【Narrative Therapy and Community

Ⅰ. What did the writings offer?

This collection of materials provides us with the basic concepts , complete maps of externalization and re-authoring and detailed examples for subdivided clients and specific cases.

Ⅱ. Were there any aspects of the writings that resonated with your own experiences or learnings in different aspects of your practice? If so, in what way?

Combined with my personal experience, I have some understandings and thoughts:

1. The feasibility of externalization and re-authoring is based on the fact that problems and definition are changeable with the changes of particular time, space, situation, relationship, culture and other environments. Whether problems or some personal characteristics and expressions, including strategies and ideas、ways of solve problems, can be externalized. The definition of externalized content is also changeable. Externalization is the precondition of re-authoring, and re-authoring is the natural result of externalization. In my exercises in class, I often found some problems in the beginning changed to be not a problem at the end of conversation.

2. Externalization can be promoted by changing words and sentence patterns, naming problems, using metaphors, introducing games and third parties,etc. With the help of consultants, it is participated and constructed by the clients themselves. The cases of Mike White’s working with children and families are good examples for us.

3. "Decentralization" in externalization is to realize the "decentralization" of the relationship between "people and problems" through the "decentralization" of the relationship between the conversation subjects - people will not be trapped by problems all the time, and problems will not stick to people forever. By comparing this with the traditional psychological counseling relationship model, I can feel that the space created by "decentralization" is very valuable for "problem fade-out". This includes a core idea, that is, respect for each individual's unique values, experience, knowledge and skills, which makes these "treasured objects" to"deal with" problems become the "center".

4. In the application and practice of externalization and re-authoring, some common questions

and common ways of asking questions or elicitation may get different responses from different objects. There is no standard answer, but they have a common orientation. I got this experience when I tried to use some questions from Mike White’s cases.

Ⅲ. How did/could you put the ideas in the readings into practice?

Read Mike White's case of treating Richard, I found one question "do you think it is fair that these feelings take away your sleep?" very interesting. When I strongly feel controlled and oppressed by someone or some force, there is a voice in my heart that is "This is unfair!" When I tell stories among my fellow consultants, this is often regarded as a "the mouth of a well" to dig the subconsciousness. Here, Mike White inspired Richard to find a way to "confront" the "nauty feers" in a direct way. Richard, a seven-year-old boy, immediately responded that "it's unfair" and began to think up the ideas of how to name it, what to do with it. I think this question is also worth trying in my consultation.

Ⅳ. What differences did/could the ideas make to your practice?

I put "do you think it's fair?" in the conversation with one of my clients, a young man who is trapped in entanglement with a too strong mother. When he mentioned the influence of mother's control, coercion and negation on him again, I asked him when you are always controlled by such feelings, is it fair?He said in a moment of silence, "it's fair". He said that he rationalized his parents' treatment, which is very different from Little Richard's response. This attempt made me think further that people of different ages, clients with different trauma experiences and different social support will have different responses and answers to the same questions, but each feedback is meaningful, For example, my client admitted that he recognized and internalized his mother's treatment, which is also a starting point of externalization. It just seems that the process of extrication would take longer.

Ⅴ. What questions and/or dilemmas did they raise?

I noticed that narrative therapy was used in children's and family therapy in the beginning. It seems easier to stimulate children's imagination and cooperation by introducing metaphors and games . Another important condition is that no matter what trauma the child had experienced, the family or other relationship surrounding him are still relatively supportive. In the difficult cases of adults who is lack of enough healthy relationship of companionship and support, does it need more complicated tactics?

Ⅵ. In what areas did they spark your curiosity?

My above attempts and experiences make me more curious about the differences and similarities in response to externalized questions among more clients of different ages and with different "problems and symptoms".