Download the editorial here Editorial by Shelja Sen Dear ReaderThis edition is a mosaic of stories on love, loss and legacy.We live in times of growing uncertainty and hatred depending on where we are located in terms of geography,…
This is an audio recording of a paper that was originally published in Dulwich Centre Review, a precursor to this journal, in 1985. In this paper, childhood fears are considered within the interactional context of the family. It is argued that the survival and growth of such fears is dependent upon the presence of a "fears life-support system". The details of this life-support system can be derived by an examination of the family members' inadvertent participation with a fears lifestyle. Interventions to disrupt this participation are discussed. These interventions include the introduction of a non-threatening interactional description of the problem and a structured ritual to challenge the fears lifestyle. A case example is given.
This audio practice note describes a letter-writing campaign dedicated to sharing insider knowledges of Queer Joy. Letter-writing campaigns seek to create a context to share community knowledges of care in ways that can be accessed by members of the community of concern. This campaign begins with a queer invitation to allow members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community in our province to write letters about their experience of cultivating queer joy. These letters are then distributed in sessions if a person is struggling to create queer joy in their life. This audio note reviews the care put into the letter-writing invitations. It includes responses from three letter writers and outlines the effects for both readers and writers. I hope that others can create seeds of queer joy in their lives through listening to how others have traversed, creating their queer joy.
Culturally resonant metaphors can highlight local skills and knowledges and strengthen connections to community, culture and history in ways that can sustain us in difficult times. In this video, Annonciata Niyibizi Muhayimana shows how collective narrative practices like the Tree of Life and Team of Life can be adapted to celebrate local cultures. Annonciata introduces the metaphor of Ingata Yúbuzima, the Ingata of Life, a Rwandan metaphor based on the handmade rings used to carry a load on one’s head. The ingata is a treasured item in everyday use, offering protection to those carrying a heavy load. It can be used with assistance and when help is not available. Annonciata shows how she elicited the knowledge of the mothers she worked with about making, using and caring for ingata, and how this local knowledge became the basis for rich metaphors about values, skills, hopes and connection. Individual ingatas were created as a record of what the women wanted to protect, and a giant collective ingata wove their stories together. Ingata Yúbuzima offers a resonant image of protection formed from everyday materials that enables people to skilfully bear weight without being hurt by it. This video is an extract from a presentation that was part of Annonciata’s completion of the Master of Narrative Therapy and Community Work at The University of Melbourne.
This video explores the intersection of narrative therapy, fashion and gender identity through the co-creation of a gender-neutral paper doll dress-up game. Drawing from narrative therapy principles, it challenges the rigid gender norms historically reinforced by fashion games, offering a playful yet meaningful tool for identity exploration. Alongside the game, a community collective document is being created to amplify queer voices, sharing stories of resilience and resistance against dominant societal discourses. By integrating creative mediums into therapeutic practice, I examine how narrative therapy can help individuals shape and express their preferred stories.
In recent years, we have seen a rise in anti-LGBTIQ+ violence and hate across the settler colonies of so-called Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand and Turtle Island North America. This video interview describes a response to anti-trans and anti-drag hate. It spotlights an individual therapeutic exchange that grew into a web of collective care, action and activism. In the context of counselling, people’s responses to discriminatory violence are often pathologised, creating contexts of blame and shame for people who are living through oppression. This video conversation retells significant fragments of a therapeutic relationship. It includes collective narrative practices such as letter writing, externalising and deconstructing the effects of doxing. We invite practitioners to reflect on how we might take our practices from the therapy room to the streets for protest and collective action, and to stages for drag, cabaret and performance art, as we take up our solidarity with targeted groups.
In 2024, this journal published a paper by Hamilton Kennedy highlighting the dismissive responses often experienced by people who hold beliefs that have been labelled as delusional. Hamilton argued that this dismissal constitutes a form of epistemic injustice. We received a number of responses to this article, and decided to interview the author about the wider research project they are engaged in. Hamilton has developed innovative qualitative research methods to explore the history and meanings of beliefs that have been labelled as “delusions”, and to collaborate with research participants in non-pathologising ways. In this interview with David Denborough, Hamilton reflects on some of the practical and ethical considerations involved in conducting research with people whose beliefs have been labelled delusional. They set out how their approach differs from much research in psychiatric contexts, favouring a stance of solidarity, care and reciprocal trust.
Therapeutic documents can serve as lasting records of the skills and knowledges that have helped people through hard times. When shared, they can foster community and solidarity by challenging limiting narratives and making space for counter-narratives to be seen, heard and celebrated. This practice story describes the creation of a therapeutic document in the form of a short animation, which was developed through narrative therapy sessions with Felicity, an Autistic woman and parent of two Autistic daughters. It shows how an apparently small moment can contain “bits of brilliance” that can become the basis of a significant counter-story.
