Retelling the Stories of Our Lives: Everyday Narrative Therapy to Draw Inspiration and Transform Experience

by David Denborough

Powerful ideas from narrative therapy can teach us how to create new life stories and promote change.

Our lives and their pathways are not fixed in stone; instead they are shaped by story. The ways in which we understand and share the stories of our lives therefore make all the difference. If we tell stories that emphasize only desolation, then we become weaker. If we tell our stories in ways that make us stronger, we can soothe our losses and ease our sorrows. Learning how to re-envision the stories we tell about ourselves can make an enormous difference in the ways we live our lives. Drawing on wisdoms from the field of narrative therapy, this book is designed to help people rewrite and retell the stories of their lives.The book invites readers to take a new look at their own stories and to find significance in events often neglected, to find sparkling actions that are often discounted, and to find solutions to problems and predicaments in unexpected places. Readers are introduced to key ideas of narrative practice like the externalizing problems - 'the person is not the problem, the problem is the problem' -and the concept of "re-membering" one's life. Easy-to-understand examples and exercises demonstrate how these ideas have helped many people overcome intense hardship and will help readers make these techniques their own. The book also outlines practical strategies for reclaiming and celebrating one's experience in the face of specific challenges such as trauma, abuse, personal failure, grief, and aging. 

Filled with relatable examples, useful exercises, and informative illustrations, Retelling the Stories of Our Lives leads readers on a path to reclaim their past and re-envision their future.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Social Work, Counselling, Narrative, Self Help, Writing

327 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 25, 2013

Reviews

[sAmAnE · Rating 4 out of 5]

کتاب مجموعه‌ای از جستارهاست که روایت‌هایی از تجربه‌های تلخ زندگی افراد را در بر دارد؛ روایت‌هایی که تلاش انسان‌ها برای رهایی از رنج را به تصویر می‌کشند. نویسنده معنای تاب‌آوری را به‌ زیبایی در خلال این داستان‌ها بازتاب داده است. گاهی می‌شد خود را جای تک‌تک شخصیت‌ها گذاشت، راوی هر قصه شد و بحران‌هایشان را با تمام وجود درک کرد. اما گاهی نیز احساس می‌کردم دنیایم با برخی از آن‌ها بسیار دور و ناآشناست. با این حال، باور دارم که رنج، فقدان، غم، سوگ و درد در زندگی یک انسان، می‌تواند به موهبت، رهایی و خلاص در زندگی انسان دیگری باشد....

[BobK21 · Rating 5 out of 5]

My review of this book takes the form of an interactive narrative therapy exercise that was partly inspired by the book itself. And that's where this book really shines in my experience and opinion--as a source of inspiration. It can be worked through on its own terms, but for me it's been best employed as a departure point.

-

You’re living a story.

The ways you act out your story, the patterns of your performance, are rooted in and emerge out of your knowledge and understanding of what you’ve experienced.

The ways you understand, share, and perform the story of your life make a difference in the world.

If you’re understanding, sharing, and performing your story in ways that only emphasize certain aspects of who you are and what you’ve experienced, you’re not telling all that you could.

How do you feel about that possibility?

Do you ever ask yourself questions about the story of your life? Do you ever examine the main characters, plot and subplots, climaxes, even the soundtrack?

Using writing to gather together and explore these aspects of your story can be life-changing. You can learn to tell your tale in ways that make you more resilient, in ways that turn you into someone who can help others who have gone through tragedy, and in ways that transform the motivation for malevolence that’s within you.

One helpful way to visualize or organize aspects of your life in a form that helps you see the story, and that naturally inspires creative writing, is to envision your life as a living tree and its surrounding environment.

Trees are natural symbols of the growth and dynamism of the world we live in. They express and represent the transcendent mysteries of regeneration, and the flow of cosmic energy through time. By their form itself they’re symbols of evolution, their branches suggesting the diversity that springs out from the unity of the trunk. Across cultures they’re the axis of the world, linking the supernatural and the natural. Continually looking at your life through the form of a tree can get you thinking in axial ways that build new bridges of meaning.

The Soil
-Where do you come from?
-What places and environments have deeply shaped you?
-What’s your language, your culture?
-Who are the people who have taught you the most in life?
-What are your favorite books, music, or movies? What is it about them that gives life to your story? What about them says something about the story of your own life?
-What communities do you belong to?

