“Who Am I? Where Do I Fit In?” How Cultural Expectations and Trauma Shape Immigrant Identity

“I feel like I am living for the past 15 years of my professional life in the whipped cream. The whipped cream is not what you expect, but when it comes, it is all extra. I've been living in the extra.”
— Ocean Vuong, Vietnamese American poet 

Ocean Vuong’s words speak to the layered reality many immigrants experience— particularly those whose families arrived in the United States seeking safety, opportunity, or simply survival. For many immigrants, especially those from developing nations or lower socioeconomic backgrounds, the definition of a “good life” is humble: having enough food, a roof over your head, and the ability to live another day. Yet in modern Western society, such a life is often viewed as insufficient, unambitious—even a failure.

Navigating two cultures is never easy. Immigrants and their children often face implicit or overt shame simply for being “different.” The culture they carry with them—embedded in language, customs, and even in something as simple as food—can be met with judgment. Many remember moments from childhood when they felt embarrassed bringing home-cooked meals to school, only to be ridiculed for unfamiliar smells or flavors.

The Grief of Identity: When Belonging Feels Elusive

There is a unique kind of grief that arises when you realize how your appearance, accent, culture, or even fashion choices influence how others perceive and treat you. It’s not just about “fitting in”; it’s about reconciling the multiple layers of who you are.

Second-generation immigrants often voice a deep identity conflict: For instance, “I’m not Asian enough in my country of origin because I grew up in the U.S., but I’m not American enough here either.”

These feelings of not being “enough” stem from many sources: historical trauma, racialization, and generational misunderstandings. Adolescents, especially, may feel torn between wanting to fit in with peers and preserving their cultural identity. Over time, as they conform and find belonging among their peers, the shame may fade—but another emotion creeps in: loss.

There is a quiet mourning for the parts of self that are suppressed in the process of assimilation. Despite outward confidence and friendships, many still carry a sense of disconnection. They feel as though they’re performing a version of themselves. Some come to realize they may never fully fit in—due to an invisible, deeply rooted barrier shaped by history and power.

Healing does not require erasing the barrier entirely—but it does ask us to name it, to say: “I see it, and I want to understand.” No one should have to carry the burden of bridging the cultural gap alone.

The Legacy of Trauma: How Past Pain Shapes Family Life

Immigrant families often carry histories shaped by poverty, war, displacement, political persecution, or natural disasters. These experiences leave a deep imprint—not just on those who directly endured them, but on future generations. Trauma shows up in parenting, family roles, and communication patterns.

This can create emotional distance between generations. Children, especially those raised in the host culture, may find themselves more emotionally aware or fluent than their parents, yet feel unseen or misunderstood at home.

First-generation immigrant struggles may include:

• Maintaining relationships with family in their home country, despite vastly different lived experiences.

• Coping with guilt or grief from witnessing continued suffering back home.

• Building a new support system in a host culture with different values around closeness and autonomy.
  

Children of immigrants often bear additional burdens:

• Serving as language brokers and cultural translators.

• Feeling responsible for their family’s upward mobility.

• Navigating unspoken expectations to succeed while suppressing their own needs or emotional pain.

These layered roles can leave both generations feeling isolated, living under the same roof but in vastly different emotional worlds.

Healing Across Generations: Reclaiming Voice and Identity

Healing from cultural and generational trauma is a non-linear and deeply personal journey. It requires reckoning with what was lost and rediscovering what can be reclaimed. Therapeutic support can be a vital companion along the way. A culturally-responsive therapist can help you explore and reconcile the different parts of your identity as an immigrant or child of immigrants. Here are some therapy practices that can support this healing process for immigrants and children of immigrants: 

1. Foster understanding. Each family and cultural history is unique. Gaining clarity about the historical and generational context of your experiences can help you make sense of what happened—and recognize that it wasn’t your fault.

2. Recognize and care for your inner parts. Identify the parts of yourself that carry emotional wounds. Gently unblend from those "exiled" parts holding trauma, and approach them with curiosity, compassion, and care.

