Narrative Therapy explained

Narrative Therapy is a respectful, collaborative approach that examines the stories people hold about themselves, their relationships and their experiences. It was developed in Australia and New Zealand and is widely used in trauma-informed counselling with adults.

A central premise of narrative therapy is that identity is shaped by the stories that come to dominate a person's account of themselves. Following crime-related harm, these stories can become saturated by problem experiences — for example, the person may come to see themselves as fundamentally unsafe, damaged or at fault. Narrative therapy provides structured conversational practices for examining these accounts and for surfacing knowledges, skills and values that the problem story has obscured.

A key practice is externalising conversations. The problem — for instance, fear, shame or intrusive memories — is discussed as separate from the person rather than as a fixed characteristic of who they are. This creates room to describe the problem's tactics and effects, the contexts in which it has more or less influence, and the person's own responses to it.

Re-authoring conversations then attend to the moments, actions and relationships that stand outside the problem story. The counsellor asks careful questions to develop these often-overlooked events into a richer account of the person's identity, values and preferred ways of living. Documentation such as letters, therapeutic documents or written summaries is sometimes used to consolidate this work.

Narrative practices are particularly useful where trauma has affected self-concept, where a person is negotiating the ongoing effects of injustice, or where cultural, family or community context is central to how the harm and its consequences are understood. The approach positions the client as the expert on their own life and treats the counsellor's role as one of skilled inquiry rather than diagnosis or instruction.

In telehealth, narrative conversations translate readily to a video format. Written and visual materials can be shared securely, and the collaborative nature of the work is well-suited to online delivery.

If you have a Victims Services approval and are interested in narrative therapy as part of your recovery, submit an enquiry through the contact form.