The Roots
-What do you choose to do during the course of a day, or a week?
-What are the typical activities that you choose to channel the energy of your life through?

The Trunk
-What do you value?
-What do you care about?
-Looking back at your roots, why do you choose to do those things?
-What abilities have you manifested in your life? What skills have you demonstrated? (don’t be afraid to think large and small)
-What would a particular friend, or someone who cares about you, say are your abilities or skills?
-What’s something that a community you belong to cares about?
-What’s something your group of friends is good at?

The Knots
-Where has your growth been cut off?
-What events in your life have left you feeling stunted?
-How have you compartmentalized the wounds in your life?

The Rot
-What is plaguing your soul?
-What is eating away at you inside?
-What about your life feels rotten?

The Branches
-What are some wishes, dreams, and hopes that you share with others?
-What dreams do you have for your own life?
-What hopes do you have for your community?
-What’s on the horizon for your life?
-Where do you want to channel your growth?
-What are some long-term and short-term wishes you’d like to see fulfilled in your life or in the lives of others?
-How long have you had these hopes? Who or where did they come from? Who has helped you hold onto them?

The Leaves
-Who are the people closest to you?
-Who has directly influenced you, fed you meaning, strengthened you, in a good way?
-Who are your heroes?
-What is significant to you about these people?

The Flowers
-What gifts have been passed on to you?
-What contributions have others made to your life? (material, spiritual, relational, emotional, you name it)
-Who or what do you find truly beautiful in life? What does the transforming terror of this beauty reveal about you?

The Fruit
-What gifts do you want to pass on to others?
-What legacy do you want to leave behind?
-What’s something you were never offered in your life but that you’ve come to value and want to pass on to other people?

Once you’ve done this, you can continue to use writing to stitch together connections between different parts of your story.

For example, looking at your trunk, write about the history of any of the things you value or care about. Did you inherit these from someone? Where did they come from? Forming and answering questions like these can help you think more about the soil you come in a very organic way.

Repeating this for all the different parts of your story helps you see how they’re all connected in ways you might not have appreciated before.

This whole visionary process tends to get you thinking in ways that naturally make linkages between different aspects of your life; the image of a tree is a natural form that helps you see connections between different parts of your story.

It can also be inspiring to draw this tree (or represent it artistically in any other form you like), labeling the different parts of the tree with some of your answers to the questions. This can be a great way to see the structure of your story and make connections between different parts of it if you are a very visual person.

This process basically uses the image of a tree to organically generate your own personal map of meaning. It’s about using writing to bring greater clarity to where and who you’ve been, where and who you are, and where you want to go and who you want to become.

Feel free to include emotional difficulties and any other trials you’ve been through in life — every tree is gnarled and twisted in one way or another by the wind and weather. This process isn’t meant to be an exercise in glamming up your life, but in tracing your growth honestly and looking to the future with wider and deeper vision.

Above all, don’t worry about doing all this writing perfectly (forget about perfectly proper punctuation/grammar, just write!) or getting it done in one sitting. Try to set aside even 10–15 minutes a day for writing, if you can manage it, try to write at least 500 words for each area (soil, roots, etc.), come up with your own questions, see what connections pop out at you that inspire further writing, and you’ll be shocked at what you can accomplish in even just a month!

Imagine the effects that catalyzing your own personal growth and individual differentiation could have on you and those around you, and let that fuel you.

Using writing to articulate this type of personal map of meaning can help you understand, modify, and improve your patterns of behavior; it can reveal how the ways you’ve adapted to life are influencing how you tend to act in the world. It can help you better specify goals that aren’t prisons, but chapters in the unfolding chronicle of your life.

It can help you break down your blurry fantasies of what the future could be into a strategic plan capable of conscious realization — a plan made up of simple, straightforward, honest actions, where the criteria for success and markers of failure are nested in a narrative showing the vast progress you’ve made in life. There are always times in life where you’ll fall short of your goals; when ambitions grow out of this type of context of progress this can help support you when you happen to fail.

This process can help you put into words strategies for meeting new challenges and voluntarily exposing yourself to what you’re afraid of. It can help you face what you haven’t learned or overcome, conquer your fear of it, and help you begin to grow more intentionally skillful, and more aware of what you can do to grow the rate at which your skills are developing.

