How to Coach Yourself and Others Coaching Families | Page 169
Common elements
Common elements in narrative therapy are:
The assumption that narratives or stories shape a person's identity, as when a person assesses a
problem in their life for its effects and influences as a "dominant story";
An appreciation for the creation and use of documents, as when a person and a counsellor co-author
"A Graduation from the Blues Certificate";
An "externalizing" emphasis, such as by naming a problem so that a person can assess its effects in
her life, come to know how it operates or works in her life, relate its earliest history, evaluate it to
take a definite position on its presence, and in the end choose their relationship to it.
A focus on "unique outcomes" (a term of Erving Goffman) or exceptions to the problem that
wouldn't be predicted by the problem's narrative or story itself.
A strong awareness of the impact of power relations in therapeutic conversations, with a
commitment to checking back with the client about the effects of therapeutic styles in order to
mitigate the possible negative effect of invisible assumptions or beliefs held by the therapist.
Responding to personal failure conversations
Method
In Narrative therapy a person's beliefs, skills, principles, and knowledge in the end help them regain their
life from a problem. In practice a narrative therapist helps clients examine, evaluate, and change their
relationship to a problem by acting as an “investigative reporter” who is not at the centre of the investigation
but is nonetheless influential; that is, this therapist poses questions that help people externalize a problem
and then thoroughly investigate it.
Intertwined with this problem investigation is the uncovering of unique outcomes or exceptions to its
influences, exceptions that lead to rich accounts of key values and hopes—in short, a platform of values and
principles that provide support during problem influences and later an alternate direction in life.
The narrative therapist, as an investigative reporter, has many options for questions and conversations
during a person's effort to regain their life from a problem. These questions might examine how exactly the
problem has managed to influence that person's life, including its voice and techniques to make itself
stronger.
On the other hand, these questions might help restore exceptions to the problem's influences that lead to
naming an alternate direction in life. Here the narrative therapist relies on the premise that, though a
problem may be prevalent and even severe, it has not yet completely destroyed the person. So, there always
remains some space for questions about a person's resilient values and related, nearly forgotten events. To
help retrieve these events, the narrative therapist may begin a related re-membering conversation about the
people who have contributed new knowledges or skills and the difference that has made to someone and
vice-versa for the remembered, influential person.
Outsider Witnesses
In this particular narrative practice or conversation, outsider witnesses are invited listeners to a consultation.
Often they are friends of the consulting person or past clients of the therapist who have their own
knowledge and experience of the problem at hand. During the first interview, between therapist and
consulting person, the outsider listens without comment.
Then the therapist interviews them with the instructions not to critique or evaluate or make a proclamation
about what they have just heard, but instead to simply say what phrase or image stood out for them,
followed by any resonances between their life struggles and those just witnessed. Lastly, the outsider is
asked in what ways they may feel a shift in how they experience themselves from when they first entered
the room[8]
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