Okay—I fucking love narrative therapy. I stumbled across it by accident, and when I started reading about it, I felt like someone had custom-built a mental health approach just for me. It changed my life. No exaggeration. And the best part? It’s now one of my favourite things to do. Narrative therapy is a different kind of therapy—it’s based on the idea that the stories we tell ourselves shape how we see the world, and how we see ourselves. Our past, our identity, our pain, our victories—all of it is wrapped in the narrative we carry.

This style of therapy was created by two Aussie legends, Michael White and David Epston. Shout out—Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! It’s been used to help people with everything from mental illness to relationship breakdowns, identity issues, anxiety, and more. But for me, the magic came in one part: re-authoring my story.

What the Hell Is Re-authoring?

Humans are storytellers—we make meaning by building stories out of our experiences. Those stories become the filter we see the world through. If your internal story is negative, self-blaming, hopeless, or filled with failure—you’ll live like it’s all true. But here’s the twist: you can rewrite that story. Re-authoring is the process of challenging those old, destructive narratives and replacing them with new ones—ones that reflect your strength, your growth, and your hope. That doesn’t mean lying to yourself. It means looking at your life from a new angle. It means choosing to focus on what you’ve survived, what you’ve learned, and what you’re building—instead of what broke you.

What Does That Look Like?

Here’s how it worked for me. At first, I was using writing as a place to vent—really raw, really emotional. I wrote out everything I felt—rage, revenge fantasies, you name it. And yeah, it was intense. But here’s the surprising bit: as I kept writing, my nightmares started to fade. The pain that used to sit just behind my eyes… softened. Then one day, during a session, I realised I hadn’t had a nightmare in weeks. That was the moment. The narrative was shifting. My brain was beginning to believe a new version of reality—one where I wasn’t constantly haunted or stuck. I had rewritten my internal story from chaos into control. From being stuck in the past to creating something new.