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Collective Narrative Practices
Exploring Collective Narrative Practices
Collective narrative practice is built on the practice and foundation of narrative therapy. It is an emerging field. Collective narrative practice is a practice that aims to reach and help groups or communities that have suffered from a significant collective experience. This practice is applied in contexts where therapy might not be effective due to the cultural system.
The Collective narrative practice aims to help the group members or community tell their story in a way that would make them strong enough to recover from the experience. It promotes a more healthy and just society.
The practice takes the healing process and works outside of the treatment room. It is a mixture of community organising and therapy. It is easy to work with and offers a new and effective approach to dealing with hardship.
Principles of Collective Narrative Therapy
- It aims to enable people to tell their stories to make them stronger and find a way forward.
- It helps the affected people discover that there is more than just one story beneath the story of trouble, loss, and despair.
- It aims to build and sustain the mental health of the individuals, groups or communities involved.
- It aims to help people who have suffered or are suffering from some form of hardship to contribute and help others who are also experiencing a similar situation.
- It aims to help the person who contributes to help others to be able to sustain and generate hope.
Methodologies of Community Narrative Therapy
Ncazelo Ncube developed the Tree of Life alongside David Denborough in response to the plight of children suffering from HIV and AIDS in Southern Africa.
The participants draw a tree of their lives depicting their roots, skills, knowledge, hopes, dreams and special people in their lives. The participants then join all the trees to form a forest and discuss the type of storms that affect them and how they can protect themselves from it. The methodology has become very popular.
This methodology allows both young people and older people who are not used to speaking about their lives in such an open setting to discuss it in a setting where they would feel comfortable. They can engage in meaningful conversations using sports metaphors. The conversation can be held in a sports gym, on the field, in a locker room, during game half-times, and so on.
This methodology makes use of collective remembrance. After the Rwanda genocides, therapists had their hands full responding to and helping the survivors. This method was developed as a response to the requests of the counsellors to help the survivors.
The collective narrative document is a document that contains the experience of a group who have experienced a traumatic situation. It explores how they were able to sustain themselves through difficult times. This document can then be shared between groups to enable those who have endured the hardship to feel that they contribute to others. Those who receive the documents also get to see that they can overcome.
Songwriting is therapeutic. Several narrative therapists and other community workers in Australia and Ireland are now using music and songs in their therapy work with individuals, groups and communities.
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