All this is critical because it can help turn anxiety and fear into fertilizers instead of the crushing weights they often are.

It can also lead you to a deeper and more honest understanding of the motivational significance of different aspects of your story; it can grant you new insights into who and what you value, and why.

In other words, using writing to create this type of personal map of meaning can help you more clearly see the nature of your story, the most valuable ending for your story, and how you can act in order to create that ending in the world; it can show you the geography of your story from a view that helps you more clearly see how what you should do is interconnected with who it is that you are.

“To act is literally to manifest preference about one set of possibilities, contrasted with an infinite set of alternatives. If we wish to live, we must act. Acting, we value. Lacking omniscience, we must make decisions in the absence of sufficient information.” -Jordan B. Peterson

You’ve watched others act in the world, and you’ve watched yourself act in the world. You’ve learned to imitate others and yourself, and you’ve woven together information about the value of these patterns of imitation into stories that you repeat to yourself; how you act is partly steered by the stories you tell yourself about yourself.

Once you’ve done a considerable amount of the type of writing outlined above and brought the different aspects and connections of your life into higher resolution, it might be worth it to you to try synthesizing all your work into one longer and broader narrative vision by answering questions like these:

-What’s the story of my life?
-Who could I grow into?
-Who should I grow into?

I don’t know the story of your life, but I know that over time it can be transformed, and that it’s worth transforming.

Are other people writing the story of your life in negative ways? Is someone else authoring your identity?

Maybe the reason you’re reading this right now is because it’s time for you to take your story into your own hands in ways you haven’t before.

People experience unimaginable tragedy and evil in life. There is an injustice and arbitrariness to the world that can make people grow bitter and resentful and turn their backs on life.

At the same time, people are constantly bearing up under the weight of existence and seeking to rewrite and retell their stories in ways that make peace in themselves and that help steer the evolution of being down the most positive path they can see.

What’s more meaningful than taking this responsibility seriously?

It’s true that sometimes it can take generations to change the momentum of something as complex as a human narrative.

It’s also true that sometimes all it takes is a single person deciding that it’s time to rewrite the story of their life.

https://abettik.medium.com/narrating-...

More narrative therapy exercises (less inspired by this book and focused on other topics) are scattered among the posts of that medium account if anyone is interested.

[Niecie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not able to see a therapist? Work through this book!

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good for anyone interested in the healing power of writing, telling our life stories and narrative therapy.

It also had an interesting take on how you can look at things differently - both at events and at people.

[Fateme Ghaderi · Rating 3 out of 5]

قصه گویی، روایت درمانی یا روانشناسی روایی به ما کمک میکنه به زندگی با نگاه تازه ای نگاه کنیم و معانی تازه ای پیدا کنیم. کتاب شامل قصه های واقعی کسانی‌ هست که تونستند از تجربه های ناخوشایند و تروماها گذر کنند. ما می تونیم طوری تجربه ها و قصه هامون رو تعریف کنیم که قوی ترمون کنه و رنج هامون رو سبک کنه می تونیم هم برعکس طوری قصه مون رو بیان کنیم که آدم شکست خورده ای به نظر برسیم. کتاب بهمون کمک می کنه خودمون رو در چارچوب قصه ای متفاوت درک و تعریف کنیم.
اول کتاب نوشته: شاید هر اژدهایی در زندگی ما شاهدختی باشد که به انتظار نشسته تا ما را یک بار هم که شده زیبا و بی باک ببیند.

[Zahra · Rating 4 out of 5]

زندگی ما یک داستان است که خودمان انتخاب می کنیم چطور روایتش کنیم ، ما نویسنده نیستیم اما می توانیم ویراستار شویم و قصه ای دیگر انتخاب کنیم.

