Journal December 2025 Release - Flipbook - Page 91
89
This paper explores how therapeutic relationships and narrative ways of working
guided me to counterstory the relational wounds I carried from childhood. In
supporting young men through their struggles, I found myself reengaging with
subjugated aspects of my own self-narrative. I focus in particular on my work with
Quentin, a young man referred to me for substance use counseling, and on the
use of Internalized Other Interviewing (Epston, 1993; Tomm, 2010; Tomm,
2025)—a practice that transformed our therapeutic relationship by allowing each
of us to confront and work through our own distinct anxieties and reservations.
Naming the feeling in the room: Awkwardness
One lasting impact of the bullying I faced as a child was a persistent and
frustrating sense of unease in conversations with young men. It was a deeply
embodied experience: my body would tense up; my words would stumble; my
accented English seemed heavier to me and, I worried, harder to understand. I
became overly self-conscious, so much so that it pulled me out of the moment
and away from the therapeutic work I needed to be doing. I was, of course,
frustrated with this development, but I was not sure how to address it. And since
avoidance was no longer an option, I did the only thing I could: I grounded myself
in the experience, accepting the burden. In doing so, I forced myself to remain
present in spite of the distracting bodily and psychological distress that infiltrated
my therapeutic conversations with my clients.
But one day, this experience, as uncomfortable as it was, became a surprisingly
useful element in therapy. One client in particular, Quentin, was especially
instrumental in helping me learn how to work with it. He shared that he, too, had
been experiencing something similar in our sessions, though for different reasons.
Chief among them was the emotional vulnerability talk therapy often demands,
something many boys and men in Western cultures are taught to fear and avoid.
One of the qualities of narrative therapy I value most is its collaborative spirit.
Narrative conversations are intentionally scaffolded through transparency and
purposeful relationship-building practices, including, at times, self-disclosure
(Freedman & Combs, 1996; Ribeiro et al., 2021; Schloemer, 2000). This proved to
be quite effective in my work with Quentin. Letting him in on my discomfort
proved to be a turning point, marking a shift in our therapeutic relationship.
Realizing we were no longer alone in this experience, we named it,
In the Company of Awkwardness: Counterstorying Toughness in Therapy
Journal of Contemporary Narrative Therapy, December 2025 Release, p. 88 -106.
www.journalnft.com
