Narrative Therapy
Dear you,
I’m so very glad you are here.
I have a few things to say
To Promise?
To Offer?
To Hope.
I hope to meet you at the place you are,
in your heart,
in your head,
in your past and maybe
in the future you want to write.
You might find me in
The office
The forest
on the floor.
Full of curiosity and hope
of openness of wow
and wonder
for who and how you are.
I promise to not know you
And
I pledge to ask interesting questions.
I can't wait to meet you.
What is Narrative Therapy?
I believe we are all made of stories. The stories we tell ourselves, the stories others tell about us and the stories we believe. These stories shape our identities and experiences. I think this storytelling, or personal narrative, is central to how humans think and make meaning of our lives and the world.
Narrative therapy is a respectful, non-blaming approach that centres you as the expert in your own life. A narrative approach considers the problems at hand as separate from the core of who you are and assumes you have many skills, competencies, beliefs, values, and abilities that will help you to reduce the influence of problems in your life. In my role as a narrative therapist I hope to act as a mirror that asks interesting questions and curiosities about your stories and perhaps can be another human walking with you as you build the life you want.
Come to rediscover your story, stay to write your next chapter.
The road to here.
Established by family therapists Michael White and David Epston in the 1990's, Narrative Therapy is greatly influenced by anthropologists, cultural psychologists, feminist theory, literary theorists, and philosophers.
White and Epston proposed that the stories people tell themselves are also not only influenced by sociocultural and familial messages, but they suggested that stories form our experiences, shape our identities, and influence our behaviour.
Narrative therapy advocates that through an exploration of these stories, clients and therapists can collaboratively open space for new possibilities, to re-author stories portraying a preferred, and, I would argue, resilient identities.
White and Epston were also influenced by Foucault’s discourse of power, a novel approach at the time towards counselling, which involved transferring power from the therapist to the client and inspired an empowering and non-pathologizing lens. In other words, I don't believe you are the problem, the problem is the problem.
In addition to my Master of Counselling Psychology graduate research that centred on a narrative approach in counselling those who live with chronic pain, I have completed additional training of with The Vancouver School of Narrative Therapy and The Calgary Narrative Collective.
I also will not claim to be an expert in the room, nor in your life. I am a student of life just like you and I pledge to share what I am learning along the way and to propose interesting questions to help you write the next chapters of your life.
What's in a story anyway?
There is no recipe for narrative therapy. I believe we are co-creating a dynamic, new reality between us and during this organic process and there are a wide range of therapeutic tools we can explore together.
Externalizing conversations can help us deconstruct the problem-saturated stories and open space for you to consider your life from a different perspective.
Re-authoring conversations can contribute to creating an alternative story and enrich a newly emerging identity. We do this through a series of I hope interesting questions that can help you reflect and uncover your unique moments of coping, skills, knowledge, and attitude they you are already using to live.
Re-membering and Outsider witnessing conversations can explore a thickening of alternative stories of your life by charting your preferred identity based on acceptance, strength, and agency already within you.
Mapping your resilience through the making of a resilience timeline is another way to strengthen a previously defeated narrative of resilience, strength, and hope in your life.
Definitional ceremonies can allow room to acknowledge problems of invisibility and marginality. Ceremony that is meaningful to you can provide strategies and opportunities to be seen and heard on your own terms, bringing witness to you inherit worth, vitality. and being.
Therapeutic documentation. The use of letters, certificates, videos, photos, or other formats can be used to celebrate a success, contribute to a rite of passage, and or accompany the end of work together, and can be helpful for people who are in danger of losing sight of their preferred identities they have worked so hard to rediscover.
Let's Connect.
Narrative Roots Therapy
I am a Registered Provisional Psychologist with the College of Alberta Psychologists offering in-person and virtual individual therapy to adults 18+ on Tuesdays and Thursdays in Calgary, Alberta Canada.
I also offer walk and talk psychotherapy and group public Forest Bathing experiences.
Located at Riverwest Therapy Collective
850-700 4 AVE SW Calgary, AB T2P 3J4
JoAnn Reynolds (she/her), MC Registered Provisional Psychologist ANFT Forest Therapy Guide (In Training) Narrative Roots Therapy narrativerootstherapy@gmail.com
