Narrative Therapy

What's your story? How does your internal narrative about yourself help or hold you back? How do we cling to certain versions of ourselves and what do we need to change? These are some of the questions we explore in Narrative Therapy. This technique is especially helpful for clients who feel stuck in their lives but aren't sure why. I help clients begin an inner dialog with themselves which can lead to insight, growth and change.

I use Narrative techniques to help clients' map the impact of challenges, identify unique outcomes, gain insight into their complex identities, and use that insight to re-author their personal narratives.

Narrative therapy is a type of therapy that focuses on the stories that people tell about their lives. This approach can be helpful for gay men, who often have unique and complex stories to tell about their lives. For many gay men, coming out is a pivotal moment that can shape their entire narrative. In narrative therapy, therapists can help gay men to make sense of their coming out experience and to develop a more positive story about themselves.

Narrative therapy is effective at helping clients who have experienced trauma. Mild traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is a condition that affects people who have been exposed to a severe or life-threatening event. Narrative therapy helps clients to process their experiences and work through the trauma they've faced. It uses storytelling as a way to heal, which allows the client to use their own voice and create meaning from their experience.

Narrative Therapy Year-Long Intensive, 2018 -Evanston Family Therapy Center: Evanston, IL 5 Day Foundations Level Narrative Therapy Intensive Certificate Program, 2017 -Vancouver School for Narrative Therapy - Vancouver, BC

With narrative therapy, clients have the opportunity to explore difficult situations and trauma through stories. It allows clients to explore the narrative through which they view what has occurred. Narrative therapy aids clients with rewriting their story in a way that allows them to externalize issues instead of internalizing them.

The foundation of Dr. Inez's psychotherapy worldview is narrative therapy. Some suppositions of the narrative worldview as defined by Michael White: Everyone has meaning-making skills. Everyone tells stories. The meanings we give these stories shape our lives. Life is multi-storied, not single-storied. Therapists listen for these storylines, and we support people to develop the preferred storylines richly.

I've trained in Narrative Therapy with the Vancouver School of Narrative Therapy, at both the introduction and advanced levels. I use narrative therapy to help clients reframe their experiences and develop a new, empowering story about themselves. I encourage clients to explore the stories they have been telling themselves and work towards creating a more positive and empowering ones.

The idea that we develop stories about our own lives has always resonated with me. I enjoy identifying our own internal narratives and challenge those which may not be congruent with our current self or journey. The idea that people are separate from their problems resonates with me as in our most trying times we can feel entangled with those which most challenge us. Narrative Therapy allows for the externalization of problems through creative mediums.

Narrative Therapy allows room for the client's full life in the therapy room. Narrative therapy realizes that the client is the expert on their own life, and it is the therapists job to ask good questions that help thicken the story line and increase the client's own agency. Narrative therapy was my introduction to trauma therapy and I weave the principels of it into all the work I do.

As we grow and experience life we create stories about how life works. We often interact with life based on these stories we have created about ourselves and the world. It is often our stories that need love, safety, and a little update to the truth.

Sometimes a little perspective helps. It is easy to get wrapped up in your experiences & feelings. Narrative therapy encourages folx to examine their stories & effect change when the story does not match goals or desires. Part of this is externalizing things like Anxiety, so it feels less like a character flaw & more like what it is - an emotion that can be a jerk sometimes. It isn't you as a person that is causing all these problems, it is the Anxiety, so what can we do to kick its butt?

Narrative Therapy believes that as people grow and develop throughout life, they accumulate life experiences that shape a narrative around their identity, worth, and value. There are helpful narratives we can embrace about ourselves and unhelpful narratives. Narrative Therapy believes that we construct meaning around these narratives and aims to empower people to explore alternative and more adaptive life narratives.

I am a big believer in the power of stories, especially those we tell ourselves. In my work with individuals who have a significant trauma history, this modality is especially powerful. Exploring the way that you view yourself in the world reveals a lot and changing this can have major impacts on a person's life.

We all strive to be the hero of our own story. Sometimes, changing the narrator, or widening the lens to see the influence of other factors in our lives gives us an alternative perspective that can empower our journey and give us the confidence to confront our challenges with a newfound strength.

Narrative therapy talks about the stories we tell ourselves. A key concept from this approach is that "the person is not the problem, the problem is the problem." If you replaced your broken, problem-saturated narrative with a strengths-focused one, what would be the result? This is not to say that you need to focus on the positives in your past and your problems will disappear. It just allows for a reframe and shows the inherent good in each narrative.

Narrative therapy helps you see yourself as the author of your life in so many ways. It increases your ability to act and bring about the changes you want to see by helping you get clear on your individual skill sets and sense of purpose. It helps you identify your values and to see yourself and the actions available to you more clearly.