Narrative Therapy Is the Story

The work of a writer and a therapist is often the same. Both work to make sense of life by analyzing stories. When they finish their work, the client and the reader see life differently.

From one perspective, the job of a therapist is to help clients de-construct their personal stories. A person seeking out a therapist often feels stuck, depressed, anxious or unhappy. Frequently, those feelings come from the client’s reaction to their own personal stories. Together, the client and therapist work through the stories hour by hour, week after week. With luck, they begin to see the story’s structure, sorting out the players, motives and the sequence of events.

A good therapist helps the client take a story apart to see where it may not make sense. The therapist might ask, “Are you sure that’s the way it happened?” Or, “How did that make you feel?” "Why do you think he did that?" Working through the story repeatedly, the client begins to see different ways to tell the story. Slowly, the client interprets the story differently, seeing new motives and other meanings. Finally, the client tells her story in a way that allows her to move beyond the problems that brought her to therapy.

As a writer, you might consider using some of the therapist's techniques for your work. Take your story apart and put it back together again. Try shifting the focus, re-ordering the events or re-examining people's motives. See how things change when you switch the gender of a character. How does the story change if you set it in the mountains instead of at the beach? What happens when the story occurs in three days instead of four months? Improve your story by de-constructing and rebuilding it. Then do it again.