Brief Narrative Therapy

A brief narrative therapy is very much in harmony with the tradition of narrative practice (White & Epston,1990). While the term ‘brief’ has come to be connected to narrative practice as a means to share a therapy that is useful working under time constraint, we do not mean it to imply you simply do narrative practice in less time. In a similar vein to the genre of Brief Therapy demonstrated at the MRI, brevity in itself has not been the goal but rather brevity comes about as a consequence of how we think about people, problems, change, and therapy and how these premises shape what we do (Cooper, 2024).

Story is at the heart of our interest as when we are listening for story we are working with meaning-making; the sense people make of their experiences, the conclusions they draw about themselves, relationships, and the world. What’s so exciting about working within meaning is that there is always somewhere more preferred to go in these conversations. New meanings can be co-developed or past meanings can be re-negotiated. We are never solely mired in the telling of the problem.

Story also assists us to question the social, relational and cultural meta-stories that shape the sense people make of themselves and life. This welcomes context into our conversations where we, together, can name and address the effects of meta-stories on shaping people’s lives. We can look to understand how cultural, historical, or systemic factors contribute to distress and suffering. This is a move away from individualizing distress and suffering as pathologies to situating experiences within context. This exploration often leads to revised understandings, foregrounding counter efforts and knowledge.

How we listen to stories makes a difference in how we respond. Understanding that any expression is ‘radically plural’ (Turner, 1986) we are drawn to what an expression says about what people want different; a more preferred life. This kind of listening provides entry points to preferred difference that can be brought into stories-in-the-making. We are drawn to learning more about exceptions, initiatives people have undertaken, and unique outcomes- the actions, plans, hopes, wishes, values, beliefs, abilities, commitments, moral codes, etc. that are more in harmony with a preferred life. We become mentored in their stories through asking questions.

Working with meaning-making through the framework of story means we are drawing extensively from the lived experience, interpretations, and worldview of the story teller. As such, we are always engaged in the relational process of knowledge generation in a conversation. We strive to collaborate on meaningful ways to archive that emergent knowledge in take-away materials as a means to assist it to be available for further consultation, to be there for people when they need it, and to assist the story-in-the-making to live on and resist eclipse by the problem.

References:

Cooper, S. (2024), Brief Narrative Practice in Single Session Therapy. Routledge.

Turner, V., & Bruner, E. (Eds.). (1986). The anthropology of experience. Chicago. University of Illinois Press.

White, M. & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. New York: W.W. Norton.