"I'm just a useless person. Always have been."
Look at the shape of that sentence. It is a story: it has a protagonist (me), a verdict (useless), and a time span (always). It compresses a lifetime of experience into one line of judgment. Narrative Therapy (many practitioners in Hong Kong call it "narrative practice") starts right here: you are not that story. Stories are told by people, and what has been told can be told again.
Narrative therapy was developed in the 1980s and 1990s by Australian social worker Michael White and New Zealand family therapist David Epston. Its best-known line: the person is not the problem; the problem is the problem. It is especially widespread among social workers in Hong Kong, because it treats people not as patients but as the authors of their own lives. This page covers what it is, how it actually works, who it suits, and where its limits are.
Each of us makes sense of ourselves through stories. "I'm an anxious person." "That's just how our family is." "I never get anything right." These stories are not made up; they are built from real events. The trouble is that once a story becomes "dominant," it selects only the events that fit and ignores the rest. You have done a hundred things; the story remembers the ten that failed, and calls you "useless."
Narrative therapy does three things. The first is externalizing: taking the problem out of you, giving it a name, and setting it in front of you so you can both look at it. Not "you're so anxious," but "when did anxiety start visiting you? What does it want you to believe? What has it done to your life?" Once the problem has some distance, you can take a position on it.
The second is deconstructing: asking who taught you this story. Where did the standard for "useless" come from? School? Family? A society that ties a person's worth to grades and income? Many of the "facts" that trouble you are the preferences of a particular time and culture, mistaken for truth.
The third is re-authoring: looking, outside the dominant story, for the moments that do not fit it. The time you held your ground. The person who saw a different side of you. The thing you did that the story never recorded. Narrative therapy calls these "sparkling moments." Find them, thread them together one by one, and an alternative story slowly takes shape. It is not newly invented. It was always there; no one had ever told it.
Narrative therapy holds that your life has more than one version. The version that troubles you is loud, but it is not the only one.
A narrative session looks like a very attentive conversation, but the questions are asked in an unusual way. Here is what actually happens:
The counsellor will of course ask why you have come, but they are just as curious about "the you beyond the problem": what you value, who is in your life, how you have got through hard times before. Then they may ask: "What would you like to call this problem?" You give it a name. It could be "anxiety," or "that voice," "the grey," "Mr. Lazy." From that moment, there is a little distance between the problem and you.
Narrative questions come in several shapes. Externalizing: "When does anxiety come to find you? In what situations does it usually show up? What does it want you to believe?" Effects: "What has it done to your work, your relationships, how you see yourself?" Position: "What do you think of it doing that? Do you agree with it running things?" Exceptions: "Was there ever a time it came and you didn't listen? What did you do?" Witnessing: "If your grandmother had seen you in that moment, what would she have said?" There are many questions, but every one of them is handing the pen back to you.
No worksheets, but often documents. Narrative therapy takes seriously the writing down of what is discovered in conversation: the counsellor may write you a letter after a session recording something you said, a sparkling moment you found together, your position on the problem. Some people receive a "certificate" confirming that they "successfully refused anxiety's orders once." These documents look playful, but many people keep them for years, because they are evidence of the other story.
Not by agenda, but narrative therapy has several "conversation maps," and the counsellor asks in the direction the map points: naming the problem, seeing its effects, your position, why that position. On the surface it is natural conversation; underneath there is a clear route. You can take the conversation elsewhere at any time, and the counsellor will follow.
No techniques, and no advice. Narrative counsellors describe themselves as "decentred but influential": they are not the expert, you are the expert on your own life; but their questions have direction and will take you to places outside the dominant story. They also rarely pass judgment. You will not hear "you're actually great"; you will hear "who would be least surprised that you managed this?" and you answer it yourself.
Here is a common path. Narrative therapy has no fixed flow; this is only one of its maps:
No set number of sessions, usually weekly or every other week. Narrative therapy tends toward the shorter side, and many people feel the story has changed direction within six to fifteen sessions. You decide when to finish.
