Journal December 2025 Release - Flipbook - Page 41
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conversations; reading throught them felt as if he was there with us in the room
while we spoke. We saw discourses differently, exposing society’s compliance in
the validation of SS’s seductions; it was wonderful to see Joanna without her
psychiatric labels! Despite all our wins, SS demanded perfection. This sometimes
tripped her up, but now her resistance was relentless. No longer seeing Joanna as
conflated with mental illness made it possible for me to help her plan resistances
to its incessant invitations to return to its control and unseat the problem’s
convictions that she is bad or fat or worthless.
Questioning practices
I learned to craft questions in new ways. Instead of focusing on the history and
the details of the problems, I started looking for glimpses of her own resistance
against anorexia/bulimia/psychiatric illness. I learnt to formulate questions about
her hopes and dreams, her thoughts and passions, rather than to focus on all the
harm done by the dominant story. My main aim was to unseat anorexia/SS; to
push it off balance for her to create space for her own identity, voice, and choice.
This meant that I had to, at times, challenge convictions she held for more than
15 years about her personhood. SS became the new visible enemy, and we were
all on Joanna’s side, pitting our weight behind her.
Other therapeutic documents as counternarratives
The therapeutic documentation that we engaged in during our therapeutic
journey became written testaments to her recovery. Joanna started constructing
a Core Credo documenting her faith and the role it plays in her life.
My Core Credo
I believe.
There is only one God: The God of Love, God of All that Is and Is Not.
All Beings remain equally Loved parts of God.
On earth we experience Oneness in Love through also experiencing the opposite:
fear, darkness, and division.
An Apprenticeship in Extremis
Journal of Contemporary Narrative Therapy, December 2025 Release, p. 5-44.
www.journalnft.com
