Narrative Therapy Services
Brookside Family Therapy
Transform Your Story, Transform Your Life
At Brookside Family Therapy in Manassas Park, VA, we offer specialized narrative therapy services that help you separate your problems from your identity and create empowering new life stories. Our experienced narrative therapists guide you through a collaborative process to rewrite the narratives that shape your life, relationships, and self-perception.
What Is Narrative Therapy?
Narrative therapy is a collaborative, respectful approach that centers people as the experts in their own lives. This therapeutic method views problems as separate from individuals, allowing you to explore and reshape your personal narratives.
Developed by Michael White and David Epston in the 1980s, narrative therapy recognizes that the stories we tell about ourselves powerfully shape our identities and experiences. When problem-saturated stories dominate our thinking, they can limit our sense of possibility and agency. Through narrative practice, we help you identify these limiting narratives and create alternative stories that better reflect your values, strengths, and preferred ways of being.
How Narrative Therapy Works
At Brookside Family Therapy, our narrative therapists work with you to:
Externalize Problems: Rather than seeing problems as inherent to who you are, we help you view them as separate entities that influence your life. Instead of "I'm an anxious person," you might explore "How is anxiety affecting my relationships?"
Identify Dominant Stories: Together, we uncover the dominant narratives that may be limiting your potential and explore how these stories developed over time.
Discover Unique Outcomes: We look for exceptions to problem-saturated stories—moments when you weren't dominated by the problem—and use these as building blocks for alternative stories.
Create Preferred Stories: Through re-authoring conversations, we help you develop new narratives that emphasize your strengths, values, and capabilities.
Reinforce New Narratives: We work to strengthen these new, empowering stories by connecting them to your past experiences and future aspirations.
Externalizing Conversations
Externalizing conversations help separate problems from your identity. Our narrative therapists use specific language that creates distance between you and your challenges, allowing you to gain perspective and develop new strategies for addressing them.
For example, rather than discussing "your depression," we might explore how "The Depression" has influenced various aspects of your life and identify times when you've successfully stood up to its influence.
Key Techniques We Use in Narrative Therapy
Re-authoring
Re-authoring involves developing alternative stories that highlight your strengths and preferred identity. This process helps you move from problem-saturated stories to narratives that emphasize your capabilities and values.
Our therapists guide you through this process by asking questions that illuminate previously overlooked aspects of your experience and help you connect these moments into a coherent, empowering narrative.
The Statement of Position Map
The Statement of Position Map is a powerful tool we use to help you clarify your relationship with problems. This approach explores:
How the problem affects your life
Why this matters to you
What values are being compromised
What steps you can take to align with your preferred way of being
This technique helps you develop a clearer understanding of your position in relation to problems and strengthens your commitment to change.
Life Story Exercise
The Life Story exercise encourages you to frame your experiences as chapters, each representing significant events or periods in your life. By organizing your narrative this way, you gain a broader perspective and can identify patterns, turning points, and strengths that might otherwise go unnoticed.
This exercise fosters increased self-awareness and helps you develop a more nuanced, compassionate understanding of your life journey.
Who Benefits from Narrative Therapy?
At Brookside Family Therapy, we find that narrative therapy can be particularly effective for individuals, couples, and families dealing with:
Anxiety
Narrative therapy helps you externalize anxiety, seeing it as something separate from your identity. By examining how anxiety has influenced your life and identifying times when you've successfully managed anxious feelings, you can develop a new relationship with anxiety that gives you more control and peace.
ADHD
For those with ADHD, narrative therapy offers a way to challenge dominant stories about "deficiency" or "disorder." Our approach focuses on identifying your unique strengths and developing strategies that work with your natural thinking style rather than against it.
PTSD
Trauma can significantly impact the stories we tell about ourselves and our safety in the world. Narrative therapy provides a framework for reclaiming your narrative after trauma, helping you move from stories centered on victimization to those that honor your survival and resilience.
Life Transitions
Major life changes—whether planned or unexpected—often require adjusting our personal narratives. Narrative therapy can help you integrate these transitions into your life story in meaningful ways, identifying values and strengths that support you through periods of change.
Relationship Issues
Problems in relationships often involve conflicting narratives and expectations. Narrative therapy helps partners or family members understand each other's stories, externalize relationship problems, and co-create new narratives that support healthier patterns of interaction.
