Narrative Therapy
Narrative therapy is a highly respectful, highly effective, non-blaming approach to counselling, coaching and organizational work, which centres people as the experts in their own lives.
Before the first session even begins, Stephen assumes that the people seeking his help arrive into therapy with numerous (and very often forgotten!) skills, competencies, beliefs, values, survival skills, commitments and abilities. Uncovering, discussing and appreciating the person's abilities assists them in the process of changing their 'relationship' with the problems in their lives.
In developing the notion that people's lives are organized by the stories they tell and those that other's construct about them, Stephen works with how these stories shape people's lives.
Stephen's therapeutic work is influenced by the idea that the people coming to see him in therapy are so much more complex and interesting than the narrow descriptions they often come to therapy with.
Stephen helps people resolve problems by enabling them to separate their lives and relationships from specific historical ideas, influences, patterns and stories they judge to be impoverishing.
Stephen assists people on ways to challenge certain patterns of daily living (and thinking) that they find distressing, subjugating, hopeless and abusive.
Stephen is highly encouraging of people to discover ways to re-author their lives according to their own preferred stories of identity and relationships and he provides discussion on how best to support these preferred ways of living over the long term.