Narrative Therapy

By: Kal Skye, LSW

Hi, I'm Kal. I'm a therapist and I use narrative therapy. I want to tell you about it the way I understand it, through the stories we tell ourselves, the scars we carry, and what it means to get back up again. And I'm going to start with a skateboard, a power wheelchair, and a really bad idea.

When I was nine or ten years old, I had what I thought was a brilliant idea (that's always a good place to start a story right?). I tied my super rad 80s skateboard to the back of my sister's power wheelchair with a bungee cord. I pictured myself with the wind in my hair while we cruised down the street together. I didn't think about things like tension, or what would happen where our driveway met the street. I just hooked us up and told her to gun it.

My face met the street, hard. I also managed to get my shirt stuck on my board as I fell. My sister didn't notice me face planting; she was already cruising. Meanwhile, the tension was back in the rope, the wheelchair was pulling the skateboard, and the skateboard was pulling me, down the street and across asphalt. I couldn't even yell for her to stop. She fainted when she saw me.

In the end, I still bear the scars from that day. I still jump on a board on occasion too, but I stay away from bungee cords. Life's a bloody mess a lot of days. Sometimes we think we've got it figured out and then we fall on our faces. Sometimes it isn't our fault at all. It is what it is. And that's okay.

I'm still the kind of person that comes up with wild ideas. I'm a little better at thinking them through now. I'm a quieter person who came out later in life, so I know what it's like to fall on my face. I know how to get back up again. And I know that you do too.

I never imagined myself becoming a therapist. I pictured therapists as people in stuffy offices, who had all the answers and told you what was wrong with you. I spent a lot of time in doctor's offices as a kid, so I was probably a little influenced by this. And to be honest, there are some therapists like that out there, but that's not how I know therapy to be today.

To me, therapy is an invitation to journey together for a while. To acknowledge, in supportive company, that sometimes we don't have it all together. Sometimes we fall on our faces. Sometimes shit comes out of nowhere and knocks us down. Sometimes our knees get bloody. Sometimes our hearts get bruised. And sometimes, we grow scars or wounds we've never told anyone about. Sometimes maybe there's still gravel in our wounds that we never managed to get to. It's scary as hell to face all of this. But therapy just means you have someone sitting with you when you do it, reminding you that you will get back up again and when you do, you're going to feel the wind in your hair and it's going to be awesome.

And that's exactly why narrative therapy clicked for me. That skateboard story I just told you? It's become part of how I understand myself, as someone who takes risks, who falls down, who gets back up. Narrative therapy is built on this idea that we're all walking around with stories about who we are. And sometimes those stories get pretty damn heavy. Sometimes they become the only story we can tell about ourselves.

Here's the thing about narrative therapy that clicked for me: it doesn't treat you like you're broken. It works from this idea that you're the expert on your own life. You know your story better than anyone else ever could. My job isn't to rewrite your story for you, it's to sit with you while you figure out which parts you want to keep telling, and which parts might be ready for a rewrite.

In narrative therapy, we talk about something called "externalizing the problem." It's a fancy way of saying that the problem isn't you, it's something happening to you. Like, I'm not an anxious person, I'm a person who experiences anxiety. That might sound like semantics, but I promise you it's actually huge. Because if I am my anxiety, then there's no separating myself from it. There's no space between me and the thing that's crushing me. But if anxiety is something that shows up in my life? Well, then I can look at it, talk to it, maybe even tell it to get lost sometimes. I can have a relationship with it instead of being consumed by it.

Think about my skateboard story for a second. I could tell it as "I was a reckless, stupid kid who almost got killed." That's one version. Or I could tell it as "I was a creative kid with big ideas who learned about physics the hard way." Same incident, completely different story about who I was. Narrative therapy helps you look at all the different ways you could tell your story, and then asks: which version helps you move forward? Which version makes space for the person you're becoming?

We all have dominant narratives, the stories about ourselves that we tell over and over until they feel like the only truth. "I'm not good enough." "I always mess things up." "Nobody really understands me." We play these on repeat until we can't hear anything else. But there are always alternative stories too. Times when you were brave instead of broken. Moments when you chose connection even when it was hard. Narrative therapy is about finding those alternative plots, thickening them, giving them space to breathe and grow until they're just as loud as the ones that have been drowning everything else out.

And look, I still have scars from that skateboard incident. Narrative therapy doesn't pretend those scars aren't there. It doesn't try to convince you that everything was actually fine all along. The scars are real. The gravel in the wound is real. The pain is real. But the story about what those scars mean? That's something we get to explore together. Maybe they're proof of your recklessness, or maybe they're evidence of your willingness to take risks, to be bold. Maybe they're both. Maybe they're something else entirely.

So, when you come to therapy, we're not just talking about your problems. We're looking at the stories you've been telling about those problems. We're finding the moments that don't quite fit the narrative you've been carrying. We're asking questions like: Who told you this story about yourself first? Are there other ways to understand what happened? What would you tell your best friend if they came to you with this exact same story?

Because here's what I believe: you're not a problem to be solved. You're a person with a story that's still being written. And sometimes all you need is someone to sit with you while you figure out what comes next. Someone to remind you that you've survived every hard thing up until this moment. Someone to help you see that even in your messiest chapters, you've been the author all along. The pen is in your hand, even when it doesn't feel like it. And when you're ready to write the next page? I'll be right here, reminding you that you will get back up again. And when you do, you're going to feel the wind in your hair and it's going to be awesome.