I am a chartered clinical psychologist who works with individuals experiencing a wide range of issues including depression, grief, abuse, complex trauma, PTSD, anxiety and self-harm.
I am a chartered clinical psychologist who works with individuals experiencing a wide range of issues including depression, grief, abuse, complex trauma, PTSD, anxiety and self-harm.
– Michael White and David Epston
Narrative therapy is based on the premise that people give meaning to their experiences through the stories they tell about their lives and the stories that are told about them by other people.
Central to the narrative approach is the belief that problems arise from (and are maintained by) oppressive self-limiting stories which dominate a person’s life. The stories we live by, especially the stories that run in our families, can either mobilise or immobilise us. Dominant ‘problem-saturated’ stories about difficulties may lead people to identify themselves with their problems which may limit opportunities and exclude stories that may be more helpful to the person.
Narrative therapy looks at the relationships that people have with problems and helps them to step away from whatever is distressing them, so they experience the problem as separate to who they are as a person. This externalising position supports a focus on social justice. It guards against the stigma, marginalisation and ‘totalising’ of experience that can occur when people’s identities are fused with pathologising diagnostic labels (Combs & Freedman, 2012).
The narrative approach to therapy centres people as the ‘experts in their own lives’ and assumes that people have the strengths, skills, knowledges, abilities and competencies that will assist them to reduce the influence of problems in their lives.
Developing therapeutic solutions to problems within the narrative frame involves opening space for the ‘re-authoring’ of preferred stories of people’s strengths, skills and values with the aim of creating new possibilities for their lives, relationships and future.
There is a growing body of research and practice-based evidence highlighting the potential value and effectiveness of narrative therapy. Further information about this approach can be found here: