Welcome to My World of Narrative Coaching

My world of narrative coaching: a different way of Being and Seeing, so you can ‘drop the disorder’!

Part 1 © 2022 Centre for Couples, Narrative Coaching & Posttraumatic Stress, London © Jamal Alladin

Welcome to my world of narrative coaching. Part 1 © 2022 Centre for Couples, Narrative Coaching & Posttraumatic Stress, London © Jamal Alladin 2022

Time to polish your mirror, not buy a new one

Narrative coaching helps in a highly respectful way by assisting and supporting clients to change their lives, or to realise their ambitions, fulfil their potential, to be happier, less stressed, more peaceful, more sociable, or more fun.

Flexibility is the key: learning to bend so that you do not break

You may feel damaged and even destroyed by what has happened to you. However, I do not see you as deficient or as a diagnosis or as weak. If you feel broken, then you probably need to polish that mirror! The tree that breaks in the storm is the tree that does not know how to bend. Flexibility is the key whether for your well-being or for keeping fit. Your muscles know this!

I seek to empower, or if you prefer, re-empower you. I seek to bring out the best in you, which is already in you, but which may have been obscured by the pills and pain in your life. Together, in genuine partnership, we seek to bring out your resilience (I cannot give it to you, they are not pills and you are not necessarily medically ill when you feel sick). There are no tools in my toolkit. In fact I have no toolkit! There is a place for metaphors, but I confess I dislike mechanical metaphors for something so creative and beautiful as a human being. Besides not having a toolkit, I travel light and when we travel light the journey is more fun and does not weigh you down.  So to use a metaphor, come and learn how being a light-weight, you can punch above your weight.

Re-frame, re-cognise, re-discover and get a better handle on you

In Narrative Coaching we help you to re-frame and re-cognise the resilient you. We assist you to bring out the greatness in you. You will likely never look the same in your mirror again! It is time for re-building you... time for the latest upgrade. You are not a piece of cheap glass, but a rare and unique diamond that might only need a bit of polishing for you to shine. I have got the polish so let’s get to work! As I tell my clients…..go and dazzle the world with your brilliance…..every diamond has brilliance….together we will find it. When you go back to the past you are like a butterfly who behaves like a caterpillar. I teach my clients to tap their hand with a gentle ‘don’t go there!' Try it and try it a few times and watch the change and the difference in your thoughts, your feelings and your behaviour. Do you think this sounds like cognitive behaviour therapy?  I do not care much what it is called…...if it fits and works for you…like the rose, you will smell as sweet.  This change I call transformation, but if you prefer it is the magic that happens when two people…..me and thee..…work together. You have nothing to prove to me and I have no need to show you how great my approach is. Try it and decide for yourself.

Is the past troubling you?  Leave the thorns of the past alone and they will also leave you alone. Remember, when you smile at the mirror it responds in kind. Is this not helpful for me to say? How could you know that, when you have not tried what I have just suggested?

I am not interested in pandering to the untrue stories about yourself that you have been told and told yourself and believed as if it was the truth.  I do not have to persuade you that you are a butterfly. I merely invite you to flap your wings and then you will take off….and when we get to the cliff’s edge (I know it is frightening!) you will not fall, if you remember you are a butterfly and like Dumbo…..you will fly and be safe, but if you believe in the ‘untrue’ story of yourself and keep going back to the past, then you will fall….. so as British Airways is wont to say…"come fly, come fly with me!"

Note that I have not once asked you to forget your past. I said ‘don’t go there’ and I am being directive.  In other words, there are some rooms in the mansion that is you (your mind if you prefer) that is best left alone.

If you prefer person-centred therapy and want me to merely reflect back the ‘untrue’ stories you keep telling yourself…..sorry I am not going to empathise with you, and collude that you are  still the caterpillar that you were and still pretending to be…… then narrative coaching is not for you. I am not suggesting that you are telling ‘lies’ about yourself deliberately. I am suggesting that the ‘lies’ you believe about yourself came from others around you…..the social mirror and you swallowed it: hook, line and sinker! And when you keep repeating yourself like a broken record and want me to validate and affirm you….. I am not going there…..quite simply I am not going to make you feel good by ‘lying’ with you, and to you.

Lay down your arms and surrender to yourself!

We will not focus on your (mental) symptoms, though, I would listen patiently to what you have to say.  However, I am quite frankly, not much interested in the smoke (screens) in your life which to put it bluntly may be nothing more than a lot of hot air and a by-product of your problems; the consequence and not the cause of your issues.  Do you want long term psychotherapy with months and months of struggle? Why not lay down your arms and surrender to yourself?   I can show you how….in partnership.  We are interested in the out of control burning fires, that may be scaring you, and scarring you, for life, do you not agree? See what I mean? If you do, then we are already on the same wavelength!

No need to wait for recovery when you embark on self-discovery.

There is a better and different way. I want to support you and help you wake up to your better self. I do not know better than you. I am not the expert on you, and so we aim to partner you on your journey of self-discovery. There is no need for recovery. You are not a broken down car and we are not the AA or RAC rescue service!

You already know what is not quite ‘right’ with your life. Are you merely existing or living life more fully?  We want to be invited to come on board with you, by you, and share your journey and respectfully show you that there is more than one road you can travel and cross and not feel stuck at the cross-roads of life.  Take a look at the mirror that I will invite you to look at, is it a landscape or a portrait? Portrait is too closely focused on self. Landscape takes the bigger picture into account.  Reflect on what we have said.

Letting go of the medicalised view of social life and the problems of living

Can you now see that Narrative Coaching is a different way of Being and Seeing? It is not a way of replacing one creaking medical model (pills for social ills?!) with another dysfunctional psychological model (the kind of psychotherapy that is based on deficits, disorders). Many psychological models are still wedded to the outdated medical model of the establishment and some of the questionable diagnoses required by some insurance companies who will not pay if you do not comply with the medicalised approach to life. Time to change that and drop the disordered view of social life and adopt a more accurate and satisfying view of well-being.

Posted on 21st April, 2022