Retelling The Stories Of Our Lives Everyday Narrative Therapy To Draw Inspiration And Transform Experience

Our lives and their pathways are not fixed in stone; instead they are shaped by story. If we tell stories that emphasize only desolation, then we become weaker. If we tell stories in ways that make us stronger, we can soothe our losses and erase sorrows. Learning how to re-envision the stories we tell about ourselves can make an enormous difference in the ways we live our lives. Drawing on wisdom form the field of narrative therapy, this book will help people rewrite and retell the stories of their lives, reclaiming and celebrating experiences in the face of specific challenges such as trauma, abuse, personal failure, grief, and aging. Readers are introduced to key ideas of narrative practice like externalizing problems--"the person is not the problem, the problem is the problem"--and the concept of "re-membering" one's life. Easy-to-understand examples and exercises help readers make these techniques their own, leading them on a path to reclaim their past and re-envision their future. -- Publisher's description.

Starting from the assumption that people experience emotional problems when the stories of their lives, as they or others have invented them, do not represent the truth, this volume outlines an approach to psychotherapy which encourages patients to take power over their problems.

This best-selling book is an easy-to-read introduction to the ideas and practices of narrative therapy. It uses accessible language, has a concise structure and includes a wide range of practical examples. What Is Narrative Practice? covers a broad spectrum of narrative practices including externalisation, re-membering, therapeutic letter writing, rituals, leagues, reflecting teams and much more. If you are a therapist, health worker or community worker who is interesting in applying narrative ideas in your own work context, this book was written with you in mind.

Final thoughts from the now-deceased leader of narrative therapy. Michael White’s untimely death deprived therapists of a leading light. Here, available for the first time in book form, is a collection of the work he left behind—writings on topics dear to the psychotherapeutic world: turning points in therapy, conversations, resistance and therapist responsibility, couples therapy, and narrative responses to trauma.

How to apply the definitive postmodern therapeutic technique in a variety of situations, including treating alcoholics, counseling students, treating male sexual abuse survivors, and more. Written with scholarship, energy, practicality, and awareness.

Reimagining Narrative Therapy Through Practice Stories and Autoethnography takes a new pedagogical approach to teaching and learning in contemporary narrative therapy, based in autoethnography and storytelling. The individual client stories aim to paint each therapeutic meeting in such detail that the reader will come to feel as though they actually know the two or more people in the room. This approach moves beyond the standard narrative practice of teaching by transcripts and steps into teaching narrative therapy through autoethnography. The intention of these 'teaching tales' is to offer the reader an opportunity to enter into the very 'heart and soul' of narrative therapy practice, much like reading a novel has you enter into the lives of the characters that inhabit it. This work has been used by the authors in MA and PhD level classrooms, workshops, week-long intensive courses, and conferences around the world, where it has received commendations from both newcomer and veteran narrative therapists. The aim of this book is to introduce narrative therapy and the value of integrating autoethnographic methods to students and new clinicians. It can also serve as a useful tool for advanced teachers of narrative practices. In addition, it will appeal to established clinicians who are curious about narrative therapy (who may be looking to add it to their practice), as well as students and scholars of autoethnography and qualitative inquiry and methods.

Michael White, one of the founders of narrative therapy, is back with his first major publication since the seminal Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends, which Norton published in 1990. Maps of Narrative Practice provides brand new practical and accessible accounts of the major areas of narrative practice that White has developed and taught over the years, so that readers may feel confident when utilizing this approach in their practices. The book covers each of the five main areas of narrative practice-re-authoring conversations, remembering conversations, scaffolding conversations, definitional ceremony, externalizing conversations, and rite of passage maps-to provide readers with an explanation of the practical implications, for therapeutic growth, of these conversations. The book is filled with transcripts and commentary, skills training exercises for the reader, and charts that outline the conversations in diagrammatic form. Readers both well-versed in narrative therapy as well as those new to its concepts, will find this fresh statement of purpose and practice essential to their clinical work.

This book introduces a range of hopeful methodologies to respond to individuals, groups and communities who are experiencing hardship. These approaches are deliberately easy to engage with and can be used with children, young people and adults. The methodologies described include: Collective narrative documents, Enabling contributions through exchanging messages and convening definitional ceremonies, The Tree of Life: responding to vulnerable children, The Team of Life: giving young people a sporting chance, Checklists of social and psychological resistance, Collective narrative timelines, Maps of history, and Songs of sustenance. To illustrate these approaches, stories are shared from Australia, Southern Africa, Israel, Ireland, USA, Palestine, Rwanda and elsewhere. This book also breaks new ground in considering how responding to trauma also involves responding to social issues. How can our work contribute not only to 'healing' but also to 'social movement'? As we work with the stories of people's lives can we contribute to the remaking of folk culture? And is it possible to move beyond the dichotomy of individualism/collectivism? Collective narrative practices are now being engaged with in many different parts of the world. This book invites the reader to engage with these approaches in their own ways.

The authors describe their success with narrative therapy, a lighter, playful approach to the serious problems encountered in child and family therapy. They provide case vignettes in the first two sections which show how children who might have been labeled belligerent, hyperactive, anxious, or out of touch with reality are found to be capable of taming their tempers, controlling frustration, and using their imaginations to the fullest. They address the helpful role of family members, as well. The third section of the text offers five extended case stories. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

In this thoughtful collection of interviews and essays, Michael White extends upon his explorations of the narrative metaphor in therapy. Thorough explorations of the thinking that informs narrative practice are interwoven with stories of therapeutic conversations shared. For those readers who are already engaged with narrative therapy, this collection will provide further food for thought.