Tag: narrative therapy

Writing my story and sharing it with anyone feels a bit risky and involves a certain amount of bravery. I imagine others feel the same about sharing a narrative hitherto private. Life Stories Diary seems like the perfect place to take this risk. The private Self-Paced Life Stories Course within...

I love to participate in online eating disorder surveys, especially those inviting ‘lived experience’ to be shared. I haven’t always felt this way about sharing my illness story, so what has changed? Firstly, I have been with narrative mentor, Dr June Alexander, as a client for more than three years...

Six months after developing anorexia nervosa, at age 11, I received a diary as a Christmas gift. The diary and I  became inseparable. Nobody told me to write or gave guidance in what to write. I just did. More than 60 years later, my diaries fill a bookcase. These books...

Writing with the guidance of a writing mentor can assist the healing process by enabling self-discoveries. Tanya Motiani, who has severe anorexia nervosa, shares how writing is helping her to discover ‘potential for contentment’: Since starting to work with a writing mentor two years ago, I have made discoveries about myself,...

Depending on where we are on our eating disorder (ED) recovery journey, we will respond differently to the poems or stories that we read. When our ED is loud and raging, we will be drawn to, and love, everything that paints ED as the powerful one. Such is the magnetism...

Speaking to Dr Daniela Araujo about what to write in this blog post, I asked what she thought was special about the exchange of poems that have flown back and forth around the world between Chile, Brazil, and now Australia. The conversation went something like the following. Dani paused for...

The fairy tale Luna features an interplay of autobiography and fiction. The use of a narrator is paramount in the tale’s ability to act therapeutically for the author and the reader. The main message embedded in this tale is that grief can be dispelled and life can become more readily accepted...

These women blew me away. The (mainly) women in the inpatient psychotherapy groups for clients recovering from anorexia that I led for several years were strong and fierce, determined, with visions and dreams. After all – anyone who can consistently deprive themselves of the sustenance their body is calling for,...

DE: What is Anorexia calling out to you at the moment, Helen? What is it saying to you as you struggle towards the Anti-Anorexic side? What is it calling out to you? HW: Punish yourself! Starve yourself! Writing was both a survival tool and a recovery tool during my incarceration...