Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Narrative Therapy

I didn't get to use Narrative therapy as much as I would have liked in my placement. Part of the reason is that I didn't understand it well enough.

But now that I am getting a better sense of it, every client issue I revisit fits within the Narrative framework SO EASILY. I think Narrative may just be the most efficient in reaching those goals and making long-term goals.

Okay FactCheck: Lopes (2014) measured the two and found that Narrative is as effective as CBT.

I find CBT to be too labour intensive. Narrative may not even feel like serious work to clients.

I used some Narrative elements with my 79 year old client who thought he had Aspergers - but was never diagnosed. He was there, but was not motivated to make change. The way I understood it, after 80 years of living a certain way, there's immense comfort in who you are, even if it makes your everyday absolutely suck (yes, clinical terminology!). Through our Narrative conversations we started to break through to some of those belief patterns. I was so happy when in the beginning of the session once he went from saying that nothing at all brought him pleasure, to - by the end of the session - listing all the things that brought him pleasure :).

Aside: He was one of my favourite clients. So incredibly intelligent! A lot of our session time was spent on talking about the world, politics, Trump and life in general.




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