“The Terminator” was tricking 11-year-old Nathan into aggression, self-harm and suicidal thoughts. Nathan’s parents wanted to find ways to support Nathan and to develop their own coping skills. This practice story shows how we drew on Nathan’s particular interest in slugs to help him remember preferred ways of being and to keep everyone safe.
This paper shares a story of practice with a family who initially came to counselling because the 17-year-old son was suicidal. Our work came to focus on the family as a whole and their process of coming back together after being separated for some years in response to the father’s drug use. We developed a new understanding of the mother’s decision to ask the father to leave the family home as an act of bravery that had contributed to the wellbeing of all involved. Through identifying individual and collective wonderfulnesses, the family members developed a new shared identity in which bravery, resilience and calm could provide a foundation for responding to current and future life challenges.
This paper shares a tender story from the Stanikzai family, a family from Afghanistan who now live in Australia. It is generously offered in the hope that this it may assist other mothers and families who are silently grieving in their homes and who we can’t expect to bring their suffering to professional counselling offices. This paper tells the story of Ziba Stanikzai, who was very much suffering after one of her sons, Ajmal, was killed in Afghanistan. This paper is an honouring Ajmal’s life and memory. It is told through the perspectives of each of the authors. It begins with the words of Ajmal’s older brother Dr Abdul. Later you will read a series of letters linking the Stanikzai family with many others. These letters weave together storylines of loss, love and memory. They also represent a nuanced form of narrative family therapy and convey how this was a culturally and spiritually resonant response to suffering.
The extensive medical records of young people living with chronic illnesses can tell a thin story about the experiences and humanity of the person they supposedly represent. Through the story of a narrative document developed with a client, and the responses of others I shared it with, this article explores the skills and knowledges of young people navigating mental health systems while also dealing with chronic illness. From a poststructuralist perspective, the paper considers the effects of what one young person called “fat files” on how clients are “known” in clinical spaces, with implications for how professionals engage in notetaking.
This paper documents a co-research journey with three young people who had been labelled as “socially isolated” and “underachievers”. I introduce narrative ideas such as externalising the problem and its effects, exploring the absent but implicit, re-authoring and investigating the cultural context of how success is constructed in Chinese cultures. I describe the co-research methodology we used and the development of five themes; namely, the young people’s views of the problem, their descriptions of the problem and its effects, the strategies they used against the problem and its effects, what they held to be important, and how the results of our co-research were extended to inform future plans and actions. After sharing the voices of the three young persons, I reflect on lessons from this co-research process.
Spiritual care in a hospital setting regularly involves joining with people in the “betwixt and between” of life. This paper considers Michael White’s (2016) rite of passage metaphor and the way that it supports double-story development by acknowledging the difficulties people experience while also recognising that a hospital admission can include the possibility that one might arrive at a new place.
In this paper I explore a narrative therapy approach to supervision and critical reflection and present the “Reflective Conversation Cards”, a resource to support practice reflection. The cards guide conversation partners through a series of reflective questions informed by narrative ideas, aiming to democratise access to narrative therapy supervision. I present four stories from practice, which show how the cards were developed in collaboration with other practitioners. The practice stories also show how the cards can be utilised by individuals and groups in diverse practice contexts and with practitioners of varied professional backgrounds. Importantly, the practice stories show how the cards can support collaborative conversations that incorporate an ethic of accountability to the people we work alongside.
This article shares a narrative journey with a young man grappling with the effects of problematic substance use. Substance use had disrupted his dreams of becoming a medical doctor, keeping him out of university for a year. I embarked on a transformative journey with the young man and his family, guided by ideas and practices of narrative pastoral therapy. This narrative journey was non-blaming, collaborative, participatory, inclusive and contextual. The family and I wove a new tapestry telling a story of healing, transformation and renewal.
This paper explores challenges posed to double–story development in situations of ongoing injustice. Located within the Indian context, it proposes various narrative practices to address these challenges and facilitate re-authoring. The paper examines two key practices: contextualising stories and narrative explorations of the body. Additionally, it demonstrates how different narrative maps – externalising, deconstruction, re-authoring, re–membering and body-based narrative practices – can be interwoven to respond.
This paper considers the ways that narrative practices can intersect with and add richly to a meaningful and inclusive spiritual care approach. In this paper, Aunty Katrina, a Kaurna Elder, and Jesse, a spiritual care chaplain, reflect on conversations together in a hospital setting and what helped to make these occasions of mutual respect and blessing.
