Narrative Therapy and Abuse: Changing the Story You Tell About Yourself

Abuse leaves you with a story about yourself. Maybe it says you’re too sensitive, too much, or crazy. Maybe it says you started it, or that you’re as bad as the person who hurt you. Hear that story often enough, and you start telling it to yourself.

Narrative therapy is a way of questioning that story. It looks for the parts abuse leaves out: what you did to protect yourself, what you cared about, and who you are apart from the relationship. This page covers what narrative therapy is, how it applies whether you’ve stayed or left, one of my own memories rewritten, and how to try it yourself.

What Is Narrative Therapy?

Narrative therapy is a form of talk therapy developed by Michael White in Australia and David Epston in New Zealand. The Dulwich Centre, a narrative therapy organization in Australia, describes it as “a respectful, non-blaming approach to counselling and community work, which centres people as the experts in their own lives.”

It rests on a few ideas:

• People make sense of their lives through stories. When one problem story takes over, it leaves out much of what happened and much of who you are.
• You are not the problem. Narrative therapists call this externalizing, and they sum it up this way: “the person is not the problem, the problem is the problem.”
• Every life holds more than one story. Therapy looks for the events the problem story skipped and uses them to build what narrative therapists call a preferred story, one that fits your life and values better than the problem story does.

Social worker Jodi Aman explained how this applies to abuse in a 2012 interview for this site’s newsletter:

Even though there is an abuse story going on, there are also other stories that abuse makes invisible. Stories of connection, strength, love, and self-preservation are also present.

Jodi Aman, 2012

A narrative therapist works mostly through questions. Jodi described the tools she used: asking questions, getting the details of events, looking at an event from a distance, tracing where your skills came from, and changing what a memory means.

How Abuse Shapes the Story You Tell About Yourself

Your sense of who you are grows out of how you make sense of what happened to you. After abuse, that sense-making often lands on self-blame. Jodi called self-blame an epidemic among survivors.

Memory adds to the problem. Many survivors remember part of what happened and judge themselves harshly for it. Jodi pointed out what usually goes missing:

What is lost to the memory is how the survivor responded.

Jodi Aman, 2012

The other person often dismissed your response at the time, and self-doubt overshadows it afterward. But your response always says something about what you value. If you found ways to keep yourself safe, those skills say you valued yourself. Once you can see them, you can use them again.

Therapist Allan Wade wrote in 1997 that “whenever persons are badly treated, they resist.” Resistance is rarely dramatic. It can look like going quiet to end a fight, agreeing to keep the peace, protecting a child, or holding on to your own opinion in private.

If You’re Still in the Relationship

Many people believe you have to leave before recovery can start. Jodi disagreed. Staying is a response too, and often a reasoned one. Other people may call it crazy, and that judgment adds to the harm by suggesting you don’t know what’s good for you.

Staying can be a choice with a purpose. You might be staying until you have a safe plan, or staying to protect someone else. While you stay, you can still build on your skills and your confidence in yourself.

It also helps to have identities besides “abuse victim.” Anything that reminds you of who else you are counts: a friend, a coworker, a gardener, someone who loves their dog. So does a community of people who see the good in you. When you’re isolated, the other person’s voice is the only one you hear. Other voices give you something to compare it to.

If you want to see a therapist while you’re still living with the other person, choose individual therapy. The National Domestic Violence Hotline says it does “not encourage anyone in an abusive relationship to seek counseling with their partner.” Think about privacy too. Appointment reminders, emails, insurance statements, and online sessions at home can all be seen or overheard.

What Rewriting a Memory Looks Like

In 2012, about two years after I left my marriage, I tried this with one of my own memories. Here is what I wrote.

When I think of my abusive marriage, I remember the yelling and insults. My yelling and insults. I’ll admit I sometimes felt a little glow when I flipped a zinger his way. But that was during the worst of it, right before I finally figured out he abused me in many ways that had nothing to do with insults.

One of my very first journal entries from the marriage shows how horrible I felt after hurting him. (That entry is on this site as You Hate Men.) I still remember that night clearly because I’d done something completely against my character and felt awful. That moment became a turning point for “us” as a couple. It’s the foundation for my guilt and my desire to prove to him that I was a good person. That night haunts me.

What makes it worse is that I knew something bad was happening on his end. I asked all the right questions, but I didn’t answer them. (Stupid, stupid, stupid!)

How can I rewrite that memory? Where’s the good in changing my behavior and turning into someone I’m disgusted by to this day?

Well, my journal says he was “cutting into me,” and that reminds me that he was abusing me. I don’t remember exactly why he called me an actress, but to be an actress you have to act one way while being someone different. He attacked my integrity often, and this was probably one of those times.

I was afraid he was going to hurt me physically. Not long before, he’d held my face right above a glowing red stove burner. That day, I ran upstairs to get away from him, and he backed me into a corner of the hall. He wasn’t going to leave me alone. He was puffed up and red in the face.

I was so scared. So I took the safest way out I could see. I said something I knew would make him run in shame. I poked a sore spot, and my gamble worked. He ran away from me. He ran away from me because I was astute enough to know how to save myself in that moment. I valued myself despite what he thought.

I’m not recommending what I said. It was a gamble in a dangerous moment, and it could have gone the other way. What I couldn’t see for years was that I was protecting myself.

Also, things like that didn’t fly out of my mouth every day. I’m usually a tactful person who communicates in ways that don’t hurt people. His put-downs, disguised as jokes in front of his friends, oozed out of his mouth like honey. I usually handle even tough conversations well, and I’m proud of that.

And unlike him, I told the truth. I didn’t lie to save myself or to “win.” I’m honest even when the pressure is on, and that’s something to be proud of too.

It feels good to remember the things I forgot, and it’s helping me rewrite my story.

Try It With One Memory

You can do a version of this on your own. Start with a memory that’s uncomfortable but manageable, not the most painful one you have. If you start to feel flooded or stuck in the memory, stop and remind yourself that it isn’t happening now. Consider working through the hardest memories with a trauma-informed therapist.

Write the answers down, or think them through:

• What happened? Write down what the other person said and did, as plainly as you can.
• What were you afraid would happen?
• What did you do in response? Count small things, like going quiet, changing the subject, or leaving the room.
• What does your response say about what you cared about or were trying to protect?
• What skills did you use? Where did you learn them?
• What would someone who loves you say about what you did?

If you share a home, phone, or computer with the other person, think about where your writing will live. A notebook can be found, and a notes app or document can sync to a shared account or show up in previews. No option is completely private. Pick the one with the least risk for you, or work through the questions in your head.

Finding a Narrative Therapist

According to the VA’s National Center for PTSD, the talk therapies with the strongest evidence for PTSD are Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and Prolonged Exposure (PE). Narrative therapy isn’t on that list. If you’re dealing with trauma symptoms such as nightmares or flashbacks, ask about those treatments as well. Some therapists use more than one approach.

To find a therapist in the US who uses narrative therapy, you can filter Psychology Today’s therapist directory by “Narrative.” Whoever you consider, the Hotline suggests asking about their experience supporting people who have been abused. Many local domestic violence programs also offer counseling.

If you need to talk with someone now (US): Call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), text START to 88788, or chat at thehotline.org. Outside the US, contact your local domestic violence services. If you’re in immediate danger, call 911 or your local emergency number.

If You’re Here for Someone You Love

Jodi’s advice to friends and family was to have confidence in the person. Your belief in their ability to take back their life helps them believe it too. Reflect back their abilities and the good you see in them. Abuse makes people feel worthless and weak, and your voice can counter the one they hear from their partner. For more, read How to Help a Domestic Abuse Victim.