About Course
This is a brief, introductory, practical workshop that provides hands-on opportunities to use narrative strategies. Participants should leave the workshop with the ability to:
- explain the power of externalization,
- identify basic concepts associated with Narrative Therapy (NT), and
- demonstrate interviewing the problem and NT influence questions
NT aims to provide a separation of the problem from the person. The problem, in this case, SSA experiences, is deliberately removed from the person as an identity. This construct of externalization serves to reduce shame, empower the client, and deconstruct unhelpful and unscientific dominant narratives regarding the relationship of sexual attractions to one’s identity. In general, NT allows for exploration of the relationship between the person and the problem instead of focusing on the person as the problem.
NT was developed, in part, to challenge taken-for-granted cultural discourses that serve to limit the autonomy and self-determination of individuals and families. At its heart, it seeks to provide the opportunity for the client to privilege their own values over those of the dominant culture and to align their thoughts, feelings, and actions with those values. In application to SSA experiences, the client is provided the opportunity to question the cultural narrative of “born that way” that is frequently accompanied by the insistence that people should not be allowed to influence their sexuality. Additionally, clients are provided an opportunity to escape from the discourse that insists that their core identity should be rooted in their current experience of erotic attractions (gay, lesbian, ex-gay, trans, e.g.).
As a consequence of this paradigm of challenging dominant narratives, NT will challenge uniform stories about the etiology of SSA experiences that are found in the classic and postmodern psychotherapy literature. Clients are freed from the prerequisite task of owning their therapist’s story of the etiology of their SSA experiences and are allowed to consider and uncover other stories – to claim lost stories that are personal and often profound.
