Story Foundations

The Foundations of the Narrative Approach – Narrative Origins

Many individuals have experienced sitting around a burning campfire with its associated warmth, illumination, and sense of safety.  Groups of people in such a setting often find it natural to include the telling of tales.  Our early ancestors also found this quit natural, for the telling of stories may well be founded on needs basic to being human.  In the context of healing settings, this same process involves instruction arranged in a story fashion incorporating a form of narrative going from background information and the general to the specific in developmental ways as the threads of lives are woven into the tapestry of individual and family stories.

We offer a rather large introduction to the process of using “Narrative Tools”.  The materials cover both the theory of the practices, examples of storylines drawn from the events of everyday expressions, and provide dozens of practical ideas and suggestions in build the scaffolding for stories evolving from these moments in one’s life.

We have also outlined and reviewed seven mutually recursive (affecting each other) preconditions associated with story development which also become outcomes generated from the self-expression of the experience.  Stories begin in a setting where an initial sense of safety and connection where communication of one’s voice can be recognized. Voices are shared and heard through the “inter subjectivity” process (two people engage back and forth exchanging in conversation or reading a book). Thus the listener and teller create a reflective and relational understanding of the context (background) that can be useful by the person in building a healthy identity as part of their own story.

Building a healthy personal identity is so important that we have added materials on this significant topic including the Perceiving Change Handout and other such forms helping assess differences and change.  We have observed that a prerequisite for harvesting stories is recognizing and uncovering them. It will be seen that the little social transactions (interactions) occurring in the many routines of everyday life form part of such stories, and from our experiences we have attempted to conceptualize them in the Family Health Promotion Plan we use as apart of our family assessment

Links

Building a healthy identity as part of one’s own story.

Narrative Tools for Building Adaptive Identities Under resources.

Finding opportunities for social transactions in everyday life conceptualized in the Family Health Promotion Plan.  “Resiliency-Your Changing Stories” using the ready, able and willing scale in the Perceiving Change Handout and ways to weave meaningful story threads that promote child-family strengths in the Family Health Promotion Plan.

Resiliency: Your Changing Stories.