Narrative Therapy
You are not the problem. The problem is the problem.
The way we describe ourselves is rarely neutral. A person who has been anxious for years may stop saying “I feel anxious” and start saying “I am an anxious person” — and once a description becomes an identity, it quietly rules out evidence that does not fit.
Narrative therapy treats that account of yourself as a story: real, consequential, and partial.
Separating you from the problem
The first move is usually to put some language between the person and the difficulty. Not “my depression” but “the depression”, not “I am a failure” but “the voice that tells you that”. This is not a trick of phrasing. It changes what can be asked: when did it show up, what feeds it, what does it want you to believe, and when has it had less of a hold on you?
Looking for what got left out
Every problem-saturated story has exceptions — moments that do not fit. A week you managed. A time you said no. A standard you held onto when it would have been easier not to. These tend to go unmentioned because they contradict the main account.
Much of the work is finding those moments and taking them seriously: what they say about what you value, what you are capable of, and who in your life already knows it.
Where it is useful
Narrative therapy suits people who feel defined by something — a diagnosis, a failure, a role, something that happened to them. It is used with trauma, grief, identity, and family and cultural expectations, and it sits comfortably alongside other approaches rather than replacing them.
Sophia draws on narrative work within a broader, trauma-informed practice that also includes EFT, ACT and Somatic Experiencing.
Who you would work with
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MSW, RSW, B-Ed., BA(Hons)
Common questions
Does this mean my problems are not real?
Not at all. Externalising a problem does not shrink it or deny its effects. It changes where it sits — as something acting on your life that can be examined and resisted, rather than as a flaw in who you are.
Do I need to be good with words?
No. The 'narrative' is the story you already carry about yourself; you do not have to tell it well. A lot of the work is your therapist asking questions about parts of it you have not had reason to look at.
Is this just positive thinking?
No. Narrative therapy does not ask you to reframe something painful as secretly good. It looks for things that genuinely happened and were left out of the account — times you resisted, coped, or acted on something you cared about.
Ready when you are.
Send us a message and we will get back to you. If you would rather talk first, a free 15-minute consultation is always an option.
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