3. Connect with others. You are not alone in this process. Seek out relationships or communities where you feel safe and supported in your emotional vulnerability.

4. Cultivate body awareness. Trauma lives in the nervous system. Attending to your somatic experiences can help you develop both physical and emotional safety.

5. Explore meaning. Reflect on how you make sense of what happened to you and your family. Reclaim your narrative in a way that feels empowering and aligned with your truth.

6. Affirm agency. Acknowledge the impact of systemic oppression while empowering yourself to reclaim your voice, challenge internalized shame, and co-create spaces of collective care.

Culturally-Responsive Therapy for Immigrant Experiences

Who am I? Where do I belong? These questions are not signs of confusion or weakness—they are the beginning of healing. They emerge when we dare to hold the contradictions of our identity and honor the fullness of our experience.

To immigrants and children of immigrants navigating these questions: you are not alone. Your grief is valid. Your voice matters. And your story is worth telling— not just for yourself, but for the generations to come.

At ECC Chicago, all of our therapists are committed to providing culturally-responsive care to help you explore how your cultural identity is impacting your mental health and relationships. We offer multilingual therapy in Spanish, Mandarin, and Korean, both in person and online. If you’re looking for culturally competent therapy near you, we’re here to help. 

ABOUT ECC: 

Empowered Connections Counseling is a practice of licensed therapists providing quality, multidisciplinary counseling for adults, children & teens, relationships, and families in Chicago and across Illinois. Whether by in-person session or via telehealth, we work with clients to find the therapist and treatment methods that best suit their needs. Connect meaningfully with your life by booking an appointment today.

Loving From a Distance: Boundaries & Estrangement with Difficult Parents

Setting boundaries with a parent can feel confusing, painful, and even taboo, especially if you were raised to "honor thy father and mother." Maybe your parent dismisses your feelings, crosses emotional or physical boundaries, or makes you feel responsible for their moods. If any of this sounds familiar, you're not alone. In fact, estrangement between adult children and their parents is on the rise in the U.S. In this post, we'll unpack why child-parent estrangement is becoming more common, how to set boundaries with your parents if you're experiencing conflict, and how to know when to go low- or no-contact. 

Why is Estrangement Between Parents and Children Becoming More Common? 

A 2022 study found that roughly one in four adults are estranged from at least one parent: six percent of respondents reported being estranged from their mothers, while another 26% reported being estranged from their father. Most respondents of the study were in their early 20s when they became estranged from their parent(s). So what's driving this rise in estrangement? Estrangement is very personal and unique to each relationship, but there are some commonalities across gender, race, and family background, such as:

• Evolving Definitions of Harm or Trauma: In his book, "Rules of Estrangement: Why Adult Children Cut Ties and How to Heal the Conflict," clinical psychologist Joshua Coleman cites research on the evolving definition of trauma over the last 30 years or so; experiences that used to be accepted as normal or harmless are now seen for the emotional or psychological damage they can inflict on a person, even if that damage was unintentional. 

• Political Differences: In a Harris Poll released after the 2024 election, just one in five respondents directly attributed their estrangement directly to political differences. For most people, the political differences are just one contributing factor in the bigger picture, or a symptom of a deeper rift.

• Patterns of Dysfunction & Abuse: As young adults mature and form their own identities separate from their families, it is common to experience a perspective shift on familial dynamics that were once tolerated or considered normal and begin to recognize recurring patterns. 

What Defines a Toxic Parent

Recognizing patterns of dysfunction and abuse may be hard to come to grips with, especially if one parent’s behavior is tolerated by many people in the family. Personal experiences can feel subjective, especially in a society that often teaches children to suppress their emotions. When you reflect on painful interactions with your parents, a part of you might be wondering, am I just more sensitive than everyone else in my family? How do I know that it’s “abuse”? I know other people have had it worse than me, but what my parent(s) did still hurt. Is this really trauma? 

