Therapists for Post-Traumatic Stress

This page gathers clinicians who work with Post-Traumatic Stress and who list narrative therapy among their approaches. Below you can browse listings to compare focus areas, approaches, languages and professional credentials. Use the profiles to find clinicians whose descriptions resonate, then ask directly how much of their work is narrative and what a first conversation usually looks like.

Understanding Post-traumatic Stress as a set of stories

When you live with the aftermath of a traumatic event, much of what you carry can feel like a story about who you are and what the world is like. Narrative therapy begins from the idea that people make sense of their lives through stories. Those stories often include repeated lines - the familiar story that you are permanently damaged, that danger is everywhere, or that you are helpless. Narrative therapists name these recurring accounts and treat them as something that shapes experience rather than as an immutable truth. The approach, which emerged in Australia and New Zealand in the 1980s with Michael White and David Epston, looks for how cultural, family and institutional narratives have contributed to the story you have about your trauma and about yourself. In practice this means attending to the words, metaphors and sequences you use when you describe any one event and the life it has created since. That focus on language and meaning gives you a way to examine the story, to identify exceptions and to imagine different lines that might better reflect your values and commitments in everyday life.

How narrative therapy works with post-traumatic stress

In narrative practice with post-traumatic stress, therapists use several interlinked practices to shift the relationship between you and the problem story. Externalising is a central move - placing the problem outside of you so it can be described, mapped and questioned. Instead of saying "I am anxious," a narrative approach might explore how anxiety shows up and what it does in your life, allowing you to describe its effects without equating it with your identity. Thin and rich description is used to notice when your account is narrowly framed and to expand it by documenting moments, relationships and values that contradict the constraining story. Therapists look for unique outcomes - events or reactions that do not fit the familiar script - and draw them into a growing alternative account. Re-authoring conversations help you build a preferred story that names your commitments and capabilities and looks forward to how those can be enacted in ordinary situations. Practices such as re-membering conversations, outsider witness responses and definitional ceremonies provide ways to bring other voices, supportive witnesses and documented acts into the process of changing a story. Narrative work does not erase the reality of traumatic experience; it creates space to hold that reality while also enlarging the story of who you are beyond the problem.

What to expect in narrative sessions for post-traumatic stress

If you choose a clinician who works with a narrative approach, early sessions usually emphasize careful listening and naming. Your therapist will invite you to tell the story you carry, paying attention to language, images and recurring themes. Those first conversations often focus on externalising the problem and mapping its impact on daily life - relationships, routines, hopes and roles. Questions are likely to be open and exploratory, asking about exceptions to the problem, moments of resilience or small acts that contradict the dominant story. As the work progresses, sessions may shift toward re-authoring - deliberately shaping a different narrative by documenting unique outcomes and co-creating practices that make the preferred story more present in everyday life. The pace can be slower than approaches that concentrate on symptom reduction, because narrative work attends to meaning and identity, and because re-authoring often requires time to find and gather alternative evidence. It is common for therapists who list narrative therapy among their approaches to combine it with other methods that address thought patterns, skills or bodily regulation. You should ask how much of a typical session will be narrative and whether other approaches are used alongside it.

Is a narrative approach the right fit for post-traumatic stress?

There is no way to tell in advance whether a narrative approach will suit you. Many people are drawn to narrative work because they do not want to be reduced to a diagnostic label and because they value an approach that treats experience as shaped by story, relationship and culture. If you find that a story handed down by family, workplace or wider culture no longer fits, narrative work offers tools for separating the problem story from your identity and for building a preferred account of who you are. Narrative therapy differs from approaches that focus primarily on thought content or skills training. Cognitive-behavioural approaches tend to identify and change specific thinking patterns; skills-based work emphasises practice and behavioural strategies; psychodynamic work explores historical causes and unconscious processes. Narrative work prioritizes the meanings you make and the stories you tell about your life. Some therapists integrate narrative practices with other methods - for example, using narrative maps alongside techniques that support emotion regulation - when that combination serves your needs. The only reliable way to know whether a particular therapist and approach fit you is a first conversation that clarifies goals, methods and how you feel in the exchange.

How to choose a therapist who works narratively with post-traumatic stress

When you review profiles and consider reaching out, prepare questions that will help you evaluate fit. Ask how much of their practice is narrative and what a typical session looks like, so you can understand whether early work will focus on naming and externalising or on other interventions. Ask where they are registered or licensed and verify credentials where you live. Inquire about experience working with trauma and with communities or identities that matter to you, and about what other approaches they commonly use alongside narrative work. You might also ask whether they use practices such as outsider witness groups, re-membering conversations or definitional ceremonies, and how these are adapted for one-to-one work or for online sessions. If you plan to work remotely, know that narrative therapy is conversational by design, and many people find that video sessions support the kinds of reflective dialogue the approach requires. Use a first conversation to assess whether the therapist listens in a way that helps you feel heard and whether their description of narrative practice aligns with what you want to explore. Over time, narrative work builds a preferred story through repeated, ordinary acts - small changes in the way your life is narrated and lived - and that gradual process is part of what many people find meaningful when addressing post-traumatic stress.