Re-authoring without inventing
a better version of yourself.
How do overlooked experiences become a fuller account of who I am?
What re-authoring actually involves, step by step, including what happens when the person says the therapist’s meaning is wrong.
What this is: a step-by-step guide to re-authoring conversations.
Why it matters: re-authoring is easily confused with finding a positive exception or a nicer label.
The sharpest reframe: “That happened, but it doesn’t say what you think it says about me” is where the real work begins.
One thing to take away: move between what happened and what it might mean, and let the person decide.
The short version
Re-authoring is the heart of narrative therapy. It isn’t finding one positive exception, or attaching a nicer label. It means taking an experience the dominant account overlooks, exploring its circumstances and what the person makes of it, connecting it with other experiences across time and with people who recognise it, and asking what the person might carry forward. Throughout, the person decides whether the developing account fits. A preferred account can include help, mistakes, pleasure, limitation and unfinished feelings, and still belong fully to the person whose life it describes.
Two landscapes
Established practiceMichael White, drawing on the psychologist Jerome Bruner, described re-authoring conversations as moving between two “landscapes”:
Landscape of action
What happened, when, who was involved, what the person did, and what made it possible.
Landscape of identity
What this might say about the person’s values, intentions, hopes, commitments or knowledge.
The conversation moves back and forth, building each landscape from the other, and linking events across time. That is what makes the account richer rather than simply more positive.
Sorcha is 44, has MS, and receives personal care from an agency. Her dominant story is “I never have a say”: decisions about her care, her home and her treatment always seem to be made by someone else. In passing, she mentions that last month she asked the agency for a different assistant for showering, because she didn’t feel comfortable with a male carer. The agency changed it.
Sorcha is a fictional teaching example, not a real person.
How the conversation develops
Illustrative sequenceAn overlooked event
Something the dominant account doesn’t adequately describe.
You mentioned asking for a different assistant for showering. Could we stay with that for a moment?
It was nothing really. I just rang them.
Its circumstances
What happened, who was involved, what made it possible.
What made it possible to ring?
I’d had a bad week. I was too tired to keep putting up with it. And my sister was there, which helped.
The person’s interpretation
What significance, if any, they give it.
When you think about that phone call now, does it say anything about you?
Some people might say it shows you standing up for yourself.
That happened, but I don’t think it says what you think it says about me. I wasn’t brave. I was just exhausted and fed up.
The therapist doesn’t argue for the brave version:
Thank you for correcting me. So it was exhaustion, and being fed up. What were you fed up with?
Having strangers see me without being asked. My body’s about the only private thing I have left.
The meaning that emerges isn’t bravery. It is that privacy matters enough to Sorcha that, even exhausted, she acted on it.
Connections across time
Other experiences that may belong with it.
Have there been other times privacy mattered that much?
When I was first diagnosed, I didn’t tell anyone at work for a year. People thought I was being secretive. I just wanted to decide who knew.
Relationships
Who recognises this aspect of the person.
Who would understand that about you, that you want to decide who sees and knows?
My sister. She always knocks, even at home. And my old friend Marian, who never asked about the MS unless I brought it up.
Future possibilities
What the person might want to carry forward.
Is there anything from this you’d want to carry forward?
I’d like it written into my care plan. Female assistants for personal care, and that they ask before they do things. So I don’t have to ring every time.
Feedback
Whether the account fits, helps or feels imposed.
If we put it into words, something like “I need a lot of help, and my privacy still matters.” Does that fit, or would you say it differently, or not at all?
“I need a lot of help, and I still get to decide who sees me.” That’s more me.
Not inventing a better version of yourself
Our framework- The account comes from the person’s experience, not from the therapist’s idea of who they should be.
- Corrections are welcome. “That’s not what it says about me” is information, not resistance.
- No identity statement is required. Some people prefer to leave it as what happened.
- The account can include difficulty. Sorcha was exhausted. That stays in the story.
- The dominant story doesn’t have to vanish. “I never have a say” may still be true in other parts of her life. Re-authoring makes room alongside it.
- Practical change can follow, and may not. Getting the care plan changed is a separate step, and partly outside therapy’s control.
What needs attention here?
The therapist offers a meaning the person rejects
Possible focus: the person’s own meaning
What to avoid: arguing for the more flattering version
The person doesn’t want an identity statement
Possible focus: what happened, and what they want next
What to avoid: pressing for a summary of who they are
A preferred description emerges
Possible focus: checking whether it fits, in the person’s words
What to avoid: writing it down before they agree
Possible starting points, agreed with the person, not rules.
How you’d know it helped
- The person recognises the account as theirs.
- It holds both the difficulty and what matters.
- They can use it, or set it aside, as they choose.
Words you can use
For clientsQuestions worth carrying, as a therapist
Therapist Reflection- Did I move between what happened and what it might mean, or jump straight to meaning?
- Did I welcome correction?
- Was the preferred description in the client’s words?
- Have I left room for the dominant story to remain partly true?
Evidence & sources
Sources checked in October 2026, using targeted searches rather than a systematic review. “We have not located” means our searches did not find it.
Re-authoring conversations and the landscapes of action and identity, drawing on Jerome Bruner: White, M., Maps of Narrative Practice (Norton, 2007).
The seven-part sequence, the guidance on not inventing a better version, and the attention box are this site’s synthesis, developed from material prepared for this site.
Sorcha and the dialogues are constructed for learning. They are not real people or real sessions.
We have not located research on re-authoring conversations with disabled clients specifically.
How to cite this page: Donaghey, C. (2026). Re-authoring Without Inventing a Better Version of Yourself. Disability in Psychotherapy. Available at: https://disabilityinpsychotherapy.online/what-is-psychotherapy/narrative-therapy/re-authoring/ (Accessed: [date]).
Shared under CC BY-NC 4.0: you can share, adapt and teach from this page, including on fee-paying courses, with credit. See Reusing This Material.