Coaching practices for Externalizing Narrative Therapy
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Externalizing 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 don’t say "I feel anxious," I say "I am anxious"
- 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
- The story I carry about my own life is fragmented and full of shame, and I want it written down properly somewhere outside my head
- 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
Practices that may help
- 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. - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - Write an impact statement — why the trauma happened and how it affected you
A written account of the meaning you made of the trauma is CPT’s starting point for finding stuck points.
Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT): Unsticking the Meanings That Maintain PTSD - 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. - 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 - 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
Related concerns
- Narrative Therapy Letter
A therapist’s written letter to a client between sessions — documenting alternative-story gains before they fade.
Therapeutic Letters
- Therapeutic Letters Narrative Therapy
A therapist’s written letter to a client between sessions — documenting alternative-story gains before they fade.
- White 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.
- Absent But Implicit Narrative Therapy
Every problem story implies a violated value — surfacing that value reveals the person’s strengths, not just their struggles.
The Absent But Implicit: What Problems Reveal About What We Value
- Alternative 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.
- Loss Story Therapy
A therapist’s written letter to a client between sessions — documenting alternative-story gains before they fade.
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