Multi-Story Listening: What IS Possible in Brief Conversations

In all therapy conversations, and especially in single-sessions and brief work, therapists can engage with the narrative therapy concept of multi-story listening. Conversations that can make a difference are possible even in one therapeutic encounter.

We listen for more than one story—the explicit story, usually regarding something that is problematic, and the implicit story that is in the shadows of the problem story. The implicit listening we are doing is focused on hearing in people’s words, the knowledge and skills they have put to use in getting through what they have experienced, and in continuing on. We hear, in people’s expressions of psychological ‘pain’ (distress, despair), hints of what people place value on. We can understand this ‘pain’ as testimony rather than ‘pain’ as evidence of dysfunction. When these stories of identity are resurrected, many of the negative self-descriptions people have been recruited into by a ‘trauma’ experience can be displaced.