Narrative therapy: a quick method that transforms your life

Haven't you ever wished you could totally rewrite your story? Did you know that it is possible? And you don't have to make such drastic changes, or travel through time. Narrative therapy will teach you how.

From psychotherapy there are many ways to target a problem, disorder or a crisis situation; one of them is to see our life as a set of stories that we tell ourselves every day and that predispose our mental state (our emotions, thoughts, reactions to different circumstances). It's not you, it's the stories you tell yourself.

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Stories that do not give us happiness

The same thing happens in our minds every day as in a movie. We tell each other a lot of stories. They can be short and simple or long and complex, they can be drama, comedy, action or horror. With the peculiarity that we have not identified them as stories or movies, we believe them to be real.

Take the success story as an example. They began to tell you the story of success at school, when they told you that you have to work hard to get good grades, because if you don't get good grades you can't go to university, or you don't get a good job and you won't earn the money enough. The happy ending of the success story is then: a stable job, a high position in a major company and earning a lot of money. If you don't meet that goal, it will always be because you haven't tried hard enough.

Many people are telling this story and it has helped them achieve their goals. However, I meet some where they still feel lost, tired and insufficient. Despite following the rules of the success story, they don't feel very successful.

I took this example because the history of success is currently being rewritten, and in the last 10 years our vision of success has changed a lot. If success used to be about earning money and being able to buy symbols of prestige (private vehicles, fashion, international travel, the latest technologies...) nowadays, success means having free time, a stable relationship, a group of very good friends and Health.

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Your problems change when you change your stories

How much would your current "problems" change if you started telling yourself another story about what success is? The same thing happens with relationships and marriages.

For example, we still associate divorce directly with failure, because the happy ending that "death separates us" could not be reached. So, whoever has not reached this point in their marriage, has failed in her love story.

But what if we told each other another story about divorce and the end of a relationship? Instead of saying "despite all the efforts and attempts we couldn't stick together and overcome our differences", we could say "we had the courage to decide on the marriage, but after a while, which has taught us a lot, we want to move forward and now we have the courage to be honest and admit that we need a change in our lives. lives". Then the divorce ceases to be a war story that ends with the world in ashes from the which each must start from 0, but instead becomes a new starting point for both sides.

What is success and what is failure for you? What are your stories of success and failure? Perhaps what you want is only to reach the happy ending of a story that, at this point in your life, no longer makes much sense.

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How does that work in therapy?

Most people who go to therapy come with a very particular story. Many times they are very painful stories, and the intention of narrative therapy is not to deny suffering. The suffering in the moment is real, the stories that produce it do not necessarily have to be.

Let's say that a person goes to therapy because he doesn't know very well what to do with his life, he has always tried to follow "the instructions", but he feels that nothing is going well for him, he does a lot for others, but ends up losing, he is afraid of making a mistake again and he feels stagnant. As a result not sleeping well, feeling depressed, enjoying things less and less and falling into a spiral of meaninglessness. During therapeutic dialogues he shares his "stories":

• "I was a very mischievous child, I was always a nuisance to my parents, because I have interrupted their important work with my pranks."
• "I've never been a very good student."
• "I think I don't have much sense to say things."
• "I'm very sensitive, I get irritated quickly"...

Those are the meaningful stories for this person, and they make you try to fight them all your life. Perhaps he is afraid of being a nuisance and that is why he always waits for others to tell him what they want and what they prefer, so as not to bother them with their own insignificant needs, or do not like to call others on the phone, because they do not want to bother. Thus he focuses a lot of energy on controlling his behavior with others, because he is afraid of doing something inappropriate. In the end he does a lot to cover up his supposed "disadvantages" and very little to apply his strengths and all just to tell himself that story of "being a nuisance".

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The challenge is to know the stories of possibilities

Knowing the background and dominant histories of a person, we can now jointly know and construct other histories. It is not about inventing a world of fantasies, but about changing the focus of attention, which is about the deficit, and moving it towards resources and towards other realities.

The consultant in my example saw that he was a nuisance since he was little, because this was the story that his parents told him. But here's another (more real) story: What would change if we say that the querent's parents were just very busy people with little money? sensitivity to the needs of a child and in his stress and indisposition they told him that he was the problem (note: children always believe that they are the trouble)?

And the new story would be: "I was not the problem, I was a child with needs and my parents did not organize their priorities well enough to take care of me. I'm not a nuisance, I'm a person with needs."

As can be seen, completely change the script. With this story the consultant can suddenly be curious about his needs, he can say:

• "I have the right to demand things for myself too."
• "I want to know what it is that I want to do."
• "I can question, doubt, oppose what others tell me."

Thus, the person takes a new role in her situation, realizes that she has influence over her problems and can change the narrative by herself.

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Everything can be questioned

There are many things in our mind that we believe to be true: about ourselves, about other people, about the world, the future, etc. The only truth is that everything can be questioned. We can tell ourselves totally different stories about the same life. Stories of possibilities, which highlight our achievements, personal values, rights and priorities.

We all have these alternative histories; Finding them by yourself is not so easy, but once discovered, it is difficult to ignore them. Narrative therapy starts from the premise that stories shape us and transform us. When the story changes, the problem changes and we can choose which stories we want to believe. Therapy doesn't have to be a long process, and changing the narrative of a few stories can be enough for many people.