Mental Health Academy’s online narrative therapy training begins with the modality’s foundations, assumptions and core conversational practices. You can then extend your learning through video case studies involving grief, adolescents, couples, substance use, and major life transitions.
Designed for counsellors, psychologists, psychotherapists, social workers, and other mental and allied health practitioners, these self-paced courses can help you explore narrative practice within the context of your existing qualifications, professional role, and scope of practice.
Jump to section
- What is narrative therapy?
- What can narrative therapy training help practitioners develop?
- Where can narrative approaches be applied?
- What does the evidence say?
- A recommended narrative therapy learning pathway
- What should you look for in narrative therapy training?
- Why learn with Mental Health Academy
- Related narrative therapy reading
- Frequently asked questions
- Start your narrative therapy learning pathway
- References
What is narrative therapy?
Narrative therapy is a collaborative, non-blaming approach to counselling and psychotherapy that considers how people organise and give meaning to their experiences through stories.
Rather than treating the person as the problem, narrative practitioners seek to separate people from the difficulties affecting their lives. This can create space to examine the problem’s influence, identify responses that may have been overlooked and develop richer accounts of the person’s skills, commitments, values, and preferred ways of living.
Developed principally through the work of Michael White and David Epston, narrative therapy is informed by social constructionist and poststructuralist ideas. It pays particular attention to language, meaning, identity, culture, relationships, and the operation of power.
Narrative practice is not simply positive reframing. Re-authoring conversations are intended to identify experiences and actions that support preferred identities – and to help those preferred stories become more fully described, witnessed, and lived.
For a more detailed examination of the modality, read Rethinking Narrative Therapy.
What can narrative therapy training help practitioners develop?
Narrative therapy is better understood as an ethical position and a body of conversational practices than as a rigid, step-by-step protocol. Quality training should therefore develop both conceptual understanding and practical judgment.
| Learning level | Competencies to develop |
| Foundational understanding | The story metaphor; social construction of meaning; person–problem separation; the collaborative and de-centred practitioner position |
| Core conversational skills | Externalising conversations; mapping the effects of a problem; identifying responses, exceptions and unique outcomes; eliciting values and intentions |
| Re-authoring practice | Developing preferred stories across time; connecting actions with identity conclusions; strengthening accounts of agency, knowledge, and capability |
| Relational and contextual practice | Attending to family, community, culture, social expectations, and structural power; avoiding an expert position over the client’s lived experience |
| Specialised practices | Therapeutic documentation; re-membering conversations; outsider-witness practices; double listening; and work with couples, families, or groups |
| Reflective practice | Recognising when narrative methods fit the client’s needs, when another approach is indicated, and when consultation or further training is required |
A practitioner should be able to explain not only what an externalising question is, but also why it is being asked, how it may affect the therapeutic relationship, and whether the wording respects the client’s preferred description of the problem.
Where can narrative approaches be applied?
Narrative practices have been used with individuals, couples, families, groups, and communities. Their relevance depends on the client, context, practitioner competence, and purpose of the work.
Grief and continuing bonds
Narrative approaches to grief may explore the continuing significance of an important relationship rather than assuming that healthy grieving always requires detachment or “moving on”.
Re-membering and therapeutic storytelling can help practitioners invite fuller accounts of the deceased person’s contribution, the values carried forward, and the ways a relationship continues to influence the client’s life.
Identity, shame, and problem-saturated stories
Clients may describe difficulties through global identity conclusions such as “I am weak”, “I am broken”, or “I always fail”.
Narrative practice does not merely replace these statements with positive ones. It investigates how a conclusion became dominant, which experiences support or contradict it, what cultural messages sustain it, and what the client’s responses reveal about their values, abilities, and intentions.
Related reading:
- Working with Shame: Interventions for Deep Emotional Healing
- Addressing Feelings of Inadequacy in Clinical Practice
Adolescents and families
Narrative and solution-focused practices may help young people describe problems without reducing their identity to a symptom, behaviour, or label.
This work must still account for development, family systems, culture, safeguarding, consent, and the practitioner’s responsibilities when risk is present. A collaborative stance does not remove the need for appropriate assessment or protective action.
Couples and relationships
In couple work, externalising conversations may help partners examine the influence of conflict, defensiveness, or mistrust without designating one person as the problem.
The practitioner must remain alert to power imbalances, coercion, abuse, and incompatible agendas. Externalising “the conflict” must never obscure one person’s responsibility for harmful behaviour.