Maggie
Counsellor
MS
「今日我地由邊度講起好呢?」 生活總是充滿起伏，有時光是應付每天的日常，就已經讓人筋疲力竭。如果您正感到疲憊、迷惘或被焦慮壓得喘不過氣，我想告訴您：有這些感受都是沒關係的，您已經做得夠好了。 我深信，每個人內在都擁有一股獨特的力量，足以陪伴自己走過低谷，並尋回屬於自己的方向。無論您正處於生命的哪一個階段，我都準備好陪伴您走過這段路。希望給您一個停下來休息、重整步調的機會。
Lincoln Tso
Registered Social Worker
BASW
我本身寫咗個好文縐縐嘅開頭，但又唔係好代表到我；我想嘗試代入你嘅心情，寫啲好「中」嘅嘢，但又好似有啲夾硬嚟。我諗，我喺輔導入邊最重視嘅就係真實感，我相信每一個尋求輔導嘅人都某程度上想要一個真實嘅人同佢交流，因為如果唔係咁， AI可能已經取代咗我……哈哈！如果你願意，我哋作為兩個唔完美嘅人，可以一齊嘗試，好真實咁面對你嘅煩惱！
Narrative therapy has a distinctive temperament: respectful, curious, non-judging, and convinced that you already have plenty of resources. A rough guide:
Narrative therapy's externalizing language has been borrowed by many other approaches. You may hear "what does this anxiety want you to do?" in counselling that is not called narrative at all.
Narrative therapy is most often used for self-image and identity, for people stuck inside a label or diagnosis, for life transitions, for grief (narrative has a set of "re-membering" conversations that let the person who has died remain in your life in a different way), and for struggles with family and cultural expectations. It is also common in work with young people, families and communities. What they share: the problem has become your identity, and you want to separate the two. These are some of the concerns narrative therapy is most often paired with:
How you see yourself, your sense of worth, and the voice that keeps criticising you.
The road with no timetable after losing a loved one, a relationship or an identity.
The uncertainty when career, family, body and direction all shift at once in midlife.
Changing fields, promotion, losing direction, or the pull between work and life.
Persistent low mood, loss of interest and motivation, and a sense that nothing matters.
The word "narrative" easily brings to mind things that it is not:
"It's just telling stories and keeping a journal."
Narrative conversations follow clear maps with clear direction, and every question is doing a job: separating the problem, taking apart where it came from, finding evidence outside the dominant story. It looks like chatting; underneath it is fine craft.
"It's positive thinking. Only the good bits."
Narrative therapy does not believe in positive thinking and will not ask you to ignore pain. The "sparkling moments" it looks for are things that actually happened, not inventions. And it takes the problem's effects seriously, sometimes more seriously than other approaches, because it asks where the problem came from and who benefits from it.
"Externalizing the problem means no responsibility."
The opposite. The person who "just is this way" cannot move. The person who says "this problem visits me sometimes, and I can decide how to respond" is the one who can take responsibility. Externalizing is not shirking; it turns "I am the problem" into "what can I do."
"The counsellor does nothing but ask questions."
The questions are the work, and they are asked with real direction. Counsellors also write letters, create documents, and sometimes invite people you care about to act as witnesses. "Decentred" does not mean absent; it means handing you the pen while staying right beside you.
Narrative therapy's influence lies mainly in practice, social work education and community work; formal research is relatively scarce. The more rigorous studies include a randomized controlled trial comparing narrative therapy with CBT for moderate depression, which found both effective, with CBT slightly ahead at the end of treatment but no difference at long-term follow-up (Lopes et al., 2014), and a small study showing clear improvement in depression after eight sessions of narrative therapy (Vromans and Schweitzer, 2011). The Dulwich Centre website holds a large body of practice material and research.
To be plain about it: narrative therapy has few studies, they are small, and it is not on the NICE guidelines or the American Psychological Association's list of research-supported treatments. Narrative practitioners themselves have reservations about the "evidence-based" framework, holding that each person's story cannot be measured on a standard scale. That is a principled position, but it also leaves the approach at a disadvantage on evidence. If you want an approach backed by extensive research, narrative therapy is not there yet. If you want a way of talking that respects you and does not treat you as a patient, it is what many people choose.
For the right person narrative therapy can be liberating, but it has clear limits:
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Focuses on the future you want and what is already working, rather than the causes of a problem.
Exploring your thoughts and feelings at your own pace within a relationship built on empathy, acceptance and genuineness.
Learning to allow difficult feelings to be present while living in line with what matters to you.
Views different inner "parts" as having protective intentions, and helps you relate to them with greater understanding and compassion.
Facing questions of meaning, freedom, aloneness and death, and living more authentically.