Reauthoring the Self: How Narrative Therapy Helps Us Find Our Way Home
- Asta Au
- Oct 1, 2025
- 8 min read
Narrative Therapy is a therapeutic approach that explores the stories we tell about ourselves. It views people as separate from their problems, which allows clients to get some distance from the difficulties faced. It hopes to empower clients to make changes in their
thought patterns and behaviours by recognizing the dominant narrative (problem-saturated stories), externalization (separating the person from the problem), and reauthoring (constructing new, values-based stories). It asks individuals to rewrite their life story for a future that reflects who they are, what they are capable of and what their purpose is.
Beginning: The Stories We Inherit
Narrative Therapy and the Stories that Define us
We live in our own stories. Some we create. Others are handed to us by families, cultures, systems, identities, and early experiences. They are stories we tell ourselves and others. Over time, they become the lens through which we understand ourselves and the world.
In Narrative Therapy, these are called dominant narratives—the stories that become the most visible and loud in our lives. Often, they are problem-saturated stories, focused on what’s wrong, missing, or broken. These narratives don’t just describe what we think. We begin to live them out, often unconsciously. Many of us carry stories that are repetitive, narrow narratives that define us by our struggles:
“I’m too much.”
“I don’t fit in.”
“I’m broken.”
These kinds of stories often form quietly. A passing comment, an early experience of exclusion, or unspoken family expectations can plant a seed that grows into a lifelong belief. These stories often take root in pain. And when repeated enough times, they start to sound like the truth.
Knotted Threads: The Broken Story
Personal reflections on Early Dominant Narratives of Brokenness and not Belonging
For a long time, I believed I was broken. I couldn't name exactly why, until much later, so I grew up feeling different, like there was some essential part of me missing that others seemed to have. No matter how hard I tried to fit in, I always felt slightly out of place. It was like I was carrying around a quiet, private fracture that no one else could see, including myself.
At some point, my story became: “I am too broken to be loved because something is fundamentally wrong with me.”
That became the backdrop of my life. Every perceived failure reinforced it, and every success felt like I was borrowing someone else’s story, one I didn’t deserve. I was unworthy, a fraud, an alien disguised as human.
Middle: The Moment of Shift
Narrative Therapy and Externalizing the Problem
Narrative Therapy invites us to become curious about these stories, not as absolute truths, but as interpretations. This is where Narrative Therapy offers one of its most empowering practices: externalization, the idea that you are not the problem; the problem is the problem. This shift creates space between you and the narrative you’ve carried. You can begin to examine it, challenge it, or even talk to it.
When we examine it, challenge it, and talk to it, we begin to see the threads. These are times when the dominant story didn’t fully explain what was happening. Maybe you showed up for someone, created something meaningful, or felt unexpectedly calm. These are not just memories; they are evidence of who you are beyond the problem.
In Narrative Therapy, we explore these threads and begin to weave another narrative, a fuller story that reflects your values, strengths, and hopes.
Narrative Therapy asks: What if the story you've been living isn't the only one available to you?
It invites us to do something radical:
To step outside the “truth” we’ve internalized
To explore the history of our narratives
And to discover the thin threads—small, forgotten moments—that point to other possibilities
Reauthoring doesn’t mean denying the past. It means looking at it differently. It asks:
What have you lived through that you never gave yourself credit for?
What values have quietly guided your choices, even in chaos?
Who have you been becoming, even when you didn’t feel whole?
Unravelling Threads: Another Path to my Story
Personal Reflections on Shifting my Narrative
I remember sitting across from a therapist who asked me, “When did you first believe you were broken?” It wasn’t accusatory. It was gentle, curious.
The question sat with me, a heavy weight on my shoulders. I didn’t know the answer. I didn’t know a time when I didn’t think I was broken. It had always been that way. To me, broken was just who I was.
And then one day, I stumbled across a blog post. It was about asexuality and aromanticism.
And for the first time, I had words to describe me. It wasn’t because I was a terrible, awful person, because I couldn’t understand what love was. It wasn’t because I was missing a fundamental part of the human experience. And it certainly wasn’t because I was an alien pretending to be human. There were people in the world who were like me.
It was as if the threads that bound me to this place began to unravel. In that moment, I realized something important. I wasn’t alone in this world. I wasn’t incapable of love. I wasn’t broken.
I thought: If my story wasn’t about brokenness, then what is my story? What if I was never fragmented, but whole, with stories written in invisible ink that I couldn’t see until now? What if my stories have been there all this time, but I just couldn’t recognize them?
