Michael White

Two islands in a boat.

I was in Australia listening to Michael White teach.

Michael White, together with David Epstein, produced narrative therapy, what we call narrative therapy.

And he was talking about rites of passage.

And he used the phrase migration of identity as... kind of the way he spoke about when people come to see a counsellor, they're experiencing something which is not okay for them and they're desiring to be somewhere else.

It's quite warm and optimistic.

Yeah.

But our work brings us, Michael White uses this phrase disillusioned, that most of us are walking around the world illusioned that things are like this.

How do I make it last?" I love this question because it's honest about something the wellness world or even the therapy world doesn't really like to admit: insights fade, and feeling connected for a weekend doesn't rewrite an entire lifetime.

In narrative therapy, Michael White and David Epston wrote about reauthoring.

The stories we live inside aren't fixed, but a new story needs to be lived, witnessed, and repeated before it can hold.

Told once on your own, it's very easily swallowed back up by the old story that we had.

I mean, I had read Najah's work early, but it didn't ring a bell for me until I read an article that was published in 2014. by Carlson and Haire in a narrative therapy journal.

I've been influenced a lot by Michael White in narrative therapy.

And they talk, it's something like, it's like something like invitations to accountability in couple therapy.

I've got the title along there, but that's the approximate idea.

But the mother was able to conduct.

And then the two of them became a team.

And this is kind of a Michael White intervention, right? A team standing up to criticism.

And wherever they saw criticism, they invited each other to name it, not in a blaming way, but in a kind of we're a team that's noting this when it's happening.