Coaching practices for Documenting Alternative Story
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Documenting Alternative Story, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- 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
- I’m so convinced I’m "the one who always falls apart" that I can’t see anything else
- There’s a story I tell about my past
- The new way I’m trying to see myself only seems to hold when I’m alone with it
Practices that may help
- 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - Generate alternative histories for past outcomes
For any past success or failure, construct two or three plausible alternative paths that could have led to a different outcome.
The Narrative Fallacy: Why We Can’t Stop Making Stories - Create a testimony document
NET produces a written testimony of the person’s life — a document that the person and therapist co-author and that the person keeps.
Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET): Weaving Trauma Into a Coherent Life Story - Structure the story as a transformation, not a summary
The protagonist (you, your customer, your team) should be different at the end than at the beginning.
Storytelling for Persuasion, Made Practical - 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 - Journal specifically about the relationship and what it meant
Write in detail about who or what was lost and why it mattered — creating the record that no one else will maintain.
Disenfranchised Grief, Made Practical
Related concerns
- Definitional Ceremonies Narrative Therapy
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.
- Narrative Therapy Community
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.
- Narrative Therapy Rewriting The Stories That Define You With Friends
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.
- Narrative Therapy Techniques
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.
- Narrative Therapy Values
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.
- Re Authoring Narrative Therapy
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.
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