1 Introduction to Narrative Therapy: Collection of practice-based texts

Say hello again

The incorporation of the

lost relationship
in the resolution of the duel

by

Michael White

Freud…suggests that the completion of the grieving process requires that those we have
left behind develop a new reality that no longer includes what has been lost. But... it must
be added that complete recovery from the grieving process can restore what has been lost,
maintaining it through incorporation into the present. Complete recollection and retention
can be as vital to recovery and well-being as abandoned memories.

(Myerhoff 1982, p. 111)

For some time I have been exploring the metaphor of “saying hello” and its application to
grief work. This exploration has been prompted by particular experiences in therapy with
people who have been diagnosed, somewhere, as suffering from “unresolved grief” or
“pathological mourning.” Many of these people have received intensive and prolonged
treatments guided by the normative model of the grieving process, or by some chemical
approach related to their life problems.

I usually find that such people are well familiar with the grief map and can map their
experience in relation to it. They clearly understand that they have failed, in working
through their grief, to reach an appropriate destination. They “know” that their arrival at this
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destination will be evidenced by a “goodbye” fully experienced, permanently accepting the

loss of the loved one and wishing to begin a new life disconnected from that person.

At first contact, people who experience “unresolved grief” or “pathological mourning” seem
as if they have lost their own “self,” as well as the person they loved. Without provocation
they bring the therapist in touch with their loss and the subsequent effects on their lives,
freely recounting the details of their feelings of emptiness, worthlessness, and feelings of
depression. Such is their desperation that I have often felt somewhat overwhelmed at the
beginning of therapy. I commonly discern these people's invitations to participate in their
“more of the same” conversations, activated by the metaphor of “saying goodbye,” and I am
usually able to decline this intention.

It can be expected that, under these circumstances, persisting in “grief work” guided
by a normative model will further complicate the situation rather than empowering these
people to enrich their lives. The desolation experienced by these people is such that
establishing a therapy context in which to incorporate the lost relationship seems far more
strongly indicated than efforts to motivate the loss of this relationship. My investigation of
the “say hello” metaphor was prompted by this consideration.

Guided by this metaphor, I formulated and introduced questions that I hoped would
open the possibility for these people to reclaim their relationship with the lost person.
Surprised by the effect of these questions on resolving the sense of emptiness and feelings
of depression, I decided to explore this metaphor further. I hoped that a greater
understanding of this process would enable me to assist people more effectively in re-
positioning themselves in relation to the death of their loved one, a re-positioning that would
bring the relief so strongly hoped for.

Maria

Maria was forty-three years old when she sought help for what she described as an
“unresolved loss.” Six years earlier, her husband, Ron, had died suddenly of heart failure.
This event had come totally unexpected. Until that moment, everything had been going well
for Maria. She and Ron had enjoyed a “rich and loving” friendship, something they both
valued extremely.

After Ron's death, Maria's world fell apart. Heartbroken and with a feeling of
“insensitivity” from that moment on, she simply let herself be carried away by what was
happening in her life without finding solace anywhere. His “callousness” survived a large
number of attempts to work on his situation through therapy. Nor had he found relief from
medication. Despite this, María persisted in her attempts to achieve some sense of well-
being, consulting therapists and working on acceptance for the next 5 years.

At my first meeting with Maria, she told me that she had lost almost all hope that she
would ever regain even a semblance of well-being. She thought she would never be able to
say goodbye. After Maria brought her despair to my attention, I invited her to escape the
consequences of Ron's death once and for all.

I wondered out loud if saying goodbye was a good idea and if it wouldn't be better to
say hello to Ron instead. Furthermore, I told her that the desolation she so acutely
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experienced could mean that she had said goodbye too well. María's response was one of
astonishment and surprise. Had he heard what he thought was happening to him? I
repeated my thoughts and saw, for the first time, a spark of light in her.

I then asked her if she would be interested in the experience of saying hello to Ron,
or if she thought he was too deeply buried in her to entertain this idea. María began to sob,
lightly, without despair. Wait. After ten or fifteen minutes, he suddenly said, “Yes, it has
been buried very deep for me.” Maria smiled and then said it might be helpful to "dig it up a
bit." So I started asking some questions:

-If you saw yourself through Ron's eyes right now, what would you be realizing about
yourself?

- What would be different about how you feel, if you were appreciating that same thing in
yourself, right now?

-What do you know about yourself that you can awaken when you remember the nice
things Ron knew about you?