Identifying the harm and naming the behavior for what it is is an important part of the process of rebuilding self-trust, agency in your relationship with your parents, and healing the wound. Despite what you might have been told by your parent or family member, there are objective signs that your parent is engaging in toxic behavior toward you, such as:

• They try to control your behavior

• They lack concern for and are dismissive of your feelings 

• They offer excessive criticism 

• They make you feel bad about yourself 

• They don’t support or celebrate you 

• They physically, emotionally, or verbally abuse you

Do any of these signs feel familiar? Even if your parent(s) checks all the boxes of toxic behavior, you may not want to distance yourself completely. Parent-child relationships, like all relationships, exist on a spectrum of closeness. There are many points along that spectrum between close and estranged. You can start by setting clear and firm boundaries, and if they have a hard time respecting your boundaries or continue to exhibit toxic behavior, you can choose to go low-contact (limited interactions, staying somewhere else instead of at their house when visiting family, etc). 

How to Set Boundaries with Toxic Parents

As psychotherapist Prentis Hemphill wisely said, “Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.” With that in mind, here are some steps to help you set and maintain boundaries that protect your well-being while navigating a difficult relationship with a parent.

• Setting boundaries can be uncomfortable and difficult, especially if this is a new dynamic, but following through is incredibly important. Reflect on your needs and values, what you feel comfortable with, and what feels both accessible and enforceable. 

• Remember that you do not have to go all or nothing, and you can start slow. This can be a process. Be gentle with yourself and any conflicting emotions you feel. 

• Clearly communicate your expectations to your parent(s) and how you will respond if your boundaries aren’t respected. 

• Be direct without being cruel or dismissive. Boundary work can support breaking intergenerational cycles of emotional and physical harm, so while any anger, hurt, or resentment you feel is absolutely valid and deserves space, approach this with a focus of caring for yourself and acting in alignment with your values. 

• Boundaries can be hard to accept, so your parent(s) may lash out. Don’t feel like you need to debate or adjust the expectations you’ve set to accommodate their feelings or displeasure. Remember that boundaries are not about hurting someone else; they’re about reinforcing that you are worthy of respect, care, and relationships that support you. 

• Be firm and consistent. If you want your parent(s) to respect your boundaries, you need to respect your own boundaries first. 

When to Go Limited or No Contact 

Recognizing when a relationship has become too damaging is difficult, especially when it involves a parent. If you're wondering whether it's time to go low- or no-contact, here are some signs that distance may be the healthiest choice.

• If physical, emotional, or verbal abuse persists

• If you continue to set boundaries that are violated or not respected 

• If your parent(s) continues to invalidate your feelings 

• If you find yourself feeling perpetually exhausted, overwhelmed, and uncared for in communication and engagement with your parent(s)

• If you’ve made attempts to repair the relationship but your parent(s) is unwilling to change

Therapy Support for Painful Parental Relationships

Going limited or no-contact is a complicated decision, but sometimes, despite best efforts, it’s the next step in the process of protecting yourself. The consequences can be very emotionally devastating, and it’s normal for there to be feelings of grief and loss, even with the shifting or ending of toxic relationships. Give yourself permission and space to feel those feelings and take care of them, as well as yourself. 

The most important thing to remember is that you are worthy of respectful, caring relationships. You don’t have to cope with painful parental relationships alone. If you’re struggling to set boundaries with your parent(s), advocate for yourself and your needs in family settings, or you’re grieving estrangement, our therapists at ECC are here to help. We'll match you with the right therapist and therapy approach to help you process your experiences and find healthy ways to communicate and honor your needs. 

ABOUT ECC: 

Empowered Connections Counseling is a practice of licensed therapists providing quality, multidisciplinary counseling for adults, children & teens, relationships, and families in Chicago and across Illinois. Whether by in-person session or via telehealth, we work with clients to find the therapist and treatment methods that best suit their needs. Connect meaningfully with your life by booking an appointment today.

Building Community in a Divided Society

American society is divided and polarized in our beliefs and perspectives, now more than ever. This can present unique challenges around connecting with others who we may not view as “like us” in our thought processes or belief systems, and this isolation can negatively impact our mental health. In this blog post, we’ll explore how to find community in a divided world, and why community is so important to our mental well-being. 

