A client describes a difficult conversation, then adds, “That’s just who I am. I ruin relationships.” In their mind, this event has become a conclusion about their entire identity, whether the belief is accurate or not.
Narrative therapy is a collaborative approach that explores the stories shaping clients’ identities within their social and relational contexts. It treats problems as separate from the person and invites clients to explore experiences that a problem-focused story may leave out. These experiences can help clients describe their values and preferred ways of living more fully.
In a session, the narrative therapy process of using collaborative questions helps clients explore those experiences in their own terms. This guide focuses on what to ask and how a client’s response can shape your next question. The questions below are original examples for clinical adaptation. They illustrate conversational possibilities rather than a prescribed treatment sequence.
Key Takeaways
- Begin with the client’s language and goals. Let the next question follow from what the client says rather than treating a list of prompts as a script.
- Externalizing explores the problem’s influence without defining the client by it. It does not remove responsibility for actions or their effects.
- Narrative questions explore how a problem affects the client’s life and how the client responds, including times when the problem had less influence.
- Re-authoring connects specific experiences with the client’s values, commitments, relationships, and preferred directions for the future.
- Treat your understanding as provisional. A client’s disagreement or correction can help guide the conversation.
- Use letters, documents, or outsider-witness practices when they fit the client’s preferences and goals, with attention to consent and confidentiality.
Start with curiosity and the client’s language
Narrative practice centers clients’ knowledge of their own lives and makes room for their goals, language, and interpretations to shape the work. Your questions contribute direction and structure, while clients determine which descriptions fit and which possibilities matter to them.
Before introducing an exercise, consider asking:
- “Would exploring how that description developed be useful?”
- “What would make this conversation helpful?”
- “Does the word ‘failure’ describe the experience accurately?”
- “What needs more attention before moving forward?”
Leave room for correction. If a client rejects a metaphor or interpretation, that response gives you information about how to proceed.
You don’t need an elaborate storytelling exercise to begin. A useful question can earn its place without a worksheet, a whiteboard, or another browser tab.
1. Externalizing the problem
Externalizing describes a problem separately from the client’s identity, using language developed collaboratively with the client. The language develops collaboratively; the therapist doesn’t assign a name or metaphor.
A playful character may suit one client; another may prefer a straightforward term such as “worry” or “pressure.” The name should serve the conversation rather than demonstrate the therapist’s creativity.
Possible questions include:
- “What name would fit the experience you’re describing?”
- “When does this pressure become most persuasive?”
- “What does it encourage you to believe about yourself?”
- “How do you respond when it shows up?”
Check whether the language is useful: “Does talking about it this way fit, or would another description work better?”
Externalizing also requires attention to accountability. When discussing harmful behavior, keep the client’s actions and their effects on others explicit. Naming “anger” or “control” does not remove responsibility for what the client did.
2. Mapping the problem’s influence
Once a description fits, explore what the problem affects. Move toward specific situations: a postponed appointment, an unanswered message, or a decision the client felt unable to make.
Mapping influence includes exploring the problem’s effects, the client’s evaluation of those effects, and the reasons behind that evaluation. Michael White, one of the co-creators of narrative therapy, created the Statement of Position Map to offer a structure for this inquiry.
For example:
“When self-doubt persuaded you to cancel the meeting, what happened afterward?”
Follow with questions about meaning:
“How do you feel about the influence it had there? What makes that matter?”
Then explore the client’s responses:
“Was there anything you did that limited its influence, even briefly?”
Avoid assuming that every effect has the same meaning. A client may object strongly to one consequence while feeling uncertain about another. That distinction can shape the next question.
For example, postponing a social event may bring immediate relief while also interfering with a relationship the client values. Explore both experiences before deciding which direction deserves attention.
3. Deconstructing restrictive expectations
Here, a restrictive expectation means a rule or standard a person experiences as limiting their choices or how they see themselves. It may come from family, culture, institutions, or the client’s own experience—and the client may value some parts of it.
Ask how a restrictive expectation became familiar, whose interests it serves, and whether it fits the client’s circumstances.
Narrative therapy attends to the relationship between identity, social context, and power. This includes examining how cultural expectations and structural inequalities influence descriptions of people and problems.
Begin with a specific expectation:
“You mentioned that a capable person should handle this alone. Where did that idea become familiar?”
Other questions might include:
- “Who gets held to this standard?”
- “How does that expectation fit your circumstances?”
- “Which parts reflect your own commitments?”
- “What happens when someone questions the rule?”
Keep your interpretation open to revision. A client may value a cultural or family commitment while wanting more flexibility in how they live it.
For example, explore the client’s preferred meaning of family responsibility before treating that responsibility as a problem. Ask how the commitment relates to the particular demand causing distress.
The conversation should leave room for the client to retain, revise, or reject the expectation.
4. Identifying unique outcomes
A unique outcome is an event, intention, or response that falls outside the dominant problem story.
Imagine a client who describes a longstanding inability to speak up. Later, the client mentions asking a colleague to clarify an unfair assignment.
You might ask:
“Would spending a moment on that request be useful? How did you come to make it?”
Stay with the details:
- What happened before the request?
- What did the client consider?
- What made the action possible?
- What significance, if any, does the client give it?
Avoid using the event to argue against the client’s distress. One request does not erase a history of feeling unable to speak.
Let the client decide whether the event matters. Your enthusiasm can wait until you understand what the moment meant to them.
A tentative intention may also deserve exploration. If the client considered asking for clarification but chose another response, ask about that decision without turning an uncompleted action into a success story.
5. Re-authoring preferred stories
Re-authoring questions connect actions and their meanings across past experiences, present circumstances, and future possibilities. This can help clients notice values, skills, and commitments that a problem-focused story may leave out, and consider what they want to carry forward. Michael White’s Re-authoring Map offers a structure for developing these connections.
Again, using the example of the client who requested clarification at work.
An action question might be:
“What did you say, and how did you prepare?”
A meaning question might be:
“What were you trying to protect or make possible by asking?”
If the client identifies fairness, explore that connection:
“Can you recall another occasion when fairness influenced a decision?”
A future question could follow:
“What small action would fit that commitment in the coming week?”
Use the client’s terms for the emerging story. A description such as “having a perspective that deserves consideration” may fit better than a therapist-supplied label such as “becoming assertive.”
Leave room for mixed experiences. The client may value the request and still feel disappointed by the colleague’s response.
Optional extensions to the conversation
There are other narrative therapy techniques you can also use. Re-membering, therapeutic letters, and outsider witnessing are all optional parts of the narrative therapy process and can extend an inquiry when the client wants to explore or preserve it.
Re-membering significant relationships
Re-membering conversations explore significant relationships and reconsider which voices receive authority in shaping a client’s identity. Ask, “Who would recognize what mattered to you in that moment?” and, where it fits, “What did you contribute to that relationship?” Follow the client’s choice of whom to include. A meaningful contribution does not make an entire relationship positive or require renewed contact with someone unsafe.
Therapeutic letters and documents
Therapeutic documents preserve meaningful language, knowledge, and preferred stories in forms clients can revisit. Ask, “Is there a phrase from today you would like to keep?” Review the wording together, using the client’s expressed meanings rather than a therapist-supplied success story. Agree on storage and sharing before sending anything. A therapeutic letter and the clinical record serve different audiences and purposes.
Outsider witnesses
Outsider-witness practices involve an invited audience listening to and acknowledging a client’s preferred stories through structured reflections. Prepare witnesses to reflect on what stood out without giving advice, evaluating the client, or replacing the client’s meaning with praise. Give the client space to respond. Before involving anyone, agree on purpose, participation boundaries, and confidentiality and its limits, and consider pressure or unsafe relationship dynamics. Outsider witnesses can be a power experience, but they are not required in narrative therapy.
Putting the questions into a session
Follow one example far enough
The following fictional exchange builds on the workplace example above. It illustrates how a response can change the next question; it is not a script, a required sequence, or evidence of a treatment outcome. The point is to follow the client’s priorities, direction, and readiness.
Start with the event and check the language
Therapist question: “You mentioned asking your colleague to clarify an assignment. What happened just before you asked?”
Fictional client response: “I had two deadlines for big projects already. I typed a message, deleted it. Got frustrated and then finally retyped it and sent it to ask which task should come first.”
Possible therapist follow-up: “What was happening in those moments when you deleted it?”
Fictional client response: “I thought they would decide I couldn’t handle the job.”
Possible therapist follow-up: “Would ‘self-doubt’ fit what was happening, or would you describe it another way?”
This keeps the description open. If the client accepts it, the next question might explore its influence: “When self-doubt was strongest, what did it make harder to do?” If the client prefers another term, use that wording.
Ask what the action meant
Therapist question: “What led you to send the message despite that concern of being seen as not being able to handle the job?”
Fictional client response: “I was tired of pretending the workload was manageable. I wanted the priorities to be fair.”
Possible therapist follow-up: “What would fairness have looked like in that situation?”
