#gene combs

Through externalizing conversations we put into practice the idea that people and problems are separate. Externalization allows narrative therapists a space in which they can work to understand problems without seeing people themselves as problematic or pathological. As problems are externalized, we begin to inhabit a world where, rather than being problematic in and of themselves, people have relationships with problems. When told in the context of an externalizing conversation, people’s stories almost always become less blame- and guilt-ridden, and less restrictive.

We once saw a young heterosexual couple. The man told us that anxiety attacks were waking him in the middle of the night as if someone were holding a gun to his head. When we asked him what he would name the problem, he called it “the thief” because it was trying to steal his sleep. His partner, who had been scornful of the fear and difficulty sleeping until this point, could easily relate to the terror of an armed burglary in the dark of night. She began to appreciate her partner’s bravery in facing it alone. She suggested that he wake her so that she could help him face the thief. His poetic and compelling name for the problem helped her sign on for a project of helping him stand up to it, and they were soon telling stories of how they worked together to ward off the thief.

Once the problem was named in this way and the couple was working together, they began to have conversations about what was figuratively holding a gun to the man’s head. He spoke of the pressure he was under to falsify research data. To be a good member of the research team he felt pulled to go along with the group. He feared the consequences for his job if he did not. But if he did, it was at the cost of his integrity. He was caught between discourses of loyalty, success and personhood. Once these discourses were exposed the couple could decide together how the man could respond. The narrative practice of externalizing conversations created a context in which the young couple could experience themselves as heroes in a story of standing up to injustice. This is a radically different outcome than anything that might emerge from therapy that was focused on helping the man learn to cope with a (pathological) anxiety disorder that was located in his internal physiology.

When we ask externalizing questions about contextual influences on the problem, we can expose the effects of norm-based discourses: What “feeds” the problem? What “starves” it? Who benefits from it? In what settings might the problematic attitude be useful? What groups would proudly advocate for the problem? What organizations would definitely be opposed to it and its intentions? Questions such as these invite people to consider how the entire context of their lives influences the problem and vice versa. For example, when men who have acted abusively begin to consider how they were recruited into ways of thinking and acting that support violence they can often step back from those discourses enough to begin to look at the effects of the violence both in their own lives and in the lives of those they have abused. From this position they can begin to glimpse other possibilities that would have preferred effects.