Coaching practices for Us Narrative Relationship

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

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

• The way we talk about us has quietly soured
• I can recount exactly what happened
• I’m completely sure I know what’s going on here, but when I try to separate what I actually saw happen from the meaning I bolted onto it, I can’t cleanly tell where the facts stop and my interpretation starts
• My whole story is achievement, achievement, achievement
• I’ve got this clean, satisfying explanation for why it all went the way it did, and it feels airtight

Practices that may help

1. Build and retell the "us" narrative
   Actively shape the story your relationship tells about itself.
   The Shared Meaning System
2. Narrative Identity, Made Practical
   Dan McAdams’ narrative identity theory holds that identity itself is a personal myth — an internalized, evolving story that integrates your past, present, and imagined future into a coherent sense of self. The structure and tone of that story (whether it moves toward redemption or contamination, agency or communion) predicts psychological well-being, and the story can be deliberately revised. Evidence is primarily observational but robustly consistent.
3. 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
4. Separate the data from the narrative you’ve built around it
   List the raw facts, then list the story you’ve layered on top — and check whether the story actually follows.
   The Narrative Fallacy: Why We Can’t Stop Making Stories
5. The Narrative Fallacy: Why We Can’t Stop Making Stories
   The narrative fallacy, named by Nassim Taleb in The Black Swan, is the tendency to construct coherent, causal stories from sequences of events — and then to mistake the story for the underlying reality. Narratives feel explanatory because they are causal and emotionally coherent, but they systematically underweight randomness, omit disconfirming details, and create false predictability. The bias is real and well-grounded theoretically; its practical importance is high wherever decisions depend on forecasting or learning from the past.
6. Balance agency and communion themes in your story
   Check whether your life narrative is weighted toward self-expansion (agency) or connection (communion).
   Narrative Identity, Made Practical
7. 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.
8. Identify what the narrative leaves out
   After hearing or constructing a causal story, deliberately list the facts it doesn’t explain.
   The Narrative Fallacy: Why We Can’t Stop Making Stories
9. 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
10. 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

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