What Is Narrative Therapy?

Narrative therapy is a post-modern psychotherapy method that has received wide attention. It has got rid of the traditional concept of treating people as problems. Through "storytelling", "externalization of problems", "thin to thick", etc., People become more autonomous and motivated. Through narrative psychotherapy, not only can the client's psychology grow, but also the consultant can re-integrate and reflect on the role of the self. Narrative therapy is a modern psychotherapy technique that is widely used at present. It has the characteristics of strong operability and remarkable effect, and has high promotion value.

Narrative therapy helps people by

(1) The problem is the problem, and the person is not the problem.

The relationship between people and problems is a topic of great concern in narrative therapy, which is also the essence of narrative therapy. In life, people always construct information from the outside world into the existing cognitive structure of the individual. When the individual constructs an unreasonable cognitive structure, problems will follow. When individuals view the surrounding things and people with internalized irrational values and outlook on life, they often make positive events interpreted with negative meanings, thereby negatively affecting the self-growth of individuals. There is an interdependent relationship between the problem and the influence of the problem. The influence of the problem can be regarded as the living conditions of the problem. All that the narrative therapy has to do is to separate people from the problem. In actual consultation, it is not difficult to find that traditional psychological treatment is often diagnosed by the visitor's own problems through some established standards, and this diagnosis result will often cause the visitor to internalize the problem and post the problem to himself The label makes the visitor generate the concept that the person regards it as a problem, which makes the visitor feel exhausted and not conducive to the solution of the problem. This is also the place where narrative therapy criticizes the traditional therapy.

(B) The problem arises from the conflict between the individual mastering narratives.

Narrative psychotherapy believes that everyone in our life has its own master narrative. Master narrative is an important basis for interpreting the meaning of our lives and an important "truth" to guide individual lifestyles. Michael White, one of the founders of narrative therapy, points out that the narrative of a person s own experience story is not enough to represent his life experience because of himself or others. In this case, an important part of his life experience and the master narration Contradictions make you feel the problem. This idea of Lord White originated from thinking about the relationship between knowledge and power of Michel Foucault. Foucault believes that truth is constructed by man, and yet gives it some "truth" status. These "truths" have a "corrective effect", because people will be incited to shape or construct their own lives according to the standards established by these "truths". This incitement is the so-called power of knowledge. Master control narrative arises from the interaction between the individual and society and the influence of social history and culture. It is a deeply internalized self-identification story. It enjoys the power of dominant power in the individual's life story. Human life experience is very rich. The master narrative will selectively construct part of the life experience allowed by the mainstream culture. In this construction process, there are both active and passive, but when the individual master narrative and Psychological problems arise when important parts of one's life experience conflict.

(3) The relationship between the consultant and the visitor is cooperative treatment

Traditional psychological counseling often shows a characteristic that consultants are experts. The effect of traditional psychotherapy is worthy of recognition. However, the attitude of the consultant as an expert often makes many visitors feel passively dependent during the consultation process. We often see this situation in the consultation. The visitor seems to be I have given myself all to the consultant, hoping that the consultant can help him solve all problems, because the consultant is an expert. However, such an expert's attitude tends to make the visitor too dependent on the consultant, and it is difficult to tap his own energy. In the process of narrative therapy, the relationship between the consultant and the visitor is more a cooperative therapy relationship, and the visitor is an expert, because there is no one who can better understand his life story than the visitor, only He can really help himself to open a new window, and the consultant is a collaborator of the visitor in the process ^[1]

"People Problem"

Narrative therapy is an increasingly popular treatment in postmodern psychotherapy. The postmodern school is different from the classical school. The classical school attaches importance to diagnosing people's problems, analyzing people's problems, solving people's problems, and treating problems as an external manifestation of the intrinsic qualities of individuals. Respect, separate problems from people, problems are problems, people are people. The direction of the conversation is to support the case to establish a proper relationship between the problem and the self.

"Everyone is an expert in their own problems"

From a postmodernist perspective, narrative therapy believes that everyone is an expert in their own problems.

Each of us, no matter what kind of difficulties we encounter, for example, some people grow up in single-parent families, some people suffer domestic violence, some people are in poor health, and some people have low self-esteem ... human growth is not easy. Things, we have to face so many problems. But we can still reach today, which shows that there must be some resources that support us. These resources are inherently embedded in our own lives. When these positive resources are called up, we are more likely to find different life stories. The previous problems have melted, so we are all experts facing our own problems.

"Let the ruler for mainstream culture go"

"The formation of personal problems has a lot to do with the suppression of mainstream culture," said Mike White, the founder of narrative therapy. Social culture guides social evaluation systems to shape the behavior of members of society (such as what kind of talent is successful What kind of behavior is achieved? What kind of life is happy?), The mutual comparison between members of society has become the main way of individual socialization. The mainstream of culture always has a certain degree of oppression. It ignores the richness of individual life and compresses the originally colorful life into a thin "routine." Many people's negative conclusions on themselves are formed in the context of culture. One background, that conclusion will no longer exist.

"More Expecting Self-Identity"

When individuals completely use mainstream cultural values as the sole criterion for judging their own behaviors, individuals often only see behaviors that meet or do not conform to mainstream cultural standards, and ignore other behaviors. If an individual thinks that his behavior does not meet (not reach) the mainstream standards of society for a long time, then he may form a negative self-identity, consider himself bad, and consider himself problematic. However, in fact, any life event has multiple meanings. One thing may be both negative and positive. By showing the richness of the multiple meanings of life events, individuals are more likely to choose among them in line with their own values. The meaning of judgment, and then feel that one's life is active, and change his strategy of passively facing problems, so as to form a suitable self-identity consistent with his own experience.

