Coaching practices for Recognize Mental Narratives

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

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

  • The same exact tape plays every time things go sideways
  • The new way I’m trying to see myself only seems to hold when I’m alone with it
  • I’m so convinced I’m "the one who always falls apart" that I can’t see anything else
  • Something scared my child
  • I can recount exactly what happened

Practices that may help

  1. Name the story your mind is telling
    Recognize the narrative your emotions run — the "I’m not good enough" or "no one cares" story — so it can’t run you.
    Emotional Agility, Made Practical
  2. 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
  3. 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
  4. Name it to tame it: tell the story of the big feeling
    Help the child narrate what happened and how it felt — storytelling is brain integration.
    The Whole-Brain Child (Siegel & Bryson)
  5. 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
  6. 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.
  7. State a prediction before looking at the outcome
    Commit to a prediction before the result is known to prevent the narrative from rewriting your memory of your forecast.
    The Narrative Fallacy: Why We Can’t Stop Making Stories
  8. 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
  9. Shift identity from self-concept to awareness itself
    Experiment with "I am the aware space" rather than "I am my thoughts and feelings."
    Non-Dual Awareness, Made Practical
  10. Work the four channels of traumatic memory: sense, emotion, cognition, meaning
    NET explicitly addresses all four channels in which trauma is encoded — not just thought.
    Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET): Weaving Trauma Into a Coherent Life Story

Related concerns

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.

Practice this with IX Coach

Try this practice