The threads began to splinter and spread into a multitude of paths to follow. I wasn’t bound by just one thread, one story, one narrative.
Climax: Discovering the Author Within
Narrative Therapy and Reshaping Identity
Reauthoring builds resilience because it reframes identity. You stop being defined by what hurt you and begin to be shaped by how you kept showing up.
The reauthoring process is at the heart of Narrative Therapy. It’s the act of consciously choosing to reshape your identity by connecting with your values, reclaiming your voice, and making new meaning from your experiences.
This doesn’t mean rewriting history or denying pain. It means widening the lens. Reauthoring helps people move from feeling like the passive subject of their life story to being its co-author.
The shift from “This happened to me, and it defines me” to “This happened, and here’s who I became in response” is the beginning of deep, resilient healing.
Resilience, in this context, is not just about bouncing back. It’s about holding pain and strength at the same time and choosing to live from a story that honours your growth. This is the heart of reauthoring: realizing that even in your hardest seasons, you were responding, resisting, caring, navigating. Maybe not perfectly, but meaningfully.
You are not the passive subject of your story. You are the narrator. The author.
Branching Threads: Finding My Way Home
Personal Reflections on a New Core Narrative
The more I examined my story, the more I saw the traces of something I hadn’t recognized before. A longing for home. Not just a physical place, but a sense of wholeness, of belonging inside myself.
I realized I had been creating that home in pieces and moments: In the art and poems where I could breathe; in the friendships where I could finally speak honestly; in the journals filled with truth, long before I could say it out loud
Each act of care, creativity, or quiet self-preservation wasn’t evidence of brokenness. It was evidence of trying to come home to myself.
That realization changed everything. The story shifted from “I am broken” to “I’ve been finding my way back to myself all along.”
End: A Living Story
Narrative Therapy and Resilience
Narrative Therapy reminds us that stories are alive. They evolve. You are not bound to one version of who you are. Your story can hold grief and joy, loss and love, fear and strength. In therapy, we often revisit old stories with a new lens, not to erase them, but to find what else is there. We ask:
What’s missing from this narrative?
What parts of you were active, even if unnoticed?
What would you name your preferred story?
Reauthoring doesn’t offer a fixed ending. It’s an ongoing process; a living document. The stories we tell about ourselves evolve as we do. This is resilience. Not the absence of pain, but the presence of meaning.
Infinite Threads: Still Becoming
Personal Reflections on the Lifelong Journey of Reauthoring My Story
The old narrative still whispers sometimes: “You’re still not enough. You’re still broken”.
But now, I know how to respond. I pause. I breathe.
I don’t try to silence the old voice anymore. I just remind it that I am not lost. I am not broken. I am becoming. I’ve found my way home, one sentence, one chapter, one story at a time.
Epilogue: An Invitation to Inwards
If you’ve carried the weight of a story that says you’re broken, unworthy, or don’t belong, know this: You can pause. You can reframe. You can reauthor.
You can come home to yourself, one word, one memory, one truth at a time. Your story is still unfolding. And there is room in it for healing, hope, and wholeness.
Reflective Prompts: Beginning Your Reauthoring Journey
If this story stirred something in you, take a moment to reflect. I invite you into the beginnings of reauthoring your story, with its infinite threads.
Find a quiet space, a notebook, or even the notes app on your phone and let yourself write freely. There are no wrong answers, only honest ones.
Exploring the Dominant Narrative
What is a story you’ve carried about yourself for a long time? (e.g., “I’m too much,” “I always ruin things,” “I’m not lovable”)
Where do you think this story came from? Was it spoken out loud? Implied? Felt?
How has this story shaped your choices, relationships, or self-image?
Finding the Thin Threads
Can you remember a time when you acted against this narrative, even in a small way?
What values were guiding you in that moment? (e.g., compassion, strength, creativity, justice)
Who has seen a different version of you, someone who didn’t believe this limiting story?
Reclaiming Agency
What parts of your story have been overlooked, ignored, or silenced?
If you could tell your story from a place of kindness and self-respect, how would it begin?
What are you proud of surviving, navigating, or holding together?
Coming Home to Yourself
What does “home” feel like for you, not as a place, but as a feeling?
How have you already been building that home within yourself?
What story would you like to live into now? What’s its tone, texture, and truth?
A Final Thought to Carry Forward
“The story is not over. You are still writing.”
What is one word or phrase you want to carry with you as you reauthor the next chapter?
Cross-Posted on Rainbow Counselling Blog - August 2025
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