Narrative therapy begins with a simple, radical claim: the person is not the problem. The problem is the problem. It sounds like wordplay until you feel the difference. 'I am broken' is a verdict. 'Something difficult has been visiting me' is a description, and descriptions can change.
We all live inside stories about ourselves. Some were written early, by family, school, culture, or by a single hard season that taught us a conclusion we never questioned. These stories feel like facts because we have lived inside them so long. But a story is not a monument. It is a current. It is still moving, and it can still turn.
In the room, we look for what narrative therapists call unique outcomes: the moments that do not fit the problem's version of you. The morning you got up anyway. The time you spoke honestly. The kindness you showed when the story said you had none. One exception is a crack in the old narrative. Enough exceptions, gathered and honoured, become a different story entirely, one with more of you in it.
This is not positive thinking. Nothing is denied or painted over. The hard chapters stay in the book. But they stop being the whole book, and you stop being a character the story happens to, and start becoming its author again.
If there is a sentence you have been carrying about yourself for years, it might be worth asking: who wrote this, and do I still have to agree?
You are not the problem. The problem is the problem, and the story is still being written.