Narrative Couples Therapy: Understanding People's Identity
Narrative couples therapy is a particular way of understanding people's identities. This therapy sees people's problems separate and assumes that they have many skills, abilities, competencies, beliefs, values and commitments that help change the relationship with the partner, in life or with others. From a relational point of view, stories are considered to be a central part of our understanding of how therapist work. That is why it is called narrative. During therapeutic conversations, it is a matter of listening and searching for clues about knowledge and skills that go into the history saturated with problems. Often to be discovered are what begin as little trails to subordinate stories of intentions, hopes, commitments, values, desires
and dreams. With curiosity and exploration, these stories and favorite stories of people's lives can become thicker and richly described. The practices of the narrative therapy of couple do not have contradictions or restrictions of any type, can be applied in diverse contexts and for all type of problems or situations from traumas to the mental, emotional and even addictions disorders.
What a therapist does is basically to collapse or reconstruct these tags along with the person or the couple to continue building, in a collaborative relationship, other identities more preferred and useful for the consultants. Narrative therapy is a form of therapy that is respectful and does not look guilty, is a therapy of approach to the person. It works with the sense of identity of the individual and not only with the symptomatology. In this way, the important aspects of the identity and the hopes, the dreams, the values, the commitments are highlighted. They shape the lives of the people or the couple involved in the therapeutic process. The narrative couple therapy works from a related model in which the problems are seen from a cultural point of view and not only individual. In this way, we analyze the relationship between the problem and cultural concepts such as machismo, perfectionism, individualism, competitiveness, etc., this is what differentiates this model of therapy from others.
White, M. & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. New York: Norton.
and dreams. With curiosity and exploration, these stories and favorite stories of people's lives can become thicker and richly described. The practices of the narrative therapy of couple do not have contradictions or restrictions of any type, can be applied in diverse contexts and for all type of problems or situations from traumas to the mental, emotional and even addictions disorders.
What a therapist does is basically to collapse or reconstruct these tags along with the person or the couple to continue building, in a collaborative relationship, other identities more preferred and useful for the consultants. Narrative therapy is a form of therapy that is respectful and does not look guilty, is a therapy of approach to the person. It works with the sense of identity of the individual and not only with the symptomatology. In this way, the important aspects of the identity and the hopes, the dreams, the values, the commitments are highlighted. They shape the lives of the people or the couple involved in the therapeutic process. The narrative couple therapy works from a related model in which the problems are seen from a cultural point of view and not only individual. In this way, we analyze the relationship between the problem and cultural concepts such as machismo, perfectionism, individualism, competitiveness, etc., this is what differentiates this model of therapy from others.
White, M. & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. New York: Norton.