Narrative Therapy

Founders:-

The founders of this theory are Michael White and David epston.

Narrative therapy

Narrative therapy is a form of therapy that aims to assist patients in identifying their beliefs as well as the skills that go along with them. It teaches the patient of their need to live these beliefs in order for them to successfully cope with current and potential issues.

The word narrative is derived from Latin narratives meaning a tale or story. In this theory, the main idea is that human experiences are so vast and ambiguous that we give them meaning, and in return whenever we feel or hear that influences our mind.

Basic principle

Narrative therapy is concerned with our stories, which are thought to have an effect on our emotions and, as a result, our decision-making and actions. The concepts of narrative therapy are as follows:

1-Reality is a product of social construction. Our interactions with others have an effect on how we perceive reality. These mutual experiences become our agreed truth.

2-A narrative will assist us in maintaining and organizing our facts. Making sense of our experiences can be aided by the creation of a narrative or plot.

3-Language has an effect on reality. People use language to interpret their experiences, and different people can interpret the same event or interaction differently.

4-There is no “objective reality.” The same experience can be experienced in various ways by different people. What we believe to be real may not be true for others.

This therapy suggests that a human in his life makes many stories based on his past experiences and that follow with him with remaining his life. There is also some factor influence in our development of stories such as Culture, Gender, Age and Environment, etc.

Problematic area:-

The problematic area in stories is that a human is making more than one story in his mind and there are possibilities that one negative story can influence his mind and other skills and become dominant for example A person in his childhood show laziness in some of the work due to which his parents named him lazy boy due which that name click in his mind and every time he heard the word lazy the same story start in his mind and due to which he becomes depressed and consider himself lazy So, in this example problem start at the past when his parents called him lazy much time due to which this becomes a dominant story in his life and it started effecting his present life.

How narrative therapy works:-

The therapist who is applying narrative therapy uses some of the exercises that influence the client's mind and changes his problematic stories. Following are the exercises:-

Putting together all the good stories:-

In this therapist urge client to remember the good memories of his life after knowing or diagnosing the history of a problematic story that affects the client. In this way, the client will start to feel comfortable and these memories will be those that give the feeling of a wonderful life to the client and in this way that problematic story will get merged or collapse within these memories and the client will begin to get better.

Deconstruction:-

There are some cases when a client had its big problematic story in his mind and it becomes difficult to forget that. In this case, a therapist will break down this story by doing some interviews and after that, the therapist after making that story into pieces will try to construct them with the association of good memory that the client feels in his past memory.

Applications:-

This Therapy helps people to cope up with the past bad experiences that they store in their mind and give them a flashback.

Also, the client explores something new in itself through therapy like in his past he considered himself lazy due to which he underestimate his capabilities through this therapy he gets aware of himself.

The client will get new thoughts with the positive impacts.