Family Counseling Approach – Narrative Therapy Kristi Sabbides Moos Liberty University Marriage and Family Counseling I May 13, 2011 Dr. Suhad Sadik, Instructor
Abstract
Narrative therapy focuses on helping clients gain access to preferred story lines about their lives and identities and takes the place of previous negative and self-defeating narratives about themselves. An overview of the Social Construction Model, Narrative Therapy, is presented, as well as poststrucuralism, deconstructionism, self-narratives, cultural narratives, therapeutic conversations, ceremonies, letters and leagues in addition to several facets of narrative therapy. Personal integration of faith in this family
It is a systematic and reliable method for segmenting of therapy transcripts into units for further analyses, and a useful tool for psychotherapy researchers hoping to further understand the processes which contribute to the construction and collaboration of narratives in psychotherapy (Angus & Hardtke).

Self-Narratives and Cultural Narratives

In an attempt to make sense of their lives, clients arrange experiences of events over time and self-narratives become the basis for interpreting the clients’ experiences and making sense of who they are and their surroundings. “Put succinctly, it is the stories we develop about our lives that actually shape or constitute our lives” (Goldenberg & Goldenberg, 2008, p. 370). Helping clients become aware that the stories they tell themselves shape their lives is a big step in helping them realize they can form new stories for their lives and re-author their own lives (Goldenberg & Goldenberg, 2008).

Cultural stories help shape personal narratives and specify preferred ways of behaving in a culture. Narrative therapists engage clients in conversation to deconstruct cultural beliefs and practices that help the problem story perpetuate itself. Internalizing culturally based discourses leads to a self-defeating future and restricts different ways of thinking about life (Goldenberg & Goldenberg, 2008). Ethnic