approach to counselling. It focuses on the client’s life story and is premised on the idea that problems are manufactured in cultural, social, and political contexts. Each person produces the meaning of their experiences within these contexts. A more recent and inclusive way of thinking about the nature of human life and knowledge is postmodernism, which posits there is no one “truth” and that there are multiple ways of viewing and interpreting personal experience. In other words, client’s problems are not rooted in a single experience but rather multiple experiences or factors contribute to how the client feels, behaves etc.

For example: Jane explains that when she was 9 years old her history teacher yelled at her for talking to another student during class time. As a punishment for talking in class Jane was made to sit next to the teacher’s desk, while facing the class. Jane explains that she felt extremely embarrassed. Jane further explains that when she got on the school bus to go home that day, other students laughed at her and called her hurtful names. She stated that she felt ashamed and further embarrassment. Jane’s story continues with an explanation of what happened after she told her parents about what the history teacher did. Her parents felt the teacher’s response was appropriate, because rules are meant to be followed not broken and that Jane should have known better and as a further consequence, Jane was not allowed to visit with her grandmother on the weekend. Jane often visited her grandmother and on that particular weekend they had planned a picnic and a visit to the zoo.

Through the process of narration Jane became aware of the role those experiences played in the development of her own rigid rules regarding behaviour and how those rules impacted her relationships.  Narrative therapy asserts that, by the time someone gets to counselling, the stories they have for themselves and their lives become completely dominated by problems that serve to oppress them. Therapists refer to this phenomenon as “problem-saturated stories”. These problem saturated stories can also become identities (addict vs substance user) and can lead to self-imposed negative messages (I’m a loser). In narrative therapy the client can discover “untold” stories that reflect their hopes, desires, intentions and dreams. The therapist collaborates with the client to help the client to live in accordance with their preferred way of being (//About narrative therapy// (n.d.). 