Narrative Therapy

My training at the Ackerman Institute included a focus on social constructionism and narrative therapy. My practice has focused on distinguishing people from their problems, exploring the relationship understandings that systems of power influence our lived experience, supporting people to cultivate life affirming, empowering narratives about their lives.

Narrative therapy is effective at helping clients who have experienced trauma. Mild traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is a condition that affects people who have been exposed to a severe or life-threatening event. Narrative therapy helps clients to process their experiences and work through the trauma they've faced. It uses storytelling as a way to heal, which allows the client to use their own voice and create meaning from their experience.

I believe that we are made of stories. By examining the stories we have told ourselves and those we have told about ourselves, we can make lasting change as we rewrite our own narratives. I also believe that we connect to the stories that resonate with us in the world. I look at the stories we love to bring light to parts of our lives we may not have examined.

Coming from a professional history of writing, and trained in the White/Epston variety of narrative work, I offer most of my clients the opportunity to see their life's trials, tribulations, successes, and celebrations through a storied lens, one that can be edited and re-told by the client.

I'm trained in narrative therapy, which is an approach that recognized that just telling your story can be a healing act-but that it's even more powerful when you get to re-author your life. You don't have to keep living the same story.

Narrative Therapy Year-Long Intensive, 2018 -Evanston Family Therapy Center: Evanston, IL 5 Day Foundations Level Narrative Therapy Intensive Certificate Program, 2017 -Vancouver School for Narrative Therapy - Vancouver, BC

Narrative therapy is a therapeutic approach that focuses on the stories we tell ourselves about our lives. It emphasizes that these stories shape our perceptions and behaviors. By identifying unhelpful narratives, therapists help clients construct new, more empowering stories. This process can lead to increased self-awareness, reduced self-blame, and greater resilience. Narrative therapy empowers clients to become the authors of their own lives, rather than passive victims of circumstance.

Narrative therapy is an essential piece of therapy as it not only gives YOU control of the story but more importantly it encourages you to use your voice.

Narrative Theory is a hope-based approach to counseling that actively works to empower you. The goal is for you to take an active role in how you live your life and understand the challenges you face. This is accomplished by exploring you and your experiences to find and leverage strengths that you possess that are either hidden, forgotten, or haven't been discovered yet. Through Narrative theory, you take an active part in becoming the best version of yourself.

I am a huge fan of letter writing. Sometimes it's writing a letter to someone you are having conflict with and never sending it. Or maybe burning it in the fireplace. Or it's a letter to your dad, who died 10 years ago. Or your younger self, letting her know that she did the best you could. Or maybe to your future self, letting her know that she is doing her best and that it's worth it to keep going. I think it can be so cathartic to get our thoughts and feelings out on paper.

I have training and experience using narrative therapy. I particularly use externalizing techniques and work on finding unique outcomes.

Narrative therapy is a type of therapy that focuses on the stories that people tell about their lives. This approach can be helpful for gay men, who often have unique and complex stories to tell about their lives. For many gay men, coming out is a pivotal moment that can shape their entire narrative. In narrative therapy, therapists can help gay men to make sense of their coming out experience and to develop a more positive story about themselves.

I helped co-lead a seminar on utilizing Narrative Therapy to retell our own stories and have kept it at the forefront of my therapy toolbox ever since. I enjoy using NT to take a second look at the "story we tell ourselves" (e.g. "I'll never be good enough," "That breakup showed me that I'm unlovable," "I am weak because of my feelings") and retell it from an honest and healed place (e.g. "I have worth regardless of my circumstances," "I am brave," "I am lovable").

I have graduate-level education in narrative therapy, and have utilized techniques associated with this modality throughout my professional career.

Narrative Therapy believes that as people grow and develop throughout life, they accumulate life experiences that shape a narrative around their identity, worth, and value. There are helpful narratives we can embrace about ourselves and unhelpful narratives. Narrative Therapy believes that we construct meaning around these narratives and aims to empower people to explore alternative and more adaptive life narratives.

As a post-modern approach, Narrative Therapy centers you as the expert of your life. My role is to ask questions to bring you through processing your life in a way that allows for you to re-examine and re-narrate in a way that is empowering and clarifying. By doing so, we'll discuss carrying that empowerment into how you "write" your life going forward.

Narrative therapy is a style of therapy that helps people become—and embrace being—experts in their own lives. In narrative therapy, there is an emphasis on the stories that you develop and carry with you through your life.

I utilize narrative therapy in combination with multicultural intersectional feminist theory to examine my clients' life stories with the new context of their adult lives. Reexamining and reframing stories from our lives, and discovering how they have contributed to our current negative self beliefs can help us to gain confidence and self-compassion for who we are today.