Emotional Intelligence

Coherent Narrative work invites you to come into relationship via dialogue. 

Emotional Intelligence is a measure of one’s awareness of self and other. Daniel Goleman describes it as the ability to read others. Part of what is gained in the Coherent Narrative Therapy process, is the opportunity to learn about yourself in dialogue with an attentive and attuned other. You will not only be asked to consider deep questions about your own ‘story,’ but will be listened to deeply and responded to with authenticity. In being listened to this intently, you too will become a better listener, to yourself and others. The work will be guided by the way in which you language your own experience, and much of what is discovered about where you are stuck will be discovered in the way that you communicate with the therapist/coach. As you articulate your story, you will become more comfortable with giving language to your experience and to interacting with others. Once you are more aware of the way you language your experience, as in the Buddhist tradition, you will align your thoughts, words, and actions with your deepest understandings. (See Phillip Moffit). 

Write Brain

Coherent Narrative Therapy uses written meditations, in addition to spoken explorations, to access all that clients already know about themselves and to strengthen the coherence (see Bruce Ecker) of their stories. 

Recent evidence-based research has shown that we often don’t remember things we know, until we write about our experience. We write to remember what we've forgotten (See Pennebaker  http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170601-can-writing-about-pain-make-you-heal-faster?ocid=ww.social.link.facebook). I have discovered that we also don’t hear what we are saying to others, or fully know what we feel until we write it down; and once we have written it down, we are able to process the learning and are more likely to remember it going forward.  Writing invites the brain into a reflective memory state. Participants tap memories not previously accessed in the autobiographical archives in the right (write) brain, using the storytelling drive in the left brain, which results in an altered state akin to hypnosis. Gail is also trained in EMDR, and can combine her approach with bi-lateral stimulation during sessions.

Using Narrative as a tool for healing and transformation has a long history. Narrative Therapy was developed in the 1980’s, by Michael White & David Epston. It sees people as not fixed, but as fluid throughout life and believes that people can develop new senses of themselves. It encourages a shift from focus on the present problem, to focus on strengths exhibited in the past, allowing clients to re-author the ‘problem-saturated’ story that they arrive with, and replace it with a more empowering reading of their lives. This is done by getting in touch with memories that have been forgotten and left out of the dominant plot. It is not about writing a happy story, but a true story and a mindfully coherent story of the past, of the unfolding present, and of the future; sharing the written findings bring them into useful awareness. Spoken exploration is enhanced by written and imagined meditations, both within and outside of sessions. Because we write from a deeply unconscious place close to the part of the brain where memories are stored, we can retrieve what is hidden from ordinary awareness. 

Mindfulness

Coherent Narrative Therapy invites the mindful noticing and reframing of past and present experience.  

Mindfulness is a growing movement worldwide. It's a practice of paying attention to self, to others, and to the present moment. Dan Siegel asserts that: “In a reflective state, we can choose to engage autobiographical memory stores, inviting whatever comes into awareness to come more fully…the healing that emerges with this reflective form of memory and narrative integration…is deeply liberating”. This kind of reflection is at the core of Coherent Narrative therapy, and yields what Siegel refers to as narrative integration, which “enables us to weave together the story of our life...the mindful telling of our tale can be greatly healing of unresolved issues in our life, because a coherent narrative is essentially a story that makes sense of our lives in a deep, viscerally full way”.  Clients have commented to me that they have never before been listened to, or understood this deeply and compassionately by themselves or another. Being mindful of our fuller, more authentic story allows us to see our lives as they are, and ourselves as we are.