Narrative Therapy Techniques: Externalizing, Re-Authoring and the Tree of Life
Narrative therapy techniques treat the person as separate from the problem and help them re-author the story they live by. The main techniques are explained below, with a printable reference.
Reviewed byMichael Callans, MSWKey terms in narrative therapy
An externalizing conversation (White's statement of position map)
- Name the problem in the person's own words. Ask what they would call it, and let the name change as the conversation goes on.
- Map its effects. Where does it show up: at home, at work, in the body, in relationships, in hopes for the future? What does it get the person to do, and stop doing?
- Evaluate the effects. Ask whether these effects are okay with the person, partly okay, or not okay, and let them answer rather than assuming.
- Justify the evaluation. Ask why it is not okay. The answer names what the person values, which becomes the ground for the alternative story.
Questions that find unique outcomes
- Was there a time this week when the problem was around and it did not get its way?
- What did you do in that moment? What did it take?
- Who noticed, or who would not have been surprised?
- What does that moment say about what you want for your life?
- Is there an earlier time that fits with this one?
- If this moment were the first chapter of a different story, what might the next chapter be?
Re-authoring: the two landscapes
Landscape of action
The events, in sequence and in context. What happened, when, where, with whom, and what came just before and just after. Questions here build a plot: how did you prepare, what was the first step, what did you do next.
Landscape of identity
What the events say about the person. Intentions, values, hopes, commitments and what they know about life. Questions here ask what the action reveals: what does doing that tell you about what matters to you, and who taught you that.
The tree of life (Ncube and Denborough, 2006)
- Roots: where you come from. Family, place, culture, ancestors, and the people who taught you most.
- Ground: where you live now and what you do day to day.
- Trunk: your skills and abilities, and where each one came from.
- Branches: your hopes, dreams and wishes, for yourself and for others.
- Leaves: the important people in your life, present and past.
- Fruits: the gifts you have been given, material or otherwise, and who gave them.
- Forest of life: the trees are displayed together and the group talks about what the forest holds.
- Storms of life: only now are difficulties discussed, with the strengths of the forest already visible, and what people do to protect each other and recover.
- Certificates and celebration: the process ends by acknowledging what each person contributed.
Outsider witness retelling: the four categories
- Expression: which words or phrases caught your attention as you listened?
- Image: what image of the person's life, identity or values did those words bring to mind?
- Resonance: why did those words catch you? What in your own life do they connect with?
- Transport: where has listening taken you? What will you think about, or do, differently?
- Not permitted: praise, advice, interpretation or applause. The retelling stays close to what was said.
What the evidence supports
Narrative therapy has a large practice literature and a small research literature: case studies, qualitative studies and a handful of controlled trials, mainly for depression and in school and community settings. The trials are small and few have been replicated, so the approach is best described as promising rather than established. It is a reasonable choice for people who want to work on identity, meaning and the story they tell about themselves. For a specific diagnosis, ask a clinician which treatments have trial evidence for it; that question is outside what this page covers.
About this tool
Narrative therapy techniques are the practical methods of an approach developed by Michael White in Adelaide and David Epston in Auckland during the 1980s, and set out in their 1990 book Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends. The founding idea is that people make sense of their lives through stories, that some stories become problem-saturated and crowd out everything else, and that therapy can help a person notice, thicken and live into alternative stories that were there all along. Its best-known line is White's: the person is not the problem, the problem is the problem.
The approach has postmodern and social-constructionist roots, and the techniques make more sense once you see that. White drew on Michel Foucault's work on how power operates through the categories we are given for describing ourselves, on Jerome Bruner's account of narrative as a basic way humans organize experience, on Clifford Geertz's distinction between thick and thin description, and on the anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff's work on definitional ceremonies. The common thread is that identity is made in language and in community, not discovered inside the individual. That is why narrative therapists do not diagnose, avoid expert pronouncements about what is really going on, and work hard to position the person as the authority on their own life.
Externalizing conversations are the first and most recognizable technique. Instead of "I am anxious" or "she is an anxious child", the problem is spoken about as a separate thing with its own name, tactics and history: when did Worry first show up, what does it tell you, who is on its side. Naming the problem, ideally in the person's own words and sometimes with a child's playful name for it, creates room to examine its effects without the examination becoming an attack on the self. White described a sequence for this, his statement of position map: name the problem, map its effects across relationships, work, feelings and hopes, evaluate those effects, and justify the evaluation (why is this not okay with you?). The last step quietly surfaces what the person values.
Unique outcomes, also called sparkling moments or exceptions, are the second technique. A problem-saturated story has gaps: the time the panic was there and you went to the meeting anyway, the evening the arguing did not happen. These moments are usually dismissed as flukes. The narrative therapist treats them as evidence of a different story and asks about them in detail: what did you do, what did it take, who noticed, what does it say about what you want. The questions are not reassurance. They are an invitation to give the moment a thicker description than luck.
Re-authoring is the technique that turns unique outcomes into an alternative story with a past and a future. White borrowed from Bruner the idea that stories run on two landscapes at once: a landscape of action (what happened, in sequence) and a landscape of identity, sometimes called the landscape of consciousness (what those events say about the person's intentions, values, hopes and commitments). Re-authoring conversations move back and forth between the two, linking a recent sparkling moment to earlier events that fit it, then asking what someone who did those things might do next. The goal is a story the person recognizes as their own and can act from.
