Therapists for Chronic Pain

This page features therapists who list narrative therapy among their approaches and who work with chronic pain. Browse the listings below to read how practitioners describe their narrative work, focus areas, approaches and languages.

Understanding chronic pain through a narrative lens

When chronic pain becomes part of your life it often arrives with a story - about who you are, what your limits are, and what others expect from you. Narrative therapy, which began in Australia and New Zealand in the 1980s with the work of Michael White and David Epston, starts from the idea that people make sense of their lives through stories. Some of these stories are thin and unkind because they have been handed down by family, workplace culture, medical encounters or wider social expectations. In a narrative approach the aim is not to argue away pain or to re-label symptoms. Instead, the focus is on the way the problem has been named and described, on the relationships that support that naming, and on the moments that do not fit the familiar account.

For you this can mean shifting attention from a fixed identity - for example, I am a person defined by pain - toward a fuller account that includes values, commitments and small moments of agency. Narrative practices create space to see pain as something that interacts with your life story rather than defining it. That distinction shapes the kinds of conversations you will find if you choose a therapist who works with narrative ideas.

How narrative therapy works with chronic pain

Narrative practitioners use a set of practices designed to separate the problem from the person, to trace the origins of familiar stories, and to build alternative and richer accounts. One early move is externalising - talking about the pain or the limitations as something that sits outside you so it can be described, examined and related to differently. Externalising language helps you to recognise how the problem operates, what it does to your relationships and how it responds to attempts to manage it.

Alongside externalising, narrative work attends to thin and rich description. Thin description captures shorthand stories - for example, I am fragile or I have failed - that were picked up from diagnosis conversations, family remarks or social expectations. Rich description expands these accounts by exploring context, exceptions and values. Therapists who list narrative therapy among their approaches will often look for unique outcomes - moments when your lived experience does not match the thin story. These unique outcomes are evidence that there are other plots in your life worth following.

Re-authoring and re-membering conversations are practices that help you to build a preferred story. Re-authoring is the gradual process of composing a narrative that better reflects your commitments and aims and that holds up in ordinary life. Re-membering conversations examine who figures in your life story and how loyalties, memories and influences shape what you consider possible. Some narrative therapists also use outsider witness events and definitional ceremony techniques to allow other people to hear and reflect on parts of your developing story, creating communal acknowledgement rather than solitary revision. Together these practices shift the focus from changing internal content to re-describing experience and repositioning identity in ways that may feel more affirming and workable.

What to expect in narrative sessions for chronic pain

In early conversations you can expect to talk about the story of the pain - when it first became meaningful to you, the language that has been used around it, and the roles it has taken in your life. Your therapist will likely ask questions that separate the problem from you, such as how the pain behaves, when it is more or less present, and how it interacts with other parts of your life. These questions are often curious and exploratory rather than diagnostic. The pace tends to be collaborative; you decide what matters and which moments to follow up, while the therapist helps to notice patterns and exceptions.

As work continues, the focus may move toward collecting unique outcomes and testing alternative descriptions. You might bring specific incidents that contradict the dominant story - times when you managed, connected, or acted in ways the thin narrative did not anticipate. The therapist will attend to these episodes and help you to develop language that honours them, which is a step toward re-authoring. Because many therapists list narrative therapy alongside other approaches, a single session may include conversational narrative work alongside practical strategies, psychoeducation or techniques borrowed from other models. It is reasonable to ask how much of a therapist's work is narrative and what a typical session looks like for them.

Is a narrative approach the right fit for chronic pain?

There is no way to tell in advance whether a particular approach will suit you. People who are often drawn to narrative therapy say they do not want to be reduced to a diagnostic label or treated primarily as a set of symptoms. They may be interested in the cultural and relational stories that shape how pain is understood, or they may want a collaborative, language-focused process that highlights values and possibilities. Narrative work can be especially appealing if you have noticed that a received story - from family, a workplace, or medical context - no longer fits what matters to you.

Narrative therapy is different from approaches that focus primarily on thought content or skill rehearsal, such as cognitive-behavioural or dialectical behaviour strategies, and from therapies that prioritise insight into early life events. While CBT often targets patterns of thinking and DBT centres on skills for emotional regulation, narrative work concentrates on the accounts you and others use to make sense of events. Psychodynamic approaches foreground unconscious history and relational patterns, and some therapists integrate narrative sensibilities with insight-oriented work. Many practitioners combine narrative practices with other methods to meet practical needs; if integration is important to you, ask how and when those approaches are woven together. Remember that listening to practitioners describe their approach and having a first conversation is the usual way to find out if the style and focus fit your expectations.

How to choose a therapist who works narratively with chronic pain

When you look through listings, focus on how therapists describe their approach, areas of focus and the kinds of questions they bring to sessions. It is appropriate to ask directly how much of the work is narrative and what a typical session looks like. Ask whether they use practices like externalising conversations, gathering unique outcomes, re-authoring, re-membering conversations, outsider witness arrangements or definitional ceremony, and ask them to say in their own words how these practices show up in a course of work.

Also ask about professional credentials and registration applicable where you live. A listing that includes narrative therapy is not evidence of any particular training or credential, so it is sensible to verify the therapist's professional registration, licensure or governing body as it applies in your region. Use a first conversation to sense whether the therapist's questions and tone feel collaborative and respectful. Narrative work is conversational, so many people find it translates well to video sessions; you can ask how the therapist structures remote sessions and what they ask clients to arrange in their setting to make the conversation go smoothly.

Choosing a therapist is both practical and personal. You may prefer someone who emphasises re-authoring and values-led conversation, or you may want a practitioner who combines narrative practices with symptom management strategies. Whatever you choose, a clear early conversation about what narrative therapy looks like in their work will help you decide whether their approach resonates with your needs. Narrative ideas offer a framework for re-examining the stories that shape your experience of chronic pain, and many people find that simply naming and exploring those stories creates new possibilities for how they live with them.

Next steps

If you want to learn more, use the listings above to read how individual therapists describe their narrative work, compare focus areas, languages and credentials, and prepare a few questions to guide a first conversation. Asking about how the therapist works with stories, what kinds of moments they pay attention to, and how they combine narrative practices with other approaches will give you a clearer sense of fit. Above all, remember that most people use an initial meeting to see whether a therapist's style and questions feel right; that first exchange is often the most useful way to find out if narrative work might be helpful for you.