Coaching practices for Alternative Narrative Therapy

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Alternative Narrative Therapy, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • I’m so convinced I’m "the one who always falls apart" that I can’t see anything else
  • I’ll have a breakthrough where I really feel the better version of my story, and then a few days later the old defeating account has quietly taken back over as if it never happened
  • I’ve spotted a few moments where I was braver than my usual story says, but they feel like isolated flukes
  • The new way I’m trying to see myself only seems to hold when I’m alone with it
  • I can recount exactly what happened

Practices that may help

  1. Narrative Therapy: Rewriting the Stories That Define You
    Narrative therapy, developed by Michael White and David Epston, holds that people live by stories — about who they are, what they’re capable of, and what their experiences mean. By separating the person from the problem ("the person is not the problem; the problem is the problem") and finding "unique outcomes" that contradict a limiting story, therapy opens space to author a more empowering alternative. The evidence base is growing but smaller and less methodologically uniform than CBT.
  2. Finding Unique Outcomes (Exceptions to the Problem Story)
    Surface moments when the problem did NOT dominate — these are the seeds of an alternative story.
    Narrative Therapy: Rewriting the Stories That Define You
  3. Therapeutic Letters
    A therapist’s written letter to a client between sessions — documenting alternative-story gains before they fade.
    Narrative Therapy: Rewriting the Stories That Define You
  4. Re-Authoring the Alternative Story
    Build a preferred story of identity by thickening the exceptions into a narrative with a plot.
    Narrative Therapy: Rewriting the Stories That Define You
  5. Definitional Ceremonies and Outsider Witnesses
    Invite meaningful others to witness and retell the new story — being known differently by others consolidates the new identity.
    Narrative Therapy: Rewriting the Stories That Define You
  6. Landscape of Identity and Action Questions
    Use two question types to map both what the person DID (action) and what that reveals about who they ARE (identity).
    Narrative Therapy: Rewriting the Stories That Define You
  7. Revise your life narrative when it limits you
    Identify and reauthor the story you tell about your past that constrains what you believe is possible.
    The Life Crafting Intervention: Scripting Your Future Self
  8. Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET): Weaving Trauma Into a Coherent Life Story
    Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET), developed by Schauer, Neuner, and Elbert, is a structured short-term treatment for PTSD that works by having the client construct a detailed narrative of their entire life — placing traumatic events within a larger biographical context, rather than isolating them. Multiple randomized trials in refugee and war-affected populations show significant, durable reductions in PTSD symptoms. NET is particularly suited to complex and repeated trauma where individual events cannot easily be isolated.
  9. The Absent But Implicit: What Problems Reveal About What We Value
    Every problem story implies a violated value — surfacing that value reveals the person’s strengths, not just their struggles.
    Narrative Therapy: Rewriting the Stories That Define You
  10. Externalizing the Problem
    Separate the person from the problem by talking about it as if it exists outside them.
    Narrative Therapy: Rewriting the Stories That Define You

Related concerns

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