Fictional client response: “Having a say before another deadline was added.”
Possible therapist follow-up: “Has having a say mattered in another situation you would want to talk about?”
The follow-up uses a meaning the client has offered. It leaves room to explore a connection across experiences without deciding in advance that the request was a breakthrough.
Let disagreement change the direction
Therapist question: “Would ‘becoming more assertive’ describe what this request meant to you?”
Fictional client response: “No. I don’t feel more assertive. My colleague ignored the message, and I still had too much work.”
Possible therapist follow-up: “That description of assertiveness doesn’t fit. What do you want me to understand about being ignored and the workload?”
Fictional client response: “I guess that speaking up doesn’t necessarily change anything here.”
Possible therapist follow-up: “What happens at work when people raise concerns, and what feels important for us to focus on now?”
Stay with the client’s account of the workplace and the consequences of speaking up. Do not treat a difficult environment as merely an unhelpful story or insist that the request proves progress. If the client wants to return to fairness later, ask permission to revisit it; if they want another focus, let that guide the conversation.
Leave the next step open
Therapist question: “What, if anything, would be useful to carry from this conversation into the week?”
Fictional client response: “I’m not open to asking for more help. I’d rather notice when I agree to work I can’t realistically finish.”
Possible therapist follow-up: “What would you want to notice, and how could we revisit it next time?”
A next step can be observation, further discussion, or no task at all. Check that it fits the client’s priorities rather than turning every conversation into an assignment.
Check the conversation’s usefulness
Ask directly about the client’s experience:
“Is this helping describe what matters, or are these questions taking the conversation away from what needs attention?”
If the answer is uncertain, slow down. Return to the problem’s effects or ask what deserves attention next.
You can also revisit an interpretation: “Earlier, fairness seemed relevant. Is that still the best description?” This gives clients a clear opportunity to revise your understanding.
Record intervention and response precisely
In the clinical record, distinguish what the client reported, what you explored, and how the client responded.
For an invented example:
“Explored the client’s description of self-doubt in workplace conversations and examined a recent request for clarification. Client identified fairness as relevant to the request and chose to observe when that commitment influences future decisions.”
Adapt documentation to the actual encounter and applicable requirements. Avoid adding conclusions about progress or functioning that the session did not establish.
Clinical boundaries and further learning
Keep the scope of the article clear
The examples in this article illustrate narrative practices; they are not a script, a complete treatment protocol, or evidence that a particular question will be effective for a specific diagnosis. Adapt questions to the client’s goals, language, circumstances, and responses.
Use interventions within your competence. If the client’s needs call for expertise beyond your training, seek consultation or make a referral appropriate to the situation.
Preserve safety and accountability
When abuse or violence is part of the presentation, assess safety and keep power, harmful actions, and their effects explicit. Externalizing language should not blur who did what or shift responsibility away from the person who caused harm.
Before inviting witnesses or sharing a therapeutic document, discuss the purpose, consent, privacy, and any safety risks, including pressure or retaliation. The client may choose to keep a preferred story within therapy.
Develop skills through practice and consultation
Structured reflection on early attempts at narrative practice can examine the questions asked, their effects, and how well the approach fits the conversation.
For a focused supervision discussion, bring one question you asked, the client’s response, and the assumptions behind your next question. Examine where the client’s language guided the conversation and where your own interpretation took over.
Frequently Asked Questions
What kinds of questions are used in narrative therapy?
Questions may help clients name a problem separately from their identity, explore its effects, examine restrictive expectations, notice unique outcomes, and develop preferred stories. Follow-ups depend on the client’s language, responses, and priorities. Re-membering, therapeutic documents, and outsider witnessing are optional extensions..
What is an example of externalizing in narrative therapy?
If “self-doubt” fits the client’s experience, a therapist might ask, “When does self-doubt have the greatest influence on your decisions?” A possible follow-up is, “What happened in a recent example?” These questions explore the problem separately from identity. If the wording does not fit, use the client’s preferred description.
What are unique outcomes in narrative therapy?
Unique outcomes are experiences, actions, or intentions that fall outside a dominant problem story. Their clinical relevance depends on the meaning the client gives them and how they connect with other experiences.
What does re-authoring mean?
Re-authoring involves developing fuller accounts of identity from actual experiences and the client’s interpretations of them. Questions connect events across time with commitments, relationships, and preferred future actions.
Do clients have to write their stories in narrative therapy?
Writing is optional. Narrative conversations can happen verbally, while letters and other documents are possibilities to consider when clients find them useful.
