Narrative Therapy: Rewriting Your Family's Story for Healing

Narrative therapy can be used with individuals, families, or couples, depending on how the work is conceptualized. Developed in the early 1980s by Michael White and David Epston, it is used to treat a variety of circumstances such as trauma, PTSD, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem and self-worth issues, relationship problems, grief and loss, LGBTQ+ related issues,  life transitions and addiction. It is a non-blaming and non-pathologizing approach to counseling and works to empower the client to solve their own problems. A therapist using this approach is operating from the frame that a person is never the problem and the problem exists on its own. This blog post is designed to look at narrative therapy from the approach of the family unit, which is beneficial both in family therapy and in one’s individual therapy.

Family Therapy (All Members Present)

Narrative family therapy contends that a family’s reality stems from the collective narrative based on each family members’ “story,” which is rooted in a cultural and societal context. You are not the problem and neither are your parents; the problem exists only within the context of the stories that we tell ourselves. These “stories” can be shared between family members or have different meanings assigned to them, but they are essentially what each family member has internalized to be the truth. Together, a family’s stories have a direct effect on their homeostasis. In order to disrupt the homeostasis, these stories would have to be deconstructed and reconstructed in session. This can be done in family therapy work, as long as all family members are on board. 

The family members present in the session are part of a “witnessing structure” (Freedman, 2014) wherein they listen to the story from that storyteller/family member’s point of view and take turns telling their own versions of the story, so that all the details may be covered. Often, family members are not truly listening to the person speaking and are simply waiting for their turn. In this case, the therapist would ask the family members to listen to the speaker in a different manner such as, from the perspective of a friend, as if surrounded by teammates or from the perspective of a person who has been particularly compassionate towards the listener. This may require separate interviewing of those in the witnessing position. The therapist then looks for gaps in the story in order to deconstruct it. 

Narrative Individual Therapy or Partial Family Therapy

In the context of individual therapy or family work wherein key family members are not present, some time is spent on potential stories of family members not present, but only through the understanding that this is a projection and cannot be verified by missing parties. Rather, it’s the individual's own version of the story within the context of their family that can be deconstructed. This can be just as healing, as many of us are not in families where all family members are eager to attend sessions with us.

 A major technique of narrative therapy is to elicit a story of a problem that has already been solved and to use it as a basis to solve other problems. This is called “meeting the family apart from their problems” (Suddeath et al, 2017) and dispels the myth that therapists are just interested in the problems of a family. The goal for a narrative therapist is to create “unique outcomes” from a client’s story. The narrative therapist will often give “the presenting problem a clever name and speak of it as if it were a conscious, malevolent entity, bent on oppressing and dominating the members of the client system” (Simon, 2003). However, clients may not feel strong enough to prevail through their problems in the manner of a superhero. This is where their strengths and successes come in. The therapist uses the stories to portray them as “resourceful warriors” (Simon, 2003) in the battle against their issues.

Why Playfulness Helps

Many adults feel uncomfortable with analogies of superheroes or elaborate metaphors with personification. It lacks a certain seriousness that people can link to maturity. But that’s simply a misnomer. There is no real evidence to suggest that a lack of playfulness is correlated to maturity. The majority of people who hold this belief were told to knock off their playful and curious spirits early in life by the adults around them, who were also told to knock it off when they were kids and so-on with the backwards cycle. That doesn’t mean that it is the best thing for us and there is evidence to suggest that it is counter to bringing us closer to others, especially our loved ones. In studies of couples, engaging play and playfulness in relationships is related to “promoting intimacy, reducing conflict and tension, being a safe communication strategy, and enhancing communication for finding joint meaning” (Proyer, René T., et al., 2019).

Playfulness and getting in touch with our youthful energy again can foster “a generative sense of curiosity that relies on a close attentiveness not only to the other, but to who we each are within relational spaces” (Blix et. al, 2021). This, in turn, can lead to a productive interaction in therapy both in the individual sense in relationship to the therapist and in the family sense in relationship to them. By being playful and curious, we are being responsive to the other person or people, which allows for more closeness. “Through playfulness, we resist dominant narratives and hold open relational spaces that create opportunities of retelling and reliving our experiences” (Blix et. al, 2021).

Conclusion

Narrative therapy is about the telling of stories and the retelling of stories. The therapist takes an active role in facilitating the way the stories are told and the new meaning the client can assign to the retelling. While the therapist is an active participant, they also make it clear that the client is the hero in this story. They have defeated problems in the past and can defeat the one that brought them into therapy, as well. Looking at things from a new perspective is essential to the work being therapeutic and it creates a sense of healing, with a new understanding of one another, in the process. 

Combined with other similar modalities, such as the playful experiential style of Gestalt therapy and the narrative capacity of psychodynamic therapy, our staff can help you as an individual or as a family rewrite the story once so pervasive in your life. If you'd like to book an appointment with any of our clinicians, you can check out our bios here or make an appointment below. We look forward to working with you!

References

Blix BH, Berendonk C, Clandinin DJ, Caine V. The necessity and possibilities of playfulness in narrative care with older adults. Nurs Inq. 2021 Jan;28(1):e12373. doi: 10.1111/nin.12373. Epub 2020 Jul 13. PMID: 32662183.

Freedman, J. (2014). Witnessing and Positioning: Structuring Narrative Therapy with Families and Couples. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy, 35(1), 20-30. doi:10.1002/anzf.1043

Proyer, René T., et al. “Adult Playfulness and Relationship Satisfaction: An APIM Analysis of Romantic Couples.” Journal of Research in Personality, vol. 79, Apr. 2019, pp. 40–48, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2019.02.001.

Simon, G. M. (2003). Beyond Technique in Family Therapy: Finding Your Therapeutic Voice. (pp. 114). 

Suddeath, E. G., Kerwin, A. K., & Dugger, S. M. (2017). Narrative family therapy: Practical techniques for more effective work with couples and families. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 39(2), 116–131.