narrative therapy

Narrative therapy is a form of therapy that includes anthropology, feminism, power, and social justice. Through this lens, you are considered the expert in your own life and the therapist is often a co-author and sometimes an editor throughout the process of therapy. We hold various identities that make up our whole selves. The trouble is that by the time we are born, history and society have already defined what is expected for us and resign us to limited ways of being. For example, society often shapes quite narrow definitions of what it means to be a certain gender or occupy a specific role such as a parent or a partner (called dominant narratives). As we grow and begin to define our own roles and expectations (called personal narratives), problems can develop if there are differences between these narratives. These dominant narratives are socially constructed and hold power by shaping the words we use, knowledge we have, and become internalized as truth. Together, these narratives create our realities. Because these dominant stories are typically created by cultures and society, power is given to these dominant narratives which overshadow personal narratives. If your own beliefs do not match up with society’s, it can feel invalidating. Maybe it even feels like you don’t measure up, or are less than. 

 

Narrative therapists believe people are not their problems and those problems are outside of the individual. For example, the way you show up in the world as a partner is not the problem. Rather, the problem is with society defining that role for you. The process of change in narrative therapy helps you deconstruct and challenge dominant narratives in order to decide what is and is not serving you. Liberation from these dominant narratives makes space for you to tell your own story and open up additional possibilities through empowering you to decide how you desire to live your life.