Americans Feel Divided, Even in Their Own Communities

If you live in the U.S. right now, you’ve probably noticed the division and polarization happening in society right now, so this data may come as no surprise: Americans are less likely than people abroad to feel close to others in their country and community, according to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey of 24 nations. Even fewer Americans feel close to people in their local community: 54% feel a connection to others near them, compared with a median of 78% of adults across all 24 countries. 

When there are differences among people which cause conflict, it is typically recommended that we name and talk about the differences in order to facilitate better understanding of each others’ perspectives; however, when talking about the issue doesn’t lead to better understanding or gaining a sense of empathy for someone else, we can feel even more isolated and alone.

What is Community? 

Our sense of community can be broken down into four elements: 

• Membership defines who is in the community and who is out. It shows that people value the sense of belonging which comes with being identified as a member. Fan clubs are an extreme example of the power of membership and are often characterized by symbols of membership such as badges and t-shirts. A professional association, another example of a community of practice, might have formal membership requirements such as fees and exams before you can join. 

• Influence is the notion that “my voice counts.”  When you speak, others listen and often act on your advice. 

• Fulfillment of needs – people belong to communities to satisfy one or more needs. In a community of practice, a common need is to get better at one’s job or profession. 

• Emotional connection includes shared history, shared participation, and identification with that history, and a deeply felt connection between members. It is the most nebulous aspect of our sense of community, but still very important. 

(Source: Sense of Community: A Definition and Theory, David W. McMillan and David M. Chavis, Journal of Community Psychology, Volume 14, 1986)

It’s clear from data like that of the Pew Research study that for most Americans, one or more of these four elements are missing from our sense of community within our communities. Why we feel that way is a topic of much debate (and we won’t get to the bottom of it in this blog post), but regardless, the lack of community can have adverse mental health outcomes.

How Lack of Community Impacts Mental Health

As humans, we are wired to need interpersonal connection in order to survive. Community is an essential part of our health, both mental and physical. 

According to a National Institute of Health study (2023), compared with those who report a positive sense of community, those with a negative sense of community had significantly higher odds of reporting depression, anxiety and stress symptoms. 

Without a more defined sense of community, we can often put more stress on our interpersonal relationships or our job to give us all of the connection and fulfillment that we need, leading to greater stress and interpersonal conflict.  

What We Can Do to Rebuild Our Sense of Community

Given the state of the world and American society right now, it’s more important than ever to try and rebuild a sense of community, for our own sake as well as others, hopefully with a ripple effect of healing our broader sense of division and isolation as a country.

Here are some steps you can take to rebuild community in your own life: 

• Try to find a group of like minded people with whom you can interact regularly in person. To fulfill our need for connection and membership in a group, it is essential to have friends, colleagues, or others who share values and interests and with whom you can interact with regularly IRL, or offline. 

• Limit social media usage and engaging in online debates that can lead to more anger, hatred, and tendency toward bias. Besides, when has arguing online ever led to a productive conversation or someone changing their mind?

• Engage in an activity that benefits others and is meaningful to you. This doesn’t have to be political, and even if you aren’t able to do it as regularly as you’d like to, it can still help you rebuild a sense of influence, or ability to create positive change, which is key to your sense of community. 

• Avoiding divisive topics, while generally discouraged, is sometimes necessary to maintain your own boundaries and mental health (i.e., not getting into a political debate with family on a holiday, colleagues at work, or among friends with whom you share a hobby.) Focusing on what you share in common is key to building community, and building trust and vulnerability with people so that tough conversations don’t feel so fraught. 

• Prioritize your values and regularly do things that work towards your values. This can help with many aspects of finding community, from finding fulfillment, to connecting with others who are like-minded. Whether it’s participating in a park cleanup day because you value environmental causes, or volunteering at a food bank because you’re concerned about inequality, it’s important to find ways to align your actions with your values and connect with others who are doing the same. 