Substance use and life transitions
Narrative questions can explore how substance use or a problem story has influenced a person’s identity and relationships, while also bringing forward existing commitments, acts of resistance, recovery knowledge, and preferred directions.
Narrative practice may be integrated with other assessment, harm-reduction, relapse-prevention, or multidisciplinary approaches where clinically indicated.
Culture, community and social context
Narrative therapy has a strong tradition of examining how identity is shaped by social and cultural narratives. This can support conversations about colonisation, racism, gender, class, sexuality, disability, and other forms of power or marginalisation.
However, using narrative terminology does not itself make practice culturally safe. Practitioners need cultural humility, local knowledge, appropriate consultation, and a willingness to let clients and communities define what safety and respect mean in their context.
Read Therapies for First Nations Australians: Post-modern Approaches for further practitioner discussion.
What does the evidence say?
Narrative therapy has been studied across a range of populations and presenting issues, but it has a smaller and less standardised research base than some manualised therapies.
A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis reported a substantial reduction in depressive symptoms among adults with somatic disorders. The authors nevertheless rated the evidence as low quality and identified limited geographical diversity and a need for further research.
This illustrates an important distinction: promising findings in a particular population do not establish that narrative therapy is universally effective or superior to established alternatives.
Practitioners should integrate:
- The best available research
- Individual client needs and preferences
- Clinical expertise
- Cultural and relational context
- Risk and diagnostic assessment where required
- Relevant professional standards and scope-of-practice requirements
Narrative training should complement—not replace—competence in ethics, case formulation, risk management, supervision, and the management of complex or acute presentations.
A recommended narrative therapy learning pathway
Step 1: Build a sound conceptual foundation
Narrative Therapy: The Basics
Format: Text
Duration: 3 hours
Examine the assumptions, concepts, and techniques underpinning narrative therapy, including the movement from problem-saturated accounts towards alternative and preferred narratives.
This is the recommended starting point for practitioners who are new to the modality or want to consolidate previously encountered concepts.
Step 2: Observe narrative conversations in practice
Reading about externalising and re-authoring is different from observing how a practitioner listens, chooses language, follows a client’s response, and develops a conversation over time.
Narrative Therapy in the Face of Grief
Format: Video (Case study)
Duration: 1 hour
Observe a narrative approach with a client experiencing several recent bereavements, including close attention to language, emotion, and emerging preferred meanings.
Creating Sustaining Counselling Conversations in the Face of Grief
Format: Video (Case Study)
Duration: 1 hour
Explore re-membering practices and the continuing story of relationship in work with bereavement.
Solution-Focused Narrative Therapy with an Adolescent
Format: Video (Case Study)
Duration: 1 hour
Observe an integrated narrative and solution-focused orientation with an adolescent experiencing family pressure, school difficulties, and a problem-saturated account of her circumstances.
A Narrative Approach to Working with Sobriety and Life Transitions
Format: Video (Case Study)
Duration: 1 hour
Examine how a practitioner helps a client develop a preferred account of worthiness and identity during a significant recovery and life transition.
Step 3: Study narrative work across several sessions
Collection: Therapies In-Action: Narrative Practice with Couples
Format: Video (4-Part Collection)
Duration: 8 hours
Follow narrative work with two couples across four extended sessions. The collection demonstrates how the practitioner hosts difficult conversations, attends to patterns of conflict, and supports partners to understand one another’s experiences without positioning himself as the expert on their lives.
The extended format provides an opportunity to observe the pace and development of narrative conversations—not only isolated examples of particular questions.
What should you look for in narrative therapy training?
Not all courses using the terms “story”, “reframing”, or “strengths-based” offer rigorous narrative therapy education.
Before selecting training, consider whether it:
- Explains the theoretical foundations. Learners should understand how social constructionism, poststructuralism, language, identity, and power shape narrative practice.
- Demonstrates the practitioner position. Good training attends to collaboration, transparency, curiosity, and the risks of imposing professional interpretations.
- Goes beyond scripted questions. Techniques should be linked to therapeutic purpose, client response, context, and ethics.
- Includes realistic practice examples. Extended demonstrations can reveal pacing, uncertainty, repair, and the way one question develops from a client’s previous response.
- Addresses culture and power. Social and cultural context should be integral rather than added as an optional final module.
- States its limitations. Short CPD courses can strengthen knowledge and support skill development, but they do not replace professional qualifications, supervised practice, or advanced specialist training.
- Encourages reflection and supervision. Practitioners need opportunities to examine their language, assumptions, influence, and responsiveness to feedback.
Why learn with Mental Health Academy?
Mental Health Academy gives mental and allied health practitioners flexible access to a broad online professional development library.
