This post explores treatment via narrative exposure therapy, probing how this psychotherapy can benefit people who are experiencing PTSD and other trauma disorders before revealing personal insight on trauma recovery.

Trauma is a mighty force that occurs due to numerous reasons. It pauses for no person and does not discriminate against race, gender, or other factors. However, trauma remains in the systems of some people for longer than others, as not everyone exposed to trauma develops trauma disorders. For those who do, narrative exposure therapy (NET) might aid recovery. 

A small percentage of trauma survivors will go on to experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which can leave people more susceptible to flashbacks, nightmares, detachment, anhedonia, and other invasive symptoms. Narrative exposure therapy is one treatment for trauma disorders that can help people regain control of their lives by piecing their life narratives back together. 

What Is Narrative Exposure Therapy? 

The American Psychological Association (APA) defines narrative exposure therapy as a treatment that can help individuals establish a coherent life narrative that allows them to contextualize their traumatic experiences. This treatment is often used in group therapy settings and as treatment for refugees, as it is a particularly effective option for people who have suffered multiple or complex traumas. 

Small groups of people typically receive between 4–10 sessions to piece together the fragmented narration of each person’s life into a coherent form. This is because when individuals frame their lives around their trauma, their mental state, experiences, and perceptions all become influenced by this mindset. Therefore, it is the goal of the therapy to construct a life that incorporates the trauma but is not defined by it. 

When trauma survivors are forced to put their lives in chronological order, they add context to their experiences. I’ve written before about the profound effect trauma has on an individual when covering continuous identity cognitive therapy for people with trauma disorders. Trauma can often leave people feeling entirely unmoored, which can lend the sense that one’s life has been a series of scattered and unrelated events that happened to oneself rather than linear events, experiences, and choices. Narrative could be the key to putting things back together.

Can Narrative Exposure Therapy Really Repair Trauma Wounds?

To some, it might sound unbelievable that narrative could repair trauma. However, the act of piecing together one’s narrative allows for a coherent life story to unfold — rather than a fragmented series of events and scars. Patients are asked to describe their emotions, thoughts, sensory responses, and other reactions under the careful protection of therapy. The end goal is that the patient walks away with a completed documentation of their life.  

Staying present is achieved by utilizing permanent reminders that the emotions and physical responses that occur in response to memories are linked to episodic facts (such as time and place) but are then reprocessed and unified with meaning. 

The APA on narrative exposure therapy

Narrative exposure therapy aims at giving patients the personal freedom to explore the entirety of their past. Unfortunately, traumatized people are more likely to become re-traumatized. Since this treatment often is used in groups of people who have experienced trauma due to social, political, or cultural forces, they have likely been dealt many hardships in life. However, through narrative exposure therapy individuals can discuss, dissect, and reconstruct their past in a full representation rather than hone in on a particular episode. 

Feeling Re-Traumatized on Event Anniversaries

Narrative exposure therapy aims to help trauma survivors heal and rebuild, but that doesn’t mean they won’t have setbacks. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has some tips for coping with traumatic events, as traumatic anniversaries can re-trigger distressing thoughts and reactions.

Reflecting on past trauma can cause a wide range of responses, including feeling frightened, having difficulty concentrating, and being preoccupied with the event that transpired. Excessive worrying, sudden anger, uncontrolled crying, and intrusive thoughts about the past event could all occur on dates of past trauma and the time surrounding them.

To better cope during these times, it’s extremely important to not self-medicate with drugs or alcohol. Instead, try to spend time with friends or family or focus on calming activities and hobbies, such as exercise, mindfulness, or journaling. Setting realistic goals for the future can help you get through each day while keeping in mind that there is a place beyond the pain.

How Else Can You Heal from Trauma Disorders? (Personal Insight)

Narrative exposure therapy is one hopeful way to overcome trauma. In my experience, it accomplishes something essential for trauma healing, which is facing what happened. I believe if you don’t understand what happened to you, you can’t fully overcome it. Now this doesn’t mean understanding why something happened but rather accepting your feelings and accepting the loss while making a plan to build a future. (This can be done one day at a time.)

I’m not someone who is completely separated from what happened to me. I’m not sure if these people exist. Though I think that some have been traumatized, but like the shedding of skin cells, they’re able to detach what happened to them and keep going without dwelling on it. They don’t make their trauma a part of their personality, because unlike me, they didn’t get stuck in what happened. 

But for many people with trauma disorders, myself included, we simply wish to move past the point of stasis — the moments when our lives were cracked open — and learn to integrate our trauma into our new identities without letting them take control. There are things I will never look at the same way — smells, voices, places, dates, sounds, and even objects. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t learned to move forward. 

To get unstuck, you need to process what happened. Piecing together a linear narrative of your life in a controlled environment, such as through narrative exposure therapy, is an excellent way to do this. Once you face the truth of your past and realize you can look it in the eye, you will likely discover the courage, strength, and fortitude to build a future.

I also recommend turning to literature, film, art, and community to recognize your experience in others. Sometimes nothing is more cleansing than to hear someone put a mutual experience into words. Trauma disrupts one’s sense of time and self. It can cause you to develop a trauma disorder that derails your life narrative. But there is hope for getting back on track and tools at your disposal for piecing together a full future. 

Continued Reading: Trapped by Trauma: Identity, Stagnation & Moving Forward