Several further techniques build on these. Re-membering conversations revisit the significant figures in a person's life and decide whose membership in the club of life to upgrade or downgrade. Therapeutic documents and letters, which Epston developed, put the alternative story in writing so it outlasts the session. The tree of life, created by Ncazelo Ncube with David Denborough in 2006 for children affected by HIV and AIDS in southern Africa, has a person draw a tree whose roots are their origins, trunk their skills, branches their hopes, leaves the important people, and fruits the gifts they have received. A forest of life then stands the trees together and talks about the storms that come, with the group's strengths visible before any difficulty is named. It has since been used with adults, refugees and in schools.
The definitional ceremony is White's adaptation of Myerhoff's anthropology. A person tells their story to an audience of outsider witnesses, often other clients, community members or a reflecting team. The witnesses then retell what they heard in a structured way: the expression that caught their attention, the image it gave them of the person's life and values, how it resonated with their own experience, and where it has transported them, meaning what they will think or do differently. The person then responds to the retelling. The structure matters. Witnesses are not allowed to praise, advise or interpret, because applause thins a story as reliably as criticism does.
The research base for narrative therapy is small, and the honest summary is that it is promising rather than established: case series, qualitative studies and a small number of controlled trials, mostly for depression and in school settings, with small samples and little replication. If you want an approach that treats your account of your life as the material, it has a coherent method and a forty-year literature.
Narrative therapy suits people who feel defined by a label or a history, families where one member has become the problem, communities facing collective hardship, and anyone for whom the question "what does this say about who you are?" lands better than "what is the evidence for that thought?". It is used with children, in couples work and in group and community settings. A common mistake when borrowing its techniques is to turn externalizing into a party trick, naming the problem without doing the slower work of mapping its effects and building the alternative story. Another is forgetting that the approach is collaborative: the therapist's questions are invitations, and the person decides which story to thicken. If problems are severe, or if you want to try this approach properly, look for a therapist trained in narrative practice. The Dulwich Centre in Adelaide, which White co-founded, remains the main training hub.
References
- White M, Epston D. Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends. W. W. Norton; 1990.
- White M. Maps of Narrative Practice. W. W. Norton; 2007.
- Morgan A. What Is Narrative Therapy? An Easy-to-Read Introduction. Dulwich Centre Publications; 2000.
- Ncube N. The Tree of Life Project: Using narrative ideas in work with vulnerable children in Southern Africa. International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work. 2006;(1):3-16.
- Myerhoff B. Number Our Days. E. P. Dutton; 1978.
Cite this source
Psychology.com. (2026, October 19). Narrative Therapy Techniques. Psychology.com. https://psychology.com/tools/narrative-therapy-techniques
Narrative Therapy Techniques FAQ
What is the main idea of narrative therapy?
That people understand their lives through stories, and that some stories become so dominated by a problem that everything else disappears from view. Narrative therapy separates the person from the problem, looks for the moments that do not fit the problem story, and helps the person build a richer account of who they are and what they value. Michael White and David Epston developed it in the 1980s. Its most quoted line is that the person is not the problem; the problem is the problem.
What does externalizing the problem mean?
Externalizing means talking about a problem as something that affects a person rather than something they are. Instead of "I am a worrier", the conversation becomes "Worry has been visiting a lot; what does it tell you, and when did it first arrive?" The problem gets a name, a history and tactics of its own. This makes it possible to examine its effects honestly without the person feeling attacked, and it opens up the question of what they want to do about it.
What is a unique outcome in narrative therapy?
A unique outcome, sometimes called a sparkling moment or an exception, is any event that contradicts the problem story: a time the problem was present and the person acted anyway, or a day it did not show up. People usually dismiss these as luck. A narrative therapist asks detailed questions about them, what the person did, what it took, who noticed, what it says about their values, so the moment becomes the seed of an alternative story rather than a fluke.
Who developed narrative therapy?
Michael White, an Australian social worker based at the Dulwich Centre in Adelaide, and David Epston, a New Zealand family therapist, developed narrative therapy through the 1980s and published Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends in 1990. White's later book Maps of Narrative Practice (2007) set out the main conversational maps. The tree of life technique was created separately by Ncazelo Ncube with David Denborough in 2006, and the definitional ceremony was adapted from the anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff.
Is narrative therapy evidence based?
Partly. It has a long practice literature and a small body of research: case series, qualitative studies and a few controlled trials, mostly for depression and in school settings. The trials are small and rarely replicated, so it is fair to call narrative therapy promising rather than established. For a specific diagnosis, ask a clinician what the trial evidence supports; narrative therapy is a reasonable choice when identity, meaning and self-story are the main concern.
Can I use narrative therapy techniques on myself?
Some of them, in a limited way. You can practice externalizing by writing about a problem as a character with its own name and tactics, keep a log of unique outcomes, or draw your own tree of life. What you cannot do alone is the conversational part: the questions that push a sparkling moment into a thicker story, and the outsider witness retelling, depend on another person. If the material is heavy, or you find yourself going in circles, a therapist trained in narrative practice is the right next step.