«قصه ای که انتخاب می کنیم» را از طاقچه دریافت کنید
https://taaghche.com/book/126432

[Sarah Urmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

My PowerPoint about to be lit

[Zahra Dashti · Rating 4 out of 5]

‍قصه‌گویِ زندگیِ خویش


کتاب قصه‌ای که انتخاب می‌کنیم اثر دیوید دنبورو اثری ارزشمند در زمینه‌ی درمان روایتی است که به خوانندگان کمک می‌کند روایت‌های زندگی خود را بازبینی و بازتعریف کنند. دنبورو که از پیشگامان این رویکرد درمانی است، با الهام گرفتن از تحقیقات و اصول بنیادین مایکل وایت و اپستون، این کتاب را به زبانی ساده و کاربردی برای عموم مردم و متخصصان نوشته است.
در این کتاب، دنبورو به ما نشان می‌دهد که چگونه داستان‌هایی که درباره زندگی و هویت خود می‌گوییم، می‌توانند قدرت فوق‌العاده‌ای در شکل‌دهی به تجربیات، باورها و احساسات ما داشته باشند. او با استفاده از مفاهیم کلیدی درمان روایتی، مانند "روایت‌های جایگزین" و "تمرکز بر نقاط روشن"، خواننده را تشویق می‌کند تا داستان‌هایی که موجب محدودیت یا ناراحتی آن‌ها شده‌اند را بازنویسی کرده و جایگزین روایت‌هایی الهام‌بخش‌تر و امیدوارکننده‌تر کنند.
یکی از ویژگی‌های برجسته این کتاب، ارائه تمرینات عملی و مثال‌های واقعی از زندگی افراد است که به خوانندگان امکان می‌دهد به‌طور ملموس‌تر با مفاهیم مطرح شده ارتباط برقرار کنند. دن‌برو به خوانندگان ابزارهایی ارائه می‌دهد تا بتوانند داستان‌های خود را از دیدگاه تازه‌ای ببینند و با تأکید بر نقاط قوت، ارزش‌ها و موفقیت‌های خود، روایتی قدرتمندتر از زندگی‌شان بسازند.
از دیگر نقاط قوت این کتاب، ساختار منسجم و فصل‌بندی روشن آن است که خواننده را مرحله‌به‌مرحله در فرآیند بازسازی روایت‌های زندگی همراهی می‌کند. همچنین، ارائه مثال‌های واقعی و تمرینات عملی در هر فصل، مفاهیم کتاب را برای خواننده ملموس‌تر می‌سازد.
این کتاب نه تنها برای متخصصان حوزه روان‌شناسی و مشاوره مفید است، بلکه برای هر کسی که به دنبال رشد فردی، خودشناسی و تقویت هویت خویش است نیز جذاب و کاربردی خواهد بود.

در مجموع، «قصه‌ای که انتخاب می‌کنیم» یک راهنمای الهام‌بخش برای تغییر مثبت در زندگی است. اگر به دنبال روشی عملی و عمیق برای بازتعریف تجربیات گذشته و ترسیم آینده‌ای بهتر هستید، این کتاب یک انتخاب فوق‌العاده است.

ترجمه کتاب توسط حسنا مهرمحمدی انجام شده که انصافا ترجمه خوب و روانی‌است.
نشر اطراف ترجمه این کتاب را در ایران چاپ کرده است.

[Degan Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good secondary reading on Narrative Therapy, especially around grief and trauma.

[Cody Northup · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good read for Narrative Therapists

This book followed up another book that I had just read about Narrative therapy and with that I can attest to my overall knowledge on the subject as growing. This book helped to further cement ideas and interventions as so reign the modality. The fist half of the book was extremely valuable in that regard. The second half of the book, when y starts getting into specific populations and letter writing was much less valuable. I found myself skipping most of the letters and stories n just to find the knowledge in was looking for in a book like this.

[Patsylina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good, clear and interesting introduction to narrative therapy.

[Miglė · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first encountered David Denborough's work in my Narrative Therapy course from Dulwich Centre. He left an impression of such a deeply thoughtful and caring person, so as my course ended, I sought out his other writing, and that is how I came to read this book.

It is an instructive introduction to narrative approaches, with moving stories and ideas - I greatly appreciated the part on writing a letter to your ancestors, especially if they were involved in some acts we would consider to be greatly harmful, such as colonisation. Their work may have been celebrated at the time. And they may have been considered to be a caring husband, father, or a friend. David does not ask us to judge this from a distance, but to sit with the discomfort of inheritance - to take responsibility for what was passed down, while refusing both denial and simple condemnation.

This is the beauty of the book: it shows how our stories can be held with complexity rather than simplification. It encourages claiming responsibility for our actions, while leaning into our strengths, it encourages seeing not only challenges, but all our skills that helped us survive through them, it encourages us to take a peek at the intergenerational trauma, and see what can be resolved.

