What is Narrative Exposure Therapy?

In the field of psychotherapy, many popular treatments exist, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.

There is a strong form of psychotherapy that does not get enough attention, and it is called narrative exposure therapy. This type of therapy has gained a lot of popularity over the years because it has been proven to be very effective in healing PTSD.

The way it works is the patient is asked to establish a narrative of their life. The concentration should be on recounting past traumatic events while putting them in context.

While that can be a daunting task for many, NET emphasizes gradual progression. Patients take their time when recounting these events and stop when the trauma becomes too much.

Let’s dive more into the workings of this type of therapy:

PTSD Treatment:

Narrative exposure therapy is all about exposing trauma, putting it in context, and allowing patients to recall details in a way that helps them slowly reach catharsis.

It is well-known that one of the most challenging aspects of diagnosing PTSD is all the confusion and agony that surrounds the events which lead up to it.

Patients break down, cry uncontrollably, and might get aggressive and hurt themselves or others.

That is why putting back together these fragmentary memories and forming a coherent narrative out of them is so important for healing.

That is exactly what narrative exposure therapy is for.

By being empathetic, listening actively, and encouraging positivity, a therapist will be able to help patients get back their sense of identity.

Whom Is NET for?

Narrative exposure therapy is used on patients suffering from PTSD. This can be anything from refugees fleeing war-torn countries, victims of sexual abuse, domestic violence survivors, war veterans, childhood abuse victims, and any individual who has suffered from other traumatic events.

How It Works?

NET is all about narrating traumatic events. Victims of PTSD need an outlet. They need their voices heard, and that is what NET offers.

It is a chance to build up an autobiography of everything that has happened, with both the good and bad given equal weight.

There is no shame or guilt in doing so because the therapist maintains objectivity and simply listens to what the patient is experiencing.

Chronology is crucial to the success of NET. Patients have to go through events exactly in the order they happened.

The challenge lies in helping them figure out what did happen and what did not. PTSD patients are usually also victims of traumatic flashbacks.

They occur when the patient has spent a long time repressing the hurt and came across a trigger that brings back all the trauma and pain they experienced before.

That is why chronology is so important. Therefore, the therapist asks the patient to go back to the very beginning, where flashbacks cannot occur.

Then, the therapist introduces positive and negative symbols along the way to guide patients mentally through their slowly evolving new autobiography. Stones are usually used to point to the bad times while flowers are for the good experiences.

These objects can be big or small, depending on how strong of an emotion a patient is experiencing.

The therapist continues to keep a record of all the details the patient is providing. The details serve to answer questions that can help the patient make sense of their situation later, and the types of questions asked vary. The therapist might:

• Ask the patient specific questions as they are remembering a certain event or situation.
• Ask the patient to describe the feelings and emotions they experienced when the event happened.
• Ask about whether anyone was there to support them or make them feel worse.
• Ask about the physiological details that underpin each traumatic event.
• Ask how long can the patient keep remembering things before hitting a mental roadblock.

Whenever a patient comes across a sticking point, the therapist encourages them to control their responses and think hard before offering a solution to their narration problem.

Staying in the present is encouraged here, and the therapist emphasizes the point that what was in the past is now in the past. If someone is hallucinating, this becomes paramount, as hallucinating patients think the trauma will come back in the present moment and take on various forms to destroy them again.

Letting go of guilt and finding a way back to one’s humanity are both challenging tasks for PTSD victims. The therapist’s job here is to keep encouraging them by helping them develop a stronger sense of self and understanding of their value as human beings.

Finally, the narration is kept as a record, a form of therapy tool patients can go back and read over from top to bottom.

It offers them a way of regaining control of their lives and reduces the negative associations that they thought existed the first time they narrated everything.

Voice recordings of each individual session can also be used. When all therapy sessions are over, patients can go back and listen to each one. The auditory stimulus can complement their visual narration of events, which speeds up the recovery phase.

Can NET Be Harmful?

While NET is extremely effective for healing PTSD, it is limited in several ways.

One of them is how to convince a traumatized patient to recount events in the first place. Avoidance and flashbacks haunt most victims of PTSD, so telling them to sit down and talk about things will not work right away.

This becomes even worse when they are asked to provide a detailed recounting of all the traumatic experiences that have been accumulating up until that point. Narrative exposure therapy should only be employed when the individual receiving treatment is fully aware of the challenges lying ahead.

Moreover, NET is an advanced form of therapy, which means only highly-qualified and experienced professionals should employ it.

In Conclusion:

Few therapies are as effective as narrative exposure therapy. It is an advanced form of therapy that requires building a strong personal connection between the patient and the therapist.

The idea behind NET is to help patients forge themselves anew by recounting their traumatic experiences throughout life in chronological order.

While the effectiveness of this method is unquestionable, it is still dangerous and requires consent from the patient before starting.

If you think anyone might benefit from NET, make sure they read this and try it out. You might save a few souls in the process.