We’re in This Together

You don’t have to cope with feelings of isolation alone. It’s an incredibly difficult time in our country, and there are plenty of reasons to feel worried, angry, scared, and even distrustful. If you’re feeling disconnected from community and it’s impacting your mental health, our team at ECC is here to help. We'll match you with the right therapist and therapy approach to help you process your feelings and experiences, and strategize ways to connect with others in fulfilling ways. 

ABOUT ECC: 

Empowered Connections Counseling is a practice of licensed therapists providing quality, multidisciplinary counseling for adults, children & teens, relationships, and families in Chicago and across Illinois. Whether by in-person session or via telehealth, we work with clients to find the therapist and treatment methods that best suit their needs. Connect meaningfully with your life by booking an appointment today.

How to Heal from Religious Trauma

A person's religious upbringing can have as much influence on them as their family of origin, shaping how they see and interact with the world around them. Choosing to leave that religion or faith community is often a deeply painful experience, with many ripple effects. Even after leaving the group or beliefs behind, it can be harder to leave the thought patterns behind, resulting in continued pain and confusion. In this post, we'll cover the basics of religious trauma and how therapy can help survivors of religious trauma deconstruct their experiences, find new meaning, and rebuild their value system.

What is Religious Trauma?

Religious trauma syndrome, while not yet a formal diagnosis, is a widely accepted concept among clinicians and religious scholars. Similar to complex trauma disorders, religious trauma can impact a person emotionally, relationally, cognitively, sexually, spiritually, and physically. 

According to Dr. Marlene Winell, psychologist and religious trauma expert: 

“Religious Trauma Syndrome is the condition experienced by people who are struggling with leaving an authoritarian, dogmatic religion and coping with the damage of indoctrination. It is a function of both the chronic abuses of harmful religion and the impact of severing one’s connection with one’s faith group.”

What Causes Religious Trauma? 

Often, individuals experiencing religious trauma were members of high-control (a.k.a. high-demand) religions or religious groups. These groups are most often defined as exerting control over individual members. You can often identify high-control religions by the following: 

• Authoritarian Leadership – The spiritual leaders may avoid or dismiss open dialogue, and their authority is treated as unquestionable.

• Exclusive Truth Claims – The leaders make claims such as, “Only WE have and know the truth about the world.”

• Fear-Based Messaging – Behavioral adherence is reinforced through fear of hell, punishment, and other divine negative consequences. 

• Behavior Control – There are strict rules governing how people in the group behave, such as clothing, relationships, sex, education, diet, money, and more.

• Shame Manipulation – High-control religious groups often use and abuse self-surveillance and a person’s feelings of unworthiness to maintain control over them.

• Information Control – It’s common in high-control religion to restrict certain outside materials such as movies, books, or music.

• Isolationism – Members within the group discourage contact with outsiders or “non-believers,” unless it is for the explicit purpose of proselytizing and converting the outsiders into believers. 

• Shunning – Members who question authority or teaching or those that leave are shunned, ostracized, and demonized.

• Identity Suppression – Being part of the group becomes members’ core identity, erasing other identities one might have or interests that fall outside the accepted group norms.

(See further: Hassan, 2015; Winell, 2011)

All of these markers of high-control religious groups are ingredients that contribute to religious trauma and can create the environment for adverse religious experiences, such as: 

• Sexual and/or emotional abuse by a spiritual leader 

• Physical and emotional abuse from a parent or caregiver to "break a child's will" 

• Discrimination, rejection, and/or conversion therapy based on a person's LGBTQIA+ identity

• Purity culture and sexual shame 

• Patriarchal control 

• Homeschooling, hyper-religious education, and even educational neglect based on gender

• Being forced to give up a skill, hobby, sport, or other interest because it doesn't fit religious expectations

• Forced "faith-healing" for disability or illness

• Medical neglect due to religious beliefs

• Coercive leadership

• Breakups with romantic partners or friends over religious differences 

• Fear of hell, rapture, or apocalypse 

Signs You Might Have Religious Trauma

As with other types of trauma, religious trauma can trigger all sorts of symptoms that can make it hard to function in daily life, connect with others, and feel at peace with oneself. A few common examples include: 

Cognitive symptoms, such as difficulty making decisions, frequent dissociation, or identity confusion. In high-control religion, people are taught (often from a very young age) to suppress their emotions, intuition, and ability to think critically about things in deference to the spiritual authority of the group, or of a higher power. Even after leaving the high-control religion behind, it takes work to exercise those skills and rebuild self-trust. 

