Narrative Therapy Worksheets You Hand a Client

Authored by Andrew Evans, clinical psychologist. He writes about what belongs on a page a client can hold, what belongs in the note, and what should stay in the room.

Worksheet choice sits inside formulation, consent, and the window of tolerance. These sheets are not a Dulwich training certificate, not a crisis service, and not a substitute for supervision.

Dana has eight minutes. Marcus has already said the sentence: he is the person who cannot send a line until it is perfect. A thought record would test that sentence. He can already say it. What he cannot do is give the problem a name that is not him, or find the Tuesday when it did not get the hour.

Those four narrative therapy worksheets are the paper for that hour. You externalize the problem in his words, map where it reaches, catch one unique outcome, and start an alternative story. Each sheet has a review line you fill before he leaves. If you only have time for the name, that is the assignment. Do not send the other three blank.

When the job is still a different worksheet family, start from the therapy worksheets hub. The maps and the posture behind these questions are in the narrative therapy training notes. Read those notes when you want the maps. Use the sheets when the name is ready to leave the room.

Assign narrative therapy worksheets only after the name is spoken

Do not hand a blank grid after a two-minute explanation. The columns look friendly. Catching a name that is not a diagnosis is not.

Walk one complete externalizing pass in the room, in the words the client actually uses, before you ask for an influence map. If they cannot yet separate “I am careless” from “The Auditor says a rough sentence means I am careless,” stop there. That session was a naming task. Homework is the name, spoken once more before Thursday, not a stack of empty boxes.

Michael White’s workshop notes, published on the Dulwich site in 2005, describe externalizing conversations as four inquiries: a particular, experience-near definition of the problem; a map of its effects through the domains of living that matter; an evaluation of those effects; and a justification of that evaluation. The notes are explicit that you do not map every domain. You map the ones that seem most significant to the person consulting you (White, Workshop Notes, 2005).

The Dulwich introduction to narrative therapy describes the approach as one that views problems as separate from people and centers people as the experts in their own lives. It also names two working principles that should govern every prompt on these sheets: curiosity, and questions you genuinely do not know the answers to. If you already know what you want written in the name box, you are not asking.

The four sheets, in order

Print one sheet at a time. A client who sees all four blank on the kitchen table will fill the identity line with whatever sounds like progress.

Sheet	What the client names	What you write in the review line
Externalizing	One problem name, experience-near, not a chart diagnosis	Whether they said it aloud and whether your paraphrase survived
Influence map	Effects in the domains they rank, not every domain you can imagine	Which single domain is the assignment, and which you refused to add
Unique outcomes	One dated moment the problem did not run the hour, plus their evaluation	Whether you asked them to weigh it, or applauded it for them
Alternative story	A thin plot: events in sequence, an identity line in their words, one near step	Whether the identity line is theirs, and the stop rule if the step spikes distress

The order is the intervention. Name, then reach, then exception, then story. That is why narrative therapy worksheets go home one sheet at a time. Skipping to the alternative story because the hour is ending produces a slogan. White’s notes treat unique outcomes or exceptions as the starting point for re-authoring: a point of entry into alternative story lines that, at the outset, are visible as thin traces, full of gaps, and not clearly named. The scaffold that thickens them uses landscape-of-action questions and landscape-of-identity questions (White, Workshop Notes, 2005).

Alice Morgan’s extract on the Dulwich site puts the same idea in plot language. A story is events, linked in sequence, across time, according to a plot. Narrative therapy is sometimes known, she writes, as re-authoring or re-storying conversations (Dulwich, What is Narrative Therapy?). Your alternative-story sheet is that plot, one trace thick. It is not a vision statement.

The name has to be theirs

“Generalized anxiety” is a chart phrase. It is a poor externalized name because it is not close to the hour Marcus just lived. “The Auditor” is close. He can picture it reading the sentence over his shoulder. He can say when it visits and when it does not.

If the first name is a diagnosis, a role (“bad employee”), or your metaphor, do not write it on the sheet to save time. Ask what the problem does in the ten minutes before send. The name usually arrives as a noun they can put in a room: The Auditor, The Fog, The Committee, The Delay. Keep the one they do not flinch at.

Two failures show up in supervision more than any others.

The first is a name you like better than theirs. “The Inner Critic” is available in a hundred books. If he said The Auditor and you write The Inner Critic, you have taken the pen. The review line should say whose words are on the page.

The second is a combat name he did not ask for. “Beat The Auditor” sounds active. It also commits him to a fight he may not want, and it misses the part of the hour where he wanted the problem to wait, not to vanish. Ask what the fight would cost before you let a war metaphor onto the paper. If he wants the problem reduced and still wants the carefulness it was guarding, write that position. Do not clean it up into for-or-against.

Map the influence, not the whole life

White’s map asks where the problem reaches: home, workplace, school, peers, family, the relationship with oneself, friendships, purposes, hopes, and what the person can see ahead. That list is a menu for the conversation, not a form the client must complete. Marcus ranked work. The sister texts mattered and were not this week’s assignment. Sleep was my hypothesis. It stayed off the sheet.

A full-life map feels thorough and assigns nothing. One domain, with effects he can point to, is an assignment. If he names effects and cannot say whether they are okay, you are still in evaluation, not in homework. The justification question is the one clinicians skip: why that stand, and what in his life makes the stand make sense. That answer is often the first identity material you will need on the fourth sheet. Do not harvest it early and call it insight.

Unique outcomes are entries, not trophies

Unique outcomes in narrative therapy are easy to ruin by enthusiasm. White’s notes warn that therapists get tempted to convince the person to appreciate the development, to point out its implications, to take a strongly positive position, and to justify that position with compliments about identity. In that move the therapist becomes centered. The development feels weighty to you and unmarked by the person who lived it. The partnership you wanted closes (White, Workshop Notes, 2005).