- What would be different if you kept these thoughts about yourself alive on a daily basis?

- Feeling this, how would it make different steps you could take to return to life again?

-How could you let others know that you have regained some of the qualities about yourself
that were so clearly visible to Ron and that you personally find attractive?

- How could you make conscious what has not been visible to you in the last six years, so
that it intervenes in your life now?

- Once you know about yourself what you know now, what will you do differently in your
next steps?

- By taking those steps, what else do you think you can discover about yourself that might
be important to you now?

Maria struggled with these questions with alternating bursts of sadness and joy.
During the two subsequent sessions she shared with me the important re-discoveries she
was making about herself and her life. At follow-up, about twelve months later, Maria said,
"It's strange, but when I found out that Ron didn't have to die for me, I started to worry less
about him and my life started to get richer."

Juan

Juan was thirty-nine years old when he consulted me about his long-standing "self-
esteem difficulties." He did not remember having a critical attitude toward himself. But
throughout his life he had always sought the approval and recognition of others. He hated
himself for this, believing that he lacked substance as a person and that this was clearly
evident to others.

Juan believed that his wife and children loved him, but he thought that his
experience with his created family was in some way directed by the persistent struggle
against his self-doubt. These self-doubts were easily triggered by circumstances he
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considered trivial. He had sought professional help on several occasions, but had not been
able to experience the relief he needed.

In light of his long history of self-rejection, I asked him for more details about his life.
He told me that, as far as he knew, he had had a happy childhood until his mother's death
at the tender age of seven, just before his eighth birthday. No one in the family had faced
this circumstance. For some time, Juan's father had been aimless, both for others and for
himself. Juan vividly remembered the events surrounding his mother's death. For a while he
couldn't believe this loss, always hoping to find his mother around the next corner. Until you
become completely hopeless. Later, his father remarried a good person, “but things were
never the same.”

I asked Juan what would have been different in his life, regarding feelings of self-
doubt, if things had stayed the same, that is, if his mother had not died. At this moment
Juan's tears came to his eyes. Don't you think your mother has been out of your life for too
long? Has being absent from her life really been a big help to her? He looked at me
surprised. Would you mind if I ask you more questions? No, it would be fine. I asked him
the following questions:

- What did your mother see in you when she looked at you with her loving eyes?
- How did she know these things about you?
- What is it in you that says these things to her?
- What can you see in yourself that has been missing for so many years?
- What would be different in your relationships with others if you could carry this knowledge
with you in your everyday life?
- How would it make things easier for you if you were who you want to be for yourself and
not for others?
- What could you do to present this new image of yourself as a person to others?
- How would including others in this new image of yourself enable you to value yourself
more?
- How would this experience, where you value yourself more, affect the relationship you
have with yourself?

I met with Juan on three more occasions with two-week intervals and then we
continued with an eight-month follow-up. During this time, he took a few steps in
maintaining his mother's image with him and thus came to a new relationship with himself:
A relationship of self-acceptance instead of the previous self-rejection. He no longer felt
vulnerable to the events that used to raise self-doubt.

Discussion

The experience of the experience

- If you were seeing yourself through Ron's eyes right now, what would you be realizing
about yourself?

Those questions that helped people remember important relationships invited them to
remember what they perceived as a positive experience between the missing person and
themselves. This memory was the expression of specific aspects of his experience with the
missing person's experience. These questions had an immediate and visible effect. The
memories with which they had connected were not mere historical events, but experiences
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full of life that incorporated varied feelings and emotions in the person.

It was clear that, in this memory, past experiences between them had been re-
activated. It seemed that a lot of lost or forgotten knowledge was once again available for
people to express. How can you understand this process?

In the struggle to give meaning to our lives, we are faced with the task of organizing
our experiences of events into sequences over time in such a way as to reflect back to us a
coherent image of ourselves. Specific experiences of events from the present and the past,
as well as those predicted to occur in the future, are connected to develop this image,
which we refer to as a story or our own narrative.

The past, present and future are not only constructed but are also connected in a linear
sequence that is defined by systematic and causal relationships. How we represent any of
the sequences is related to our conception of the whole, which I choose to think of as a
story. (Bruner 1986a, p.141)

Success in this task provides us with a sense of continuity and meaning to our lives. In this
sense we base the demands we make in our daily lives and how we interpret our
experiences. However, we achieve this meaning by paying a price. A narrative can never
represent the richness of what Turner (1986) calls our “life experience”:

…life experience is much richer than speech. Narrative structures organize and give
meaning to experience, but there are always feelings and life experiences that will not be
included in the dominant story. (Bruner 1986a, p. 143)

Structuring the narrative requires resorting to a selective process in which we select

from our experience those events that do not fit into the dominant story that both others and
ourselves tell about ourselves. Therefore, over time, the majority of our inventory of life
experience appears untold and is never told or expressed.

