Narrative Medicine Therapy for Addiction in South Houston

When you start looking for drug or alcohol addiction treatment, you get exposure to a wide range of therapy types and treatment methods. Some of these prove effective through evidence success. Others suit holistic wellness as part of a healthy activities program. Still others, like narrative medicine therapy, help you re-evaluate, rethink and reshape your life for a better future.

How is Narrative Medicine Therapy Used in Addiction Treatment?

Clinician talking to patient about narrative medicine therapy

Narrative medicine therapy, or narrative therapy, help you overcome the problems of your past. It also enables you to set a new course for your future, rather than letting your history dictate what tomorrow brings. This takes you out of old behavioral ruts, changing your negative thinking patterns and helping you see yourself as a valuable person. Narrative medicine helps you take charge, shed labels, and stop negativity in your life.

This all sounds very refreshing to people struggling with long-term substance abuse. But does it really work?

Studies prove that both individuals and families benefit from narrative medicine therapy. Methods used in this therapy help you overcome a variety of issues that plague your daily life and overall wellness.

How Narrative Therapy Help Substance Abuse

Narrative therapy started in the 1970s, founded by two therapists seeking a method of working in collaboration with clients. This differs from traditional talk therapy, where the therapist guides and provides advice. In narrative therapy, the therapist helps clients achieve specific goals.

When you live your daily life, what you experience shapes your worldview. This worldview shapes how you react to other people and situations. You label yourself or experience labeling by others, dictating a definition of yourself and how you live your life. For example, someone labeled as a “problem student” gives up on studying or trying to do well in school.

Narrative therapy helps you free yourself from these labels. You redefine who you are and adopt a positive narrative of yourself, to overpower and supersede your past narrative. This allows you to let go of the negative things and behaviors programmed into you by society, those closest to you, or even yourself. You gain an understanding of who you are as a person and how your problems do not define you.

In doing this, you maintain a detached position in looking at yourself. You see yourself in a positive light and even admire your own strengths. Narrative medicine therapy includes three primary goals. These include:

  • Exploring untold aspects in your personal story
  • Rewriting and engaging in your own, new story and life
  • Forming new meaning in your life

In this therapy, you write your story, and your therapist works to help you refine and edit it. They also help you recognize your actual truths, thoughts, and behaviors.

Benefits of Narrative Therapy in Rehab

Narrative medicine as an individual therapy requires fewer sessions than other types of treatment. It usually works quickly, helping you realize that you control your own life story and what meaning you take from it.

Benefits of this narrative medicine include adaptability for individuals or families. You learn to see your life and overcome problems or concerns objectively. This helps you gain a new understanding of your life story, seeing parts that have previously not been understood or recognized. You also find strength and positive feelings where maybe you did not gain these before.

Through narrative medicine, you stop playing a role in the life others define for you. Instead, you take charge of your life and become your own life expert. In essence, you stop letting others influence you or tell you how to feel or act. You stop thinking of yourself in terms of your weaknesses and start seeing your strengths.

Narrative medicine works well alongside other addiction therapy services for addiction treatment. As part of your individual treatment plan, you receive narrative medicine therapy along with other talk therapies, experiential therapies, and a healthy living program.

Narrative Therapy in Kemah, TX Rehab

At Kemah Palms Recovery® in Kemah, TX, your life story changes as you build your new life in recovery. Kemah Palms Recovery® provides a mix of therapies for this, such as:

  • Acupuncture, massage, neurofeedback, and nutrition
  • Art, music, writing, yoga, meditation and physical fitness
  • Psychotherapy and behavioral therapy
  • Relapse prevention therapy
  • Drug detox program
  • Aftercare program

Building your best new life after addiction is made easier through the right therapies and treatments at Joint Commission accredited Kemah Palms Recovery®. Call Kemah Palms Recovery® now at 713-568-1210 to learn more about narrative medicine therapy and other treatment methods near Houston.