"Look for

1. Narrative metaphor:

(1) Narration is human nature.Everyone lives in life and everyone tells their story.

(2) Stories are things with life, and everyone uses their stories to show their lives.

(3) I am the author of the story. There are many things happening in life, but I choose the plots to become my story. People will filter which of the life events will enter my main story (dominantstory).

(4) People experience events and constantly interpret their meaning.

(5) There are always certain things that stand out and keep memorizing. It becomes my main story around a certain main axis and tune; events that do not meet this main axis, tune, and are not noticed are called alternative stories. )

(6) The therapist should believe that there are other parts of life, although not described, but there are still many possibilities.The role of the therapist is to seek new events with the parties, create new storytelling, and give new ones When a substitute story can be incorporated into one of the parties' life story tunes, even if the problematic story (the main story) still persists, the parties may have different possibilities for updating.

There are many methods and strategies involved in narrative psychotherapy. Here are the main ones:

Narrative Therapy Orchestration and Interpretation

Narrative psychotherapy is mainly to let the parties tell their own life stories first, then use this as the main axis, and then rewrite the therapists to enrich the content of the stories. For the average person, telling a story is to convey to others something that they have experienced or heard and read. However, psychologists believe that storytelling can change itself. Because we can re-tell our own story or even just re-tell a story that is not our own, discover new perspectives, generate new attitudes, and thus generate new reconstruction power. Simply put, good stories can generate insights, or make those feelings and vitality that are otherwise just vague, manifested, and strongly aware of ourselves or us. In the face of daily life's troubles, mediocrity, or boredom, "reorganize" your life and history from different angles, and become a positive, own story. This may change the mood of blindness and depression.

The philosopher Sartre said: Man has always been a storyteller, he always lives in the story of himself and others. He always sees everything through these stories, and lives in a way that seems to be constantly retelling them. It can be said that stories create a worldview and a value in life.

Good stories can not only treat mental illness and mental distortion, but also find confidence and identity from them. Through pleasing and moving metaphoric stories, we can rediscover ways to face the real situation of trouble, face our past, and Find a deep motivation and strong motivation to continue working hard and positively develop the future. "In order to create the meaning of life, a person is faced with the task that he must arrange the chronological sequence of his own time and experience and establish a consistent record of himself and the world around him. He must put past and present and future expectations The experience of the events that occur will be connected in a linear sequence to establish this record. This record can be called a story or self-narration. If this narrative is successful, people will have a sense of continuity in life and feel that life is meaningful. Simply put: if we want to create the meaning of life and express ourselves, experience must 'become a story.'

The story of narrative psychotherapy is not a closed conclusion, but an open feeling. Sometimes it is necessary to add the role of "important others" to the story, in order to find new meaning and direction, so that the parties can clearly see their own life process. For example, there is a client who seeks help. He feels frustrated, frustrated, and inferior to others. When he tells his life story, he feels useless, but the consultant asks him to recall who in his life has treated him. "It's not bad," the party who had a blank mind in his head barely recalled the name of a primary school teacher. The therapist encouraged him to call the teacher, but got an "unexpected surprise". Although the teacher had forgotten his name and appearance, he thanked him again and again, and said that because of the call of the party, he felt that he existed and was tired of the teaching work. .

As a result of talking on the phone, the parties not only helped the teacher, but also realized that his life was also so important.

Externalization of narrative therapy

Another feature of narrative therapy is "externalization", that is, separating the problem from the person, restoring the labeled person, so that the problem is the problem, and the person is the person. If the problem is seen as one with the person, it is very difficult for the changer and the person to be changed if it is difficult to change. After the problem is externalized, the problem is separated from others, and the inner nature of the person will be re-viewed and recognized, and they will have the ability and energy to solve their own problems.

For example, a teacher reported, "For a student whose performance has been lagging behind, I tried everything to encourage him, but he did not give him a sense of accomplishment. How is it good? Progressive awards are used, but the difficulty and standard of each exam vary No progress can be seen; if a percentile or ranking is used, these students will always be behind, what to do? "To equate poor results with students is to internalize the problem. How can we externalize the problem? Some teachers distance their problems from others and use the perspective of multiple intelligences to find advantages beyond student achievement and encourage them on the strengths. Once students' self-esteem is established, their grades may gradually rise to a reasonable position. This is the way of thinking that externalizes the problem.

Narrative therapy from thin to thick

Generally speaking, human experience has its ups and downs. The experience at the upper level is mostly successful experience, forming positive self-identification, and the experience at the lower level is mostly frustrating experience, forming negative self-identity. If a student accumulates more positive self-identification and is more confident in everything, what he thinks and does will be on track, without the need for teachers and parents to worry about it. Conversely, if a student has far more negative self-identity than positive self-identity, he will lose the power to support him and sink him.

The counseling method of narrative psychotherapy is to find the positive self-identity hidden in the negative self-identity.

The strategy of narrative psychotherapy is a bit like the ancient Chinese Taiji diagram: a white dot is hidden in the black area, and this white dot cannot be seen without careful inspection. In fact, white dots and black faces are symbiotic. If in the person's heart, when the white point is enlarged from a point to a surface, the whole situation will change from quantitative to qualitative. After finding the white point, how to make it bigger? The narrative psychological counseling adopts the strategy of "from thin to rich".

Narrative therapy argues that the client's active assets are sometimes compressed into thin slices by themselves, or even turn a blind eye. If the sheet is reduced, and one's awareness is deepened at the level of consciousness, then from the thin to the thick, a positive and powerful self-concept can be formed.