Narrative Therapy in Guelph
Narrative therapy for identity and self-worth
Narrative therapy is a talk therapy approach that works on the story, or “narrative,” that you tell about who you are. None of us writes that story alone. Your family wrote the first draft, and the world around you has been adding notes ever since. By the time you’re old enough to notice, it doesn’t feel like a story anymore. It feels like a fact.
These stories often keep only what fits, like “I’m the anxious one” or “I’m not loveable.” They may be rooted in real experiences, but these stories often leave out most of your life.
In sessions, we put the problem outside of you. We’ll talk about anxiety, for example, but never about you being an anxious person, because there’s a difference between having a problem and believing that the problem defines you.
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Identity and self-discovery at any age
2SLGBTQ+ identity and the stories other people wrote about you without asking
Self-worth and the constant self-judgment you may be struggling with
Shame, especially when it’s started feeling like who you are
Stories passed down through families and cultures, including the ones you inherited without anyone ever discussing them
Grief, especially if you’ve been told to move on and don’t want to
Life transitions, when the story you had about yourself no longer matches your circumstances
Working out who you are as a teen or young adult
ADHD and neurodivergence, when every story you’ve been given is about what’s wrong with you
Living with a diagnosis that has quietly turned into an identity
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Narrative therapy is quite conversational and exploratory. Think of it as a conversation with a close friend or family member. However, instead of just validating your story, we’ll dig deeper and provide understanding about where that story started.
We’ll talk about what brought you to therapy as if it were a character in your story. When did it first show up? Whose voice tells you this story? Who in your life would be least surprised to hear that you stood up to it?
Then we go looking for things that your story left out. Maybe it’s a hard thing you did that nobody noticed, or a version of you that only shows up around one particular friend. Moments like these feel fleeting at first, like they just aren’t as true. In time, you’ll notice your beliefs about self, the world, and those around you start to sound different.
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Maybe you’ve been living with a label for years (either yours or someone else’s) and your sense of who you are has become much smaller than it should be. Narrative therapy works on exactly that problem, in questions and stories, not tools and techniques.
Questions about narrative therapy in Guelph
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It’s a saying narrative therapists use, and it sums up the whole narrative therapy approach. You are not the problem; the problem is the problem. In practice, it means we treat the difficulty as something affecting your life, and never as something wrong with you personally.
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It was developed in Australia and New Zealand by two family therapists, Michael White and David Epston. The Dulwich Centre in Australia, which grew out of their work, publishes a large public library about the approach and where the ideas came from.
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No. We use writing when it helps and skip it when it doesn’t, but you can do the whole thing in conversation, without ever picking up a pen.
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Often, yes. Separating the problem from the person makes sense quickly to teens, who are already being handed stories about themselves by several adults at once.
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Yes, Golden Horizons can meet virtually with you anywhere in Ontario or Alberta.
