Coaching practices for Narrative Therapy Rewriting the Stories That Define You After a Loss

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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
  • The day they died still plays in my head in jagged pieces
  • My memories of them and of how it happened come at me in scattered, jagged pieces with no order to them, and I keep replaying the end on a loop
  • I’ve spotted a few moments where I was braver than my usual story says, but they feel like isolated flukes
  • There’s a story I tell about my past

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. 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
  3. Retell the story of the death and its aftermath
    Construct a coherent, detailed narrative of the loss — including your experience before, during, and after.
    Meaning Reconstruction in Grief, Made Practical
  4. Construct a coherent narrative of the loss
    Tell the full story of the loss — who the person was, what happened, and what life is now.
    Worden’s Tasks of Mourning, Made Practical
  5. 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
  6. 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
  7. 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
  8. 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
  9. 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
  10. 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

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