Emotional symptoms, such as anxiety, panic attacks, depression, grief, shame, loneliness, and more. Leaving behind high-control religion can trigger deep, complex emotions as a person processes their experiences and grieves how they impacted their life, from relationships that are forever changed, to belief systems that caused harm. 

Functional symptoms, such as sleep disturbance (including nightmares), eating issues, sexual dysfunction, substance abuse, and somatic complaints (e.g., pain, fatigue, etc.) Even after leaving a religion or faith community, the deeply embedded messages of shame, self-loathing, and fear can be difficult to overcome and can manifest in physical ways. 

Social or cultural symptoms, such as difficulty building strong relationships, struggles with fitting in and belonging, fractured relationships with family and friends, and problems assimilating into mainstream society. Who am I without the religious beliefs and community I spent so many years in? How do I help people understand what I've been through? These are the kinds of questions that survivors of religious trauma often ask themselves after they've left high-control religion because changing their beliefs often comes with relational consequences. Survivors often have to rebuild community and interests from scratch, which can feel painful and isolating. 

• It is also common to experience employment and financial issues after leaving high-control religion, especially if someone built their career inside of that community, such as a minister. 

How Therapy Can Help You Heal from Religious Trauma 

In therapy, your therapist can work with you to process your experiences with high-control religion and deconstruct what happened to you, and what it means. If you're familiar with the concept of religious trauma, you've probably already begun this deconstruction process. Yet healing from religious trauma is more than deconstructing; reconstructing your sense of self is just as important. Your therapist can work with you to:

• Find new meaning in life  

• Rebuild your own sense of morals and ethics 

• Learn how to say yes to things, not just no

• Navigate relationships with conservative family

• Explore dating, sex, and pleasure with confidence and peace

• Establish boundaries and privacy 

• Build healthy conflict resolution skills 

Religious Trauma Therapy in Chicago

Whether you were a true believer or were always struggling to prove your faithfulness, you didn't deserve the harm that religious trauma caused you. As you work through the process of deconstructing and reconstructing your sense of self, our team at ECC is here to offer support and compassion. We'll match you with the right therapist and therapy approach to help you find new meaning and build healthy connections with the world around you. 

ABOUT ECC: 

Empowered Connections Counseling is a practice of licensed therapists providing quality, multidisciplinary counseling for adults, children & teens, relationships, and families in Chicago and across Illinois. Whether by in-person session or via telehealth, we work with clients to find the therapist and treatment methods that best suit their needs. Connect meaningfully with your life by booking an appointment today.

What is Narrative Therapy? How to Re-Write the Story of You

We all have our own stories for how our identity formed. Some of these stories are full of beauty and can serve us really well. As a 2nd-generation Asian American, my family of origin’s immigration story speaks of resiliency and dedication in a way that brings me pride and motivation. The meaning we make behind these stories can bring inner awareness and help us grow.

Other stories can get in the way. We might have critical self-talk that has grown so powerful that we don’t think to second guess it (e.g. “I’m not articulate enough to have that conversation.”) Or we might have adopted a story that society gave us (e.g. “I’ll let that slide because people like me are accommodating.”) A story might even be so subtle that we don’t realize we are telling it to ourselves.

Narrative Therapy encourages us to consider how we might “re-author” these stories to have more ownership over our lives.

What is Narrative Therapy? 

Narrative therapy is an approach that helps people view themselves as separate from their problems and behaviors, rather than inherent to who they are as people. In narrative therapy, the therapist and client explore the stories behind identity-formation together; then they work to uncover the meaning behind those stories so that the client can decide whether they want to keep them, or write new ones.

