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CHANGING OUR LIFE STORY

© Bronwen Schoombie

Michael White, from Australia has written a lot on "narrative therapy", and I am going to try, in my own way, to understand and put across some of his ideas for you to think about. It is worth going to the root for more exact and in-depth knowledge of what he talks about, but I will attempt to provide a reasonable overview in my next few columns. Web sites to visit include: www.massey.ac.nz/~ALock/virtual/white.htm, www.massey.ac.nz/~ALock/virtual/narrative.htm and www.narrativeapproaches.com/site_contents.htm

We all have a "story" of how our life is, or at least, how we see our life. It is the stories people have about their lives, which determine the meanings they ascribe to their experience. Narrative therapy looks at helping family members to conceive an alternative story of family life. Of course, the alternative story needs to be more appealing than the one they are presently following.

Whatever story we tell or hear, it is important to remember that there are always parts of the story which are left out, because, to put a situation and all its dimensions into words would be impossible. Or, to put it another way, often one is disappointed by the interpretation a director has placed on a book we have read. This is because we may have deemed other issues to be important, and these were left out in the movie. Remember, no story can possibly encompass our life in all its facets, and so we focus on those aspects we believe to be important. In the same way, the therapist can help the client to see other (until now less important, or even contradictory) aspects of their lives.

So, when a therapist starts helping someone to see those aspects of their lives they have chosen to ignore or forget, a new story might emerge. It is quite usual for a therapist to be totally surprised at some of the other, interwoven experiences which the person may have lived through, as the dominant story has not allowed one to even guess at such possibilities. The aim of discovering these other stories, however, is for the new story to cause the "problem" to lose its focal point within the family.

Clients start identifying previously neglected but vital aspects of lived experience. They start identifying other plots, and placing different meanings in their lives. These alternative plots contradict the beliefs they may have held about themselves. An example of a re-authored story might be that of a man who has had no social contact with outsiders for approximately five years, and yet, answered a ringing telephone after having been in therapy for a while.