I cannot wait to pick up the next book by David, and to apply more narrative principles in my work.

[Aura · Rating 3 out of 5]

My biggest gripe with narrative therapy in general is that there is often a veneer of forced positivity that takes away from the potential of the actual interventions used. This book has some of those overly positive undertones, but many of the interventions provide room for the not-so-great things that are ultimately an important part of how we tell our own stories. A supervisor at my practice shared the thought that the goal of narrative interventions like this should be meaning-making moreso than positivity, and that meaning doesn't have to be good to be meaningful. Taking that little nugget of wisdom in conjunction with this book feels a little bit helpful for introducing these concepts to clients who are not about to force their narratives to fit positive labels. I have used a couple of these activities with clients and have seen them really appreciate them and get a lot out of it, so I'm grateful for that!

[Melika Khoshnezhad · Rating 4 out of 5]

لحظه‌ لحظه‌ی دومین باری که این کتاب را خواندم آغشته به عطر زعفران بود؛ با شنیدن قصه‌ها و روایت‌هایی از رنج و خوشی از آدم‌های بسیار نازنینم که شش ماه صبورانه همراه بودند تا این کتاب را در کنار یکدیگر بخوانیم. کتاب بسیار ساده و روان است و شاید واقعاً اگر تنهایی بخوانیدش چند روز بیشتر طول نکشد و البته در همان یکی دو فصل اول با رویکرد نویسنده و البته مقدماتی از از روایت‌درمانی آشنا بشوید و اگر قصدتان همین است، واقعاً کتاب پیچیده و عجیبی نیست. اما اگر دوست دارید واقعاً این کتاب روی زندگی‌تان تأثیر بگذارد تنها نخوانیدش. در جمعی امن بخوانیدش و تک تک فعالیت‌هایش را انجام دهید. درخت زندگی‌تان را بکشید، تیم زندگی‌تان را باوسواس درست کنید، نقشه‌ی زندگی‌تان را ترسیم کنید و در نهایت برای نیاکان‌تان نامه بنویسید. این فعالیت‌های ظاهراً ساده باعث می‌شوند دید بهتری نسبت به زندگی‌تان و روایتی که از آن ساخته‌اید پیدا کنید.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

An average of one star and five stars. I found this a very uneven book. There are great insights into people's sense of themselves and the way they understand and think/talk about themselves. However to me, the way the author writes is so boring, I was hard set to continue to the end. A good editor was required to reduce this book to about half of what was there.

[Brit (britlovestoread)]

I've always been so interested in narrative therapy and I really liked how this book showed some interventions you can use as an individual or as a counselor while you operate inside this framework.

"People are not problems, the problem is the problem," is my favorite takeaway from this book. It's so simple but it's radically compassionate.

[EL · Rating 2 out of 5]

Starts off well and ends on a sluggishly

A few useful tools and processes taught in the first 3 or 4 chapters with detailed how-to’s. After that it’s all real-life stories and suggested questions, with extremely vague advice on how to use them.

[Francesca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a valuable resource for those hoping to incorporate narrative therapy into their practice. I've used many of these exercises with clients, and have dog-eared many pages that I keep returning to.

[Louisa]

really practical, appreciated that and the nuance in the worked examples.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you have any interest in Narrative Therapy this is a good entry point. Reframes the western approach ro grief and provides lots of examples how a narrative approach plays out.

[Bobak · Rating 5 out of 5]

چقدر کتاب زیبایی بود
امیدبخش و همدلانه.
بسیار لذت بردم
ا‌ولین کتاب۱۴۰۲

[whereisiris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal!!!

[Nasim · Rating 4 out of 5]

هم می‌تونه کتاب خودیاری باشه، هم کتابی که درمانگر با مراجع روش کار کنن، قطعا برای هر کسی چیزای جدیدی داره و از یه قسمتش لذت خواهد برد، قصه‌ها مهمن، قصه‌ی زندگی خودمون و عزیزانمون خیلی مهم‌تر.

[Natalie Schloss]

may have gone down a research rabbit hole

[Candy Sparks · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the building community aspect of this book.

[Gijs Limonard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid 4 stars; this was pretty good, narrative therapy; simply putting into words what needs to be said, spoken out loud, to people that matter to you, including yourself; it heals, it really does and this helpful book does an excellent job explaining and demonstrating just how you might do this.