So the unique-outcomes sheet has an evaluation line the client fills, not a gold star you add. “Small and real” is a position. “See, you can do hard things” is yours. If you hear yourself supplying the meaning, stop writing and ask whether the moment is okay with them, how they feel about it, and why they take that stand.

One dated moment is enough. A list of seven exceptions becomes a highlight reel and loses the plot. If several moments are live, rank them with the client and keep the one that contradicts the problem story in the domain you already mapped. Tuesday’s send contradicts “I cannot send a sentence.” A kind text from his sister does not, not this week.

Re-author from a thin trace

The alternative story should be slightly disappointing if you are hoping for a transformation paragraph. Morgan’s account is structural: events linked in sequence across time according to a plot. One event (the send), a sequence you can date, a plot he can say in a sentence. Gaps are supposed to be there. White says the traces start full of gaps and not clearly named. Your job is a scaffold of questions, not a ghostwritten chapter.

Landscape of action is what happened, in order. Landscape of identity is what he concludes about himself from that, in categories that can carry a next step: intentions, values, hopes, commitments. Trait language (“I am confident now”) usually collapses by Thursday. “I can leave a sentence unfinished and still be careful” can be checked against a standup. Prefer the line he can fail in public without the sheet becoming a character test.

The near step is one action, with a stop rule. No fourth rewrite. Stop if deleting the message and leaving the meeting becomes the move. A near step without a stop rule is how a worksheet becomes a dare.

Narrative therapy exercises you can actually assign

The narrative therapy exercises that belong on paper are these four moves. They are not icebreakers, not a feelings wheel, and not a journal with no return ticket.

Use them like this.

1. In session, read the externalizing questions you do not know the answer to. What name fits. What it does in the ten minutes before the stuck point. Whether that effect is okay. Why that stand.
2. Send one sheet. The name, if that is all you finished. The map, if the name held. The unique outcome, only after he has evaluated a real moment. The alternative story, only after a trace exists.
3. Put the stop rule on the sheet in his words, not in your risk language.
4. Next hour, read the review line first. Ask whether the near step happened, whether the identity line showed up, and whether the name still fits. Retire a sheet that came back as a performance.

The narrative therapy prompts worth keeping on a card in your notebook are short: How long has this been influencing you? What does it tell you about yourself? When is it most likely to visit? Is this okay with you? Why that position? What happened when it did not get the hour? Who would be least surprised? Each one fails if you nod toward the answer you prefer.

If the stuck point is an automatic thought you can test with evidence, stay on a CBT thought record. These sheets do not dispute a must. They relocate a problem and thicken a neglected plot. Mixing the two in one hour usually produces a balanced thought dressed up as a story.

When the sheets stay in the folder

Fit is a formulation call. Do not send narrative therapy worksheets home because the hour ran long.

What you are seeing	Sheets	What you do instead
He can say a name that is not a diagnosis, and he wants a position on it	Yes, name sheet first	Walk it aloud before anything is printed for home
One dated moment the problem did not run the mapped domain	Yes, unique outcome, then story if he evaluates it	Ask him to weigh the moment before you write meaning
Acute crisis, dissociation, or he is outside his window of tolerance	No	Safety and orientation. Paper waits
The only language available is a chart diagnosis	Not yet	Stay in the ten minutes before the stuck point until a nearer name appears
He needs to tell what happened, in sequence, inside a trauma protocol	No	Use a trauma-calibrated frame, such as the TF-CBT guide, not a preferred-story sheet
Harm, control, or violence, and a separated name would blur what he did	No, not as an excuse	Detail real effects on the people affected. Responsibility stays with the actor
The hour is a hot thought you can test	No	Thought record. Do not rename a dispute as re-authoring

A second stop is relational. Some clients hear externalizing as cute, or as you refusing to take the pain seriously. That is not a reason to abandon the idea forever. It is a reason to slow down, use their words, and sometimes drop the paper until the room can hold a name that is not an insult.

If the problem has been guarding him from something (a harsh boss, a real standard at work), do not recruit him into a story that says the standard was fake. The Auditor can wait until after send and still be allowed to care about accuracy. Preferred stories that deny the context do not survive Thursday.

What you write in the note

The chart does not need the grid redrawn. It needs the name, the domain, the trace, and which narrative therapy worksheets actually left the room.

That note is readable to a covering clinician. It names whose language is on the page, what you refused to add, and what Thursday is for. If the next hour shows the name no longer fits, change the sheet. Do not defend the metaphor because it looked good in the record.

Download the worksheet assignment pack

Print the four narrative therapy worksheets from the example above when you want the fields in the chart and in his hand. The assignment pack holds the cover sheet, the fit and dose card, and the next-session review so you are not inventing them after the last client.

Copy-ready blanks, if you would rather start empty than from Marcus:

Where Emosapien fits

The name, the domain, the Tuesday trace, and the line he will check on Thursday are easy to lose between the door and the note. Emosapien’s Scribe Agent can hold the externalized problem name, the influence map you actually assigned, the unique outcome in his evaluation, and the alternative story in the intervention section so you are not reconstructing the sequence from memory at 7pm.

You still choose whether the name is his, whether a unique outcome is his to weigh, and whether any sheet goes home. The product keeps the thread between this hour and the review. See the AI clinical notes overview for modality-aware documentation, or start a trial if you want that sequence in your own chart.

References

• Morgan, A. (2000). What is narrative therapy? An easy-to-read introduction. Dulwich Publications.
• White, M. (2005). Workshop notes. Dulwich Publications.