As an MHA member, you can:
- Access 650+ courses across hundreds of mental health topics
- Learn from more than 250 global practitioners, researchers, educators, and authors
- Choose from text-based and video-based learning
- Study online and on-demand
- Complete assessments and download certificates
- Maintain your CPD records through the MHA learning platform
- Extend your narrative therapy learning with courses in grief, relationships, diversity, trauma, addiction, and work with children and adolescents
Practitioners remain responsible for confirming whether a particular activity meets the requirements of their registration board, professional association, or employer.
Related narrative therapy reading
Rethinking Narrative Therapy
A current overview of meaning-making, externalisation, re-authoring, power, culture, and the collaborative therapeutic relationship.
Therapies for First Nations Australians: Post-modern Approaches
Examines narrative and solution-focused approaches in relation to story, language, culture, and work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clients.
Working with Shame: Interventions for Deep Emotional Healing
Considers narrative therapy alongside compassion-focused, mindfulness, attachment-based, and cognitive approaches to shame.
Addressing Feelings of Inadequacy in Clinical Practice
Explores re-authoring, externalising, therapeutic letter-writing, and other approaches to problem-saturated identity conclusions.
Frequently asked questions
What is narrative therapy training?
Narrative therapy training teaches the theoretical position and conversational practices used to help clients examine problem-saturated stories and develop richer preferred accounts of their lives. Training may cover externalising, re-authoring, unique outcomes, therapeutic documentation, re-membering, and contextual understandings of identity.
Who is narrative therapy training suitable for?
It is most relevant to qualified or training counsellors, psychologists, psychotherapists, social workers, mental health nurses, community workers, and other professionals who use therapeutic conversations within their role. Practitioners should apply the material within their qualifications, competence, and scope of practice.
Can narrative therapy be learned online?
Foundational concepts and applied examples can be studied effectively online, particularly when courses include detailed case demonstrations. Developing advanced competence usually also requires practice, feedback, reflective supervision, and more extensive training.
Is narrative therapy evidence-based?
Narrative therapy has a developing evidence base, with positive findings reported in some populations and presenting issues. The research remains heterogeneous and less extensive than that supporting some standardised therapies, so claims should be specific and appropriately qualified.
What skills are used in narrative therapy?
Common skills include externalising problems, mapping their effects, double listening, identifying unique outcomes, eliciting values and intentions, developing preferred stories, re-membering, therapeutic letter-writing, and attending to cultural and social narratives.
Is narrative therapy the same as positive reframing?
No. Narrative therapy does not simply replace a negative thought with a positive interpretation. It investigates how meanings and identity conclusions are produced, whose ideas support them, what experiences have been excluded, and how preferred stories can become more richly described and enacted.
Will completing an MHA course qualify me as a narrative therapist?
No. MHA courses provide continuing professional education and do not confer a professional qualification or specialist registration as a narrative therapist. Practitioners seeking advanced competence should consider supervised practice and appropriately rigorous specialist training.
Can I count narrative therapy courses towards CPD?
Counsellors, psychotherapists, psychologists, social workers, community workers, and other mental health professionals can accrue CPD hours/OPD points by completing MHA courses. As requirements differ between professions, associations, and employers, and may change over time, each practitioner should verify the activity against their own current obligations.
Start your narrative therapy learning pathway
Build a clear foundation, observe experienced practitioners, and explore how narrative ideas can be applied across different client presentations and practice contexts.
MHA members receive online access to narrative therapy courses alongside hundreds of additional programs covering therapeutic approaches, clinical skills, mental health conditions, relationships, trauma, diversity, and practitioner wellbeing.
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References
- Australian Psychological Society. (2026, February 19). The tales we tell ourselves: Exploring narrative therapy.
- Devence-Taliaferro, J., Casstevens, W. J., & DeCuir-Gunby, J. T. (2013). Working with African American clients using narrative therapy. The International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work, 1, 34–45.
- Haskins, N. H., Harris, J. A., Parker, J., Nambiar, A., & Chin, P. (2023). Teaching anti-racist counseling theories: Black liberation narrative therapy. Counselor Education and Supervision, 62(4), 355–367.
- Hu, G., Han, B., Gains, H., & Jia, Y. (2024). Effectiveness of narrative therapy for depressive symptoms in adults with somatic disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis. International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology, 24, 100520. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijchp.2024.100520
- Morgan, A. (2000). What is narrative therapy? An easy-to-read introduction. Dulwich Centre Publications.
- White, M., & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. W. W. Norton.