Language is seen as an important tool in narrative therapy because it serves as one of the primary means by which all people express their experiences, explore their stories, assign meaning, and ultimately, create change.

While each narrative therapist may practice differently, there are some common underpinnings that I’ll explain below:

• Sociocultural context: All stories are told within their relational, systemic, political, and cultural contexts. Narrative Therapy distinguishes between “dominant stories” (stories which are told primarily by those in power) and “subjugated stories” (stories which are often sidelined.) Therapists may encourage clients to identify possible dominant stories in their narrative to deconstruct them together.

• Social construction: A foundational principle of narrative therapy is that our personal realities are organized and maintained through narratives. This means that we can create change by the simple (but difficult!) act of altering how we talk about something. Deconstructing language is an important part of narrative therapy.

• Role of the therapist: In narrative therapy, the therapist adopts something called the “not-knowing” stance. Since realities are socially constructed, only the client can have full knowledge of their experience. So, rather than diagnosing or advising, a narrative therapist asks questions that draw out the knowledge, strength, and experience that is already carried within the client’s existing narratives.

What Happens in a Narrative Therapy Session? 

From Narrative Therapy by Jill Freedman and Gene Combs: “I feel as though I have been sitting on a path that has become overgrown with briar and thorns, closing me in and torturously leaving me witness to my shrinking options. And Jill now stands around me and whacks down the brush so that I can see which path I want to take. She has opened up the options and so the opportunities become mine for the choosing.”

At its heart, Narrative Therapy is about questions. The therapist leans into their “not-knowing” stance to understand the client’s existing narrative and its meaning. They then shift the questions to co-create a client’s preferred new story.

How a client experiences a Narrative Therapy session depends on many factors, including the therapeutic relationship, but some key strategies of a Narrative Therapist are listed and explained below:

• Externalizing: This is probably the most defining tool of Narrative Therapy. Narrative Theory sees problems as separate from the individuals that experience them. Then, it uses language to help people distance themselves from those problems. For example, instead of saying “what kinds of things happen that lead to you becoming sad?”, a narrative therapist might ask “in what context is the sadness most likely to take over?”. This positions the sadness as a problem to be tackled, rather than an inevitable part of a person’s experience.

• Alternative story: A narrative therapist will work with a client to co-author a new story. The idea is to take power away from an existing narrative and place it back into the client. Narrative therapists use terms like “preferred realities” or “preferred stories” to emphasize the agency a client might have in writing their own narrative for themselves.

• Unique outcomes: It can be so difficult to re-write a story that we have told ourselves for our whole lives. A Narrative Therapist will attempt to open space for new stories by exploring exceptions to a dominant story. An important part of Narrative Therapy is celebrating and amplifying experiences which contradict existing narratives. 

The Benefits of Narrative Therapy

Narrative therapy can be beneficial for people experiencing a variety of presenting issues, from anxiety or depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, relationship struggles, family conflict, addiction, and more. 

Narrative therapy can offer several benefits: 

• It can provide greater awareness of how you came to be who you are today

• It can help you make sense and meaning of your experiences

• It can improve self-esteem

• It can empower you and increase the agency you feel to manage problems and conflict

Is Narrative Therapy Right for Me? 

Narrative therapy may be right for you if: 

• You are looking to build insight or awareness of yourself

• You want to shift your thoughts or beliefs about yourself

• You have negative self-talk

• For couples: if you both find yourselves experiencing the same event…but have vastly different interpretations of it

Narrative Therapy in Chicago

If the stories you've been telling yourself about your life are getting in the way, let's rewrite them together. Our therapists at ECC are here to help you deconstruct the stories you believe about yourself and write new stories that help you take ownership of your life in powerful ways. Fill out an intake form to get started today. 

ABOUT ECC: 

Empowered Connections Counseling is a practice of licensed therapists providing quality, multidisciplinary counseling for relationships, families, children & teens, and individuals in Chicago and across Illinois. Whether by in-person session or via telehealth, we work with clients to find the therapist and treatment methods that best suit their needs. Connect meaningfully with your life by booking an appointment today.