However, in certain circumstances, it is possible for some people to relive denied

aspects of their life experience. Agreement about the sequence of these events breaks
down over time and is replaced by what Myerhoff (1982) refers to as “simultaneity.” That is,
a sense of unity with everything that has been achieved in each person's history (p. 110).

I believe that those questions that invite people to tell again what they perceive of
the experience they had with the missing person achieve this simultaneity. In this reaching
back in experience, alternative and previously forgotten knowledge can be located and
represented again. In this way, new and enriching recognitions, as well as new evaluations
of oneself, are made available to people.

Selection of alternative knowledge

-What do you know about yourself that has awakened when you relived the nice things Ron
knew about you?

In this effort to encourage people to elicit alternative knowledge that is available by

reliving their experiences, I have found other questions that are also helpful. These
questions invite people to review their experience and locate those alternative knowledges
about the self where the most notable “facts” about oneself are presented; These “facts” will
help themselves and others to “write” a new story of their own lives.
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These questions also contribute to developing “awareness” in people.

Each narrative is an arbitrary imposition of meanings on the flow of memory, in which we

highlight some causes and discard others; that is, each narrative is interpreted. (Bruner
1986, p.7)

Circulate for self-knowledge

-How could you make others aware of the qualities that you have remembered about
yourself and that were so clearly visible to Ron, and that you have found personally
attractive?

Since the “self” is an interpreted self, the survival of alternative knowledge is

enhanced if the new ideas and new meanings that appear are set in motion: The hard-won
meanings must be said, painted, danced, dramatized, set in motion (Turner 1986, p.37).

To achieve this movement, an audience is required to represent these new

meanings. Questions can be derived that identify and recruit this new audience. In the
“reading” of these new meanings, this audience participates, through feedback, in the new
productions of the person's self. The production of the self is a recursive process, where
selected aspects of one's experience are represented and where this representation
contributes to the inventory of experiences from which knowledge of oneself is derived.

Awareness of the production of productions

- Knowing what you know now, what will you do differently in your next step?

-As you take this next step, what else do you think would be important for you to realize?

More questions can be introduced that motivate the person to become more involved
in the production of qualities of the self. Awareness of one's own productions in one's own
qualities opens new possibilities for people to direct their own life course.

As people become more aware of the process where they are both interpreters and
audiences of their own representations, new options become available to them based on
alternative knowledge of the self that could cooperate with the experiences they have as
the authors of themselves (Myerhoff 1986, p.263)

Other apps

The loss of a young son

Parents who have lost children at a very young age have found the metaphor of
“saying hello” useful, even in the case of children dying before birth. After being presented
with the idea, they have no difficulty speculating about what this child's experience with
them as parents would have been like and they quickly incorporate it.

Child abuse

The application of this metaphor has been explored and also found useful with
children who have been taken into custody after suffering repeated and severe abuse.
These children, as a result of abuse, often refer to themselves with hatred and doing their
best to fail, often mutilating their own lives and future through destructive behavior.
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I have worked with children in these circumstances and with live-in caregivers to find
“unique outcomes” (White 1988) that identify adult events that are positively and helpfully
related to the child, rather than negative and harmful events. These unique results can be
located historically and/or currently. For example, you might discover that a school teacher
had a particularly kind attitude toward the child, that a community worker has taken a
special interest in the child's situation, or that a social worker has recently made important
and pleasing observations. about the child.

Once the unique results have been established, questions can be introduced that
invite the child to consider them relevant once they have found meaning in them. These
questions motivate speculation about knowledge about the self that is associated with
unique outcomes . Below are examples of these questions:

- What do you think your teacher realized about you that you (abuser) was not able to see?
- What do you do to make your teacher see you like that?
- What does this teacher know about you that you can know about yourself?
- If (the abuser) had not been so blind to these facts and had not disrespected you as a
person, what would have been different in his attitude towards you?

These questions and others that motivate the movement of alternative knowledge
and awareness of the production of one's qualities undermine the child's self-hatred and his
participation in the mutilation of his own life and future.