The Brookside Family Therapy Difference
At Brookside Family Therapy, we stand out through our commitment to personalized, collaborative care. Our approach to narrative therapy is characterized by:
Genuine Connection
We believe that therapeutic success begins with customer service and genuine connection. From your first phone call with our friendly business manager, Jennifer, to your ongoing work with your therapist, we prioritize creating a warm, welcoming environment where you feel truly seen and heard.
Collaborative Approach
Our narrative therapists view you as the expert in your own life. We don't prescribe one-size-fits-all solutions; instead, we collaborate with you to discover the approaches that best fit your unique situation and goals.
Prompt, Respectful Service
We respect your time and commitment to the therapeutic process. Our team is prompt and professional, ensuring that you don't have to wait for appointments and that your concerns are taken seriously.
Holistic Perspective
We see you as more than your problems or diagnoses. Our narrative therapy approach considers the whole person—your values, strengths, relationships, and aspirations—creating space for comprehensive healing and growth.
Flexible Delivery
We offer both in-person services at our Manassas Park location and virtual narrative therapy sessions, ensuring that you can access care in the way that works best for you.
What to Expect: Your Narrative Therapy Journey
Getting Started
Initial Contact: Call our office and speak with Jennifer, our business manager, or make an appointment directly through our website.
Intake Process: You'll receive electronic intake documents and assessments that help us understand your current challenges and goals.
First Session: Your initial appointment focuses on getting to know each other, describing the counseling process, discovering your wants and needs for therapy, and discussing how we might best support you.
Ongoing Therapy
After establishing care, you can continue to make appointments through our business manager, website, or directly with your therapist. Many clients benefit from starting with weekly sessions and gradually reducing frequency as progress is made.
Our narrative therapists maintain a collaborative relationship throughout your therapeutic journey, adjusting approaches based on your feedback and evolving needs. If something isn't working, we can adapt our methods or, if necessary, match you with a different therapist who might be a better fit.
Virtual Narrative Therapy Options
In addition to in-person services, we offer virtual narrative therapy sessions that provide:
Enhanced privacy and comfort from your own space
Flexibility and convenience without commute time
Accessibility for those with mobility limitations or busy schedules
A familiar environment that bridges the gap between therapy and daily life
Many clients find that a combination of both in-person and virtual formats works best for their needs.
Frequently Asked Questions About Narrative Therapy
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Narrative therapy distinguishes itself by viewing people as separate from their problems and emphasizing the role of social, cultural, and personal narratives in shaping our experiences. Rather than focusing on "fixing" the individual, narrative therapy helps people reclaim their stories and develop narratives that better reflect their values and strengths.
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The duration varies depending on your specific needs and goals. Some clients experience significant shifts after just a few sessions, while others benefit from longer-term work to thoroughly explore and transform deeply ingrained narratives. During your initial consultation, we'll discuss a timeline that aligns with your unique situation.
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Absolutely. At Brookside Family Therapy, we often integrate narrative techniques with other modalities like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), or Solution-Focused Therapy to create a comprehensive approach tailored to your specific needs.
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Signs that narrative therapy is effective include developing a new relationship with the problem that feels less overwhelming, recognizing and building on your strengths and unique outcomes, creating more empowering narratives about yourself, and experiencing positive changes in your relationships and day-to-day experiences.
Begin Your New Story Today
The stories we tell about ourselves shape our reality. If you're ready to transform limiting narratives into empowering ones, our narrative therapists at Brookside Family Therapy are here to help.
Through collaborative, respectful therapeutic conversations, we'll help you externalize problems, identify unique outcomes, and create preferred stories that reflect your true values and strengths. Whether you're dealing with anxiety, ADHD, PTSD, relationship issues, or life transitions, narrative therapy offers a path to meaningful change.
Contact Brookside Family Therapy today to begin your journey toward a more empowering personal narrative. Our team in Manassas Park is ready to support you in transforming your story and creating positive change in your life.
Our Therapeutic Approaches
While this page focuses on narrative therapy, we offer several other evidence-based therapeutic modalities at Brookside Family Therapy:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT)
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Animal-Assisted Therapy
Solution-Focused Therapy (SFT)
Collaborative Therapy
Structural Therapy
Person-Centered Therapy
Gottman-Informed Therapy
During your initial consultation, we'll discuss which approach or combination of approaches might best serve your unique needs and goals.
Contact Brookside Family Therapy
Ready to begin your narrative therapy journey? Contact us today to schedule an initial consultation or learn more about our services.
Brookside Family Therapy
Manassas Park, VA
You are not your problems. Your true story is waiting to be told.