We understand our lives largely in terms of stories in which we are the main character.

These may be stories about growing up,falling in love,finding a career path, and so on. They are stories of success and failure, of doing good and less than good.

Who would we be if we had not stories?

Thus, when an individual suffers from a problem in living, this problem is only sensible from a problem in living, this problem is only sensibel from within some kind of story.

We often suffer, for example, when we confront a loss, when we have been rejected, or when we feel we have no direction in life. But loss, rejection, and being rudderless in life are not "probelms out there in nature."

They can only take palce from within a story plot.

For you to"lose" something(a job, a lose friend, the love of others)means that you carry around a story of yourself as a major character, embarked on a course of progress or fulfillment(end-points of a good story), and have suffered a steback.

Narrative therapists have a keen appreciation of these ideas, and believe that through "re-storying"one's life,"problems"can be bransformed; new stories can be constructed ,and from these, new courses of action can be opened. For example, some people carry with them a story in which they were permanently damaged by abusive parents. They feel unable to move forward. However, if they can revisit the early years with an eye toward hwo they intrepidly survived--emerging as a hero_they may begin to see new and more optimistic options for action.

The challenging work of family therapists, Michael White and David Epston focues especially on the political potentials of restorying. Most people see their problems as residing"in their heads."

They feel personally dysfunctional. As white and Epston reason, such narratives obscure the possibility of understangding one's problems as issuing from the socio-political conditions. What we often take to be personal dysfunctions--such as depression--can  be re-storied so that we can see that we are confromting stressful economic or political conditions. When one understands that "it is not me ,but the system," a layer of self-doubt is removed and new courses of action are invited.For example, White helps the Aboriginal people of Australia see personal distress as produced by extenal social conditions of oppression. In these relationships with powerful white people, they have come to fell dis-empowered.

This story of struggle with an outside foce is strengthened by demonstrating the way s cultural forces are biased against them. By co-constructing stories of strength, individual distress is often reduced and political action invited.