Externalizing the problem, in print
For practitioners working in the narrative tradition.
The booklets in this library are, structurally, narrative therapy in literary form: they externalize a moment, give it a name, sit with it as if it were a character, and let the reader develop a different relationship with it.
The Family Script externalizes a family-of-origin pattern in a way that lets the reader observe their own life from outside it. The Vice externalizes addictive patterns. The Noise Floor externalizes the modern attentional dysregulation that doesn’t have a clinical name yet.
Your clients can read these and recognize themselves in third person, which is, of course, the point.
Featured Companions for this work
- The Family Script — Loving people who don’t understand you
Externalizes family-of-origin patterns.
- The Long Adjustment — Year two of grief
Re-authoring the second year.
- Realizing You’re Ordinary — When special becomes average
Re-authoring the achievement self.
- The Vice — Understanding your bad habits
Externalizes addictive patterns.
- Becoming Sober — When everyone else is still drinking
Re-authoring identity in early recovery.
The clinical concept lookup
The Reader’s lookup includes identity disturbance, role confusion, masking, and meaning reconstruction. Useful for sourcing companion reading for re-authoring conversations.
Questions
- Are these aligned with narrative theory?
- Not formally, but their structure (naming a moment, externalizing it, sitting with it) maps closely.
- Can clients read these aloud in session?
- Yes. They are short enough that a single chapter can anchor an hour.
Reading that names the problem so it can be looked at.