Narrative family therapy is a new type of therapy on the horizon of the mental health domain. It is a therapeutic practice that lets you write your life story your own way as a creative way to navigate personal problems. This separates your identity from your issues, allowing a lot of room for growth and change. In this blog, we’ll explore how narrative therapy works, examining its key techniques and understanding how our mental wellness center, Solid Foundation Psychiatry can assist. The words below will provide insight into how narrative therapy for family counseling and trauma is perhaps the suitable tool that you’re looking for to create a more hopeful narrative around your life to build a better future. Let’s begin:
Before We Embark On The Subject Matter, Let’s Define Narrative Therapy First!
What is Narrative Therapy?
Narrative therapy is the brainchild of New Zealand-based therapists Michael White and David Epston, who created it together in the 1980s. It is a type of non-pathologizing approach to therapy that helps separate individuals from their problems, allowing them to reframe their life stories in a more objective way and also help develop new perspectives according to that. Narrative therapy offers an empowering effect and contributes to counseling in such a profound way that is non-blaming and non-pathological in nature(1).
Narrative therapy helps people suffering from mental conditions such as insomnia or clinical depression not find their voice but also teaches them how to use their voice for good, helping them to become experts in their own rights and to live in a way that reflects their goals and values. It is not only beneficial for individuals as it is extremely advantageous for couples, and families too.
Read More: The Benefits of Family Therapy: Strengthening Bonds and Improving Well-being
The Key Concepts and The Heart of the Narrative Therapy
In gist and at heart the main idea about narrative therapy and even the one called narrative therapy for family counseling and trauma is helping anyone who feels like they are overwhelmed by negative experiences, thoughts, or emotions such as those stemming from mental conditions such as:
- Anxiety(4),
- Attachment issues
- Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
- Clinical Depression(4)
- Eating disorders
- Grief and bereavement
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
This type of therapy stresses the importance of people not labeling themselves or seeing themselves as something “broken” or being “the problem,” or for them to feel powerless in regulating the circumstances and behavior patterns that contribute to their problematic personality(5).
Narrative Therapy Techniques
There are different types of narrative therapy techniques in existence and it doesn’t matter what these are used for, be it families, couples, or individuals. These techniques which include externalization, deconstruction, and unique outcomes, aid individuals in understanding and tackling their problems. Let’s get to the bottom of these techniques:
Constructing Your Narrative
Narrative therapists help build a narrative for their clients, who are affected individuals like us. This allows the affected individual to find their voice and explore events in their lives and the meanings they have placed on these experiences. As their story is sewn together, the affected individual starts to observe their story as an outsider and looks at it from the perspective of their therapist, working toward identifying the dominant and problematic patterns in their story.
Deconstructing Your Narrative
For one of these narrative therapy techniques, the story is systematically broken down into smaller, more manageable parts, which are then used to help people gain clarity in their stories. If the problems in their life existed for a long time due to some kind of mental condition, the shortened instances of these experiences relating to the story will improve the regulation of problematic behavior(5).
Externalization
This is where distance is created by affected individuals between their problems and themselves with the help of a narrative therapist. Through externalization, one is allowed to analyze the problems they are going through objectively. To do this, they often characterize their problems, for example, by giving these problems the name “Boogeyman” and when conversing about it with the therapist like “the ‘boogeyman’ arrived at this time and then the symptoms started showing”, to make the problem more approachable(6), making it one of the best narrative therapy techniques in the book.
Unique Outcomes
Another one of these narrative therapy techniques is unique outcomes, which is all about providing alternate storylines, even in a subtype of therapy like narrative family therapy. A narrative therapist works toward helping people not only by challenging their problems but also by widening their views through providing alternative stories, so they don’t get stuck in their story, which would limit the therapy.
Read More: Exploring Dysfunctional Family Therapy: Comprehending, Recovering, and Fortifying Resilience
Can Narrative Therapy For Family Counseling and Trauma Help?
Families will obviously have different alternates and characters when a whole story is made, each family member will be able to look at the fault lines objectively. Now this is an opportunity for the ages. A lot of time is used for treating repressed childhood trauma and other related issues such as significantly impacted attachment, development, and relationships that encompass families.
Narrative family therapy is essentially a subtype or one can say an extended and a different type of application of narrative therapy approach devised by White and Epston. While there is not much breadth of research available on both variables of the subject matter, there is one study that puts emphasis on the subject matter(7).
You can read their own conclusion on it: “Results from this study suggest that NFT has a direct positive effect on patients’ own evaluation of the burden of symptoms, and parents’ perceived personal agency regarding their child’s distress(7).” This suggests that narrative therapy for families is an effective way to deal with problems as it provides a highly alternative way of recognizing and resolving problems like trauma, especially those that stem from childhood. But it can also look at the different types of fault lines that lay on the mental disorders’ spectrum and will look at those objectively, where the affected individual is the main character, is not blamed for the problematic behavior that is displayed and is treated with the utmost respect. The same is true for family members who participate in narrative family therapy.
Read More: Facts About PTSD: Understanding The Hidden Struggles Behind Trauma
Wrapping Up!
Narrative family therapy is one of the examples of narrative therapy that is in existence. It has its benefits and is especially useful for looking at mental conditions, especially trauma. If it is family therapy, marriage therapy or couples therapy that you are looking for then look no further than Solid Foundation Psychiatry as it is well-versed in them and can treat conditions like depression, insomnia, or anxiety with aforementioned therapies or psychotherapy and alternative ones like the one mentioned in the subject matter and something else like telehealth psychiatry or psychiatric medication management.