Self abused adult

I have introduced a variant of this work in men and women, as a result of physical and/or
emotional abuse during childhood and adolescence, maintaining a negative and self-
denying attitude in adult life. This denial of self is the result of internalizing the abusive
adult's attitude toward them.

These people can't rest. They constantly feel compelled to act and discipline themselves
according to the abuser's attitudes. They are unable to trust the most favorable personal
versions of themselves that they can find in their life.

It is helpful to invite these people to pay attention to those unique results where they
identify recent occasions during which they were able to treat themselves with a fraction of
“self-acceptance,” or occasions during which they refused to submit to themselves.
themselves to the dominant guidelines that were established by the abuser.

Once the single outcome has been identified, questions can be introduced that
encourage a retelling of childhood and adolescent experiences, one where similar historical
episodes of self-acceptance and protest are located. Efforts are also made to determine the
age of the person at the time these historical episodes occurred. Asking questions is useful
for these people to help them review their relationship with themselves:

-If you were looking at yourself through the eyes of a 10-year-old boy right now, what would
he be seeing in you that he would really appreciate?
- What would be most important to him in your development as a person?
- Taking this into account, would he motivate you to be someone different, or would he
accept you for who you are?
- Why do you think he would have liked to have you as a father?
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- What would have been different in this child's life if he had had you as a father?
- What could you do to support this 10-year-old's attitude towards you, instead of the
attitude... (of the abuser)?
- What would be different in your relationship with yourself from how you related before?

The answers to these questions contribute to reclaiming alternative knowledge of the

self by behaving accordingly and forging a new relationship with oneself through the
experience of “self-specification.”

Separation

The metaphor “saying hello” is also appropriate in circumstances where a loss has
occurred in a relationship that has not been caused by a death. These losses are often
devastating for the person who did not initiate the separation and who also wanted to
continue the relationship.

A common reaction in these people is to feel betrayed by their partner and have
extraordinary doubts about themselves. Sometimes this reaction is accompanied by toxic
sanctimonious anger. These responses are usually related to a new perception that they
were never loved by others, but rather deceived. I often refer to this new perception as the
“second story.”

When these types of responses persist, questions can be introduced that bring the
“first story” – the one that includes the experience of being a lovable person – back to the
surface instead of the “second story” ; questions that invite the incorporation of the “first
story” and active cooperation with it. Incorporating success resolves one's self-doubt and
sanctimonious anger.

Conclusion

Many people who have consulted me about problems related to unresolved grief
have found that the metaphor of “saying hello,” as well as the questions derived from this
metaphor, can be useful to them. I have consistently found that, through the incorporation
of the relationship that was lost, those problems defined in terms such as “unresolved grief”
and “pathological mourning” are resolved. To achieve this incorporation, people come to a
new relationship with themselves. Their attitude toward themselves becomes one of
acceptance and they treat themselves with more kindness and compassion.
The illustrations offered in this article show some examples of the use of this
metaphor. However, these examples by no means exhaust all possible applications.
This focus on the metaphor of “saying hello” does not mean that I take a position
against the use of the metaphor of “saying goodbye.” There are many things to say
goodbye to, including many material realities, desires and expectations. On the contrary, I
believe that the grieving process is a “say goodbye and then say hello” phenomenon.
That being said, I would like to say that every loss experience is unique, as are the
requirements for the resolution of any loss. Any metaphor is useful as long as it recognizes
and facilitates the expression of this unique meaning and does not lead people towards
normative specifications.

References
9 Introduction to Narrative Therapy: Collection of practice-based texts

Bruner, E.M. 1986a: 'Ethnography as narrative.' In Turner, VW & Bruner, E.M. (eds), The Anthropology of
Experience . Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Bruner, E.M. 1986b: 'Experience and its expressions.' In Turner, VW & Bruner, E.M. (eds), The
Anthropology of Experience . Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Myerhoff, B. 1982: 'Life history among the elderly: Performance, visibility and re-membering.' In Ruby, J.
(ed), A Crack in the Mirror: Reflexive Perspectives in Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press.

Myerhoff, B. 1986: 'Life not death in Venice: It's second life.' In Turner, VW & Bruner, E.M. (eds), The
Anthropology of Experience . Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Turner, V. 1986: 'Dewey, Dilthey, and Drama: An essay in the anthropology of experience.' In Turner, VW
& Bruner, E.M. (eds), The Anthropology of Experience . Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

White, M. 1988: 'The process of questioning: A therapy of literary merit?' Dulwich Center Newsletter, Winter,
pp.8-14.
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