New Narratives
Therapeutic Narrative Techniques
New Narratives is a therapeutic storytelling workshop, teaching therapists and clinicians, also teachers and coaches, how to extract a personal narrative from their clients. The aim is to reframe a ‘story’ a client has attached to an event in their life that was unwelcome, such as an accident, an ill-health diagnosis, or an unwanted life event.
The workshops teach facilitators how to take clients on an imaginative journey, over several sessions, to transform their emotional story to an event. It enables the client to take ownership of how they perceive an event which was traumatising, and thus blocking their emotional progress.
Utilising therapeutic rapport, clients are supported to feel comfortable with the facilitator to retell their tale and the emotions they have related to a traumatic event. They then practice verbal and written processes to reframe the story narrative, so it is more functional to their life and enables them to move on with new circumstances.
By implementing speech and language therapy (SLT) techniques, storytelling strategies, coaching principles, and neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) practices, clients can reframe the emotional story they have attached to an event, to gain a different perspective on the subsequent outcomes.
A client's story can be presented in the context of their real life, or it can be presented through a fable-style story to make it easier to reflect on by emotionally dissociating from the feelings. The story style elicited is structured around their abilities and expressive preferences.
Incorporating strategies used in improvisation games and fictional writing techniques, the creative right side of the brain is accessed to evoke imagination, and ‘what if…’ thinking. This enables alternative solution-seeking approaches to personal issues. This has the added benefit of creating somatic sensations in the body by engaging thoughts and feelings to create positive cognitive, physical, and emotional shifts. The autonomy of a self-generated story leads to emotional empowerment by finding solutions or alternative choices of their own volition, as it is not generated by the facilitator.
Using dynamic Therapeutic Narrative Techniques (TNT), clients learn they cannot change the event they are ruminating over; however, they can move past it emotionally and relegate it to the past. They then create their own evoked options of how to utilise what happened and the consequences, into a more functional future.
TNT does not negate the need for qualified psychological interventions, and can be incorporated as an adjunct into other therapy, coaching, and teaching practices. It is a more creative, fun, and imaginative approach to moving through and past an event to create a new narrative for life.
Claire incorporates her academic and clinical experiences as an SLT and NLP practitioner, whilst incorporating various coaching and counselling skills, along with personal experiences in improv comedy, storytelling, and play writing into the New Narratives workshop to teach other practitioners the dynamic TNT approach to work with their clients.
TNT strategies are taught in a full-day, in-person interactive workshop to learn the theory and practices of New Narratives. The workshop programme is completed with a half-day remote video follow-up, with feedback on participant’s home-based exercises, and discussion of future activities to try with clients.
Workshops can be tailored to the needs of the group involved, and longer more interactive training sessions can also be arranged. Workshops are usually held at the group’s workplace, and if an external hired venue was required, the costs would be covered by the group requesting the training.
Participation fees are £150 per person or £500-£1000 per group, dependent upon the size. Travel costs are additional at £25 per hour of travel, and £0.50p mileage cost.