Narrative Arts Therapy

What is Narrative Arts Therapy?

Healing Through the Narrative Arts: The Science Behind Our Stories

Narrative Arts Therapy (NAT) is based on a simple but profound truth: we are wired for storytelling. From the earliest days of human existence, we have used stories and art-making to make sense of the world, to connect, to survive. Stories were created, told, changed and lived.

NAT draws from this ancient tradition. It is a creative, scientific approach to healing that helps people reframe their personal narratives. Whether through writing, visual arts, movement, or symbolic expression, NAT works with the brain’s natural storytelling structure to transform painful narratives into meaningful ones, fear-based narratives into resilient ones, transforming shame into self care.

Why Stories Heal: The Brain’s Blueprint for Narrative

Our emotions – like fear, attachment, disgust or joy – are not random. They evolved as part of a biological blueprint designed to help us survive, navigate life. Long before we had written language, our ancestors relied on emotions to tell them what was safe, what was dangerous, and what mattered most. They created stories from these emotions. Over time, their emotional patterns became the foundation for survival, navigating life's paths, creating stories by connecting things.

Scientists, like George Ellis and Mark Solms (2020) are now able to explain to us why this is; our brains and its incredible capacity for plasticity, have at least nine primary emotional systems (Ellis and Solms 2020). Together, they are responsible for:

Seeking

Disgust

Rage

Fear

Lust

Panic

Care

Play

These emotions are the foundations for all our stories - personal and otherwise. Looking at the narrative arts from this perspective, NAT engages this neural storytelling (emotional) framework as a structure for exploring healing narratives. For example:

• It employs the seeking system to map out a meaningful personal narrative.
• People often turn the disgust they feel for their abusers into shame and self-disgust. Narrative arts therapy employs other emotional systems, such as care and play, to redirect these feelings, to transform these stories into value-based stories of self-love, compassion and personal power.

By engaging with narrative in a structured and creative way, the narrative arts therapy process helps individuals find ways to rewire old emotional patterns and develop more empowering narratives – ones that align with who they truly are.

How NAT Works

NAT is not about ignoring pain or replacing difficult emotions with positivity. Instead, it is about externalising and reshaping those emotions in a way that brings clarity and a sense of agency. This happens through:

• Storytelling & Writing – Externalizing emotions through words, allowing us to step back and reframe our experiences.
• Visual Art & Symbolism – Expressing feelings that may be too complex for language, offering new perspectives.
• Movement & Embodied Storytelling – Releasing trauma and reconnecting with the body’s wisdom.
• Witnessing & Community Sharing – Being heard and seen, which rewires the brain’s relational pathways and fosters healing.

Each of these methods taps into the deep neural structures that process our human experience, helping us move from pain to integration, from fragmentation to wholeness.

Rewriting Our Stories, Rewiring Our Minds

Healing through the narrative arts is about personal expression – about restructuring the way we think, feel, and relate to the world. By working with our natural capacity for storytelling, NAT provides a framework where healing is not only possible but inevitable.

Key Texts

• Bolton, G. (2005). Reflective Practice: Writing and Professional Development. SAGE Publications.

• Caldwell, C., & Johnson, M. (2012). Body Stories: A Guide to Experiential Anatomy. Contact Editions.

• Cozolino, L. (2014). The Neuroscience of Human Relationships: Attachment and the Developing Social Brain. W. W. Norton & Company.

• Gone, J. P. (2013). "Redressing First Nations Historical Trauma: Theorizing Mechanisms for Indigenous Culture as Mental Health Treatment." Transcultural Psychiatry, 50(5), 683-706.

• Iseke, J. (2013). "Indigenous Storytelling as Research." International Review of Qualitative Research, 6(4), 559-577.

• Levine, S. K. (2018). The Principles and Practice of Expressive Arts Therapy: Toward a Therapeutic Aesthetics. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

• Magsamen, S., & Ross, I. (2023). Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us. Random House.

• Malchiodi, C. A. (2007). The Art Therapy Sourcebook. McGraw-Hill.

• McNiff, S. (1992). Art as Medicine: Creating a Therapy of the Imagination. Shambhala Publications.

• Payne, M. (2006). Narrative Therapy: An Introduction for Counsellors. SAGE Publications.

• Siegel, D. J. (2012). The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are. Guilford Press.

• White, M., & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends. W. W. Norton & Company.

  Winberg, Marlene. Stories of War and Restitution: Curating the Narratives of !Xun Storyteller, Kapilolo Mahongo (1954-2018). PhD diss., University of Cape Town, 2021.