Re-Authoring Spiritual Narratives: God in Persons' Relational Identity Stories

In important ways, the shift toward social constructionist therapies in marriage and family therapy is opening the door to include spiritual and religious issues in therapy. This article explores the benefits of using narrative therapy with religious and/or spiritual persons with regard to their personal relationship with God. A rationale is given for personal identity stories to be recast as relational identity stories. Relationships are seen as key factors in the constitution and perpetuation of one's identity story. Re-authoring spiritual narratives draws on a person's relationship with God and how this relationship influences the relational identity story of the person. The practices of externalizing conversations, deconstruction, exploring unique outcomes, re-authoring, and re-membering are explained as used in working with a person's relational identity stories and relationship with God. Examples of questions are given for each practice. Throughout the discussion, an account of a woman the first author worked with in therapy is given for illustration of these ideas.