Externalising the Problem in Narrative Therapy

When someone struggles with anxiety, depression, or any persistent life challenge, it is remarkably easy to arrive at a damaging conclusion: I am the problem. This kind of thinking fuses a person’s identity with their difficulty, making it feel permanent and inescapable. In narrative therapy, a powerful and carefully developed technique called externalising the problem directly challenges this fusion. Rather than treating the issue as a fixed part of who someone is, externalising repositions it as something outside the person – something they have a relationship with, and ultimately, something they can push back against. Understanding how this works, and why it matters, is essential for anyone studying or practising counselling.

The core idea: the problem is not the person 🔗

Externalising the problem is a foundational technique in narrative therapy, an approach to counselling developed by Michael White and David Epston in Australia and New Zealand during the 1980s. The central premise is simple but transformative: the person is not the problem; the problem is the problem.

By the time people seek therapy, they have often spent months or even years believing something is fundamentally wrong with them. Narrative therapy is a respectful, non-blaming approach that centres people as the experts in their own lives, viewing problems as separate from their identity rather than as defining characteristics. This distinction changes everything about how therapy proceeds.

White and Epston observed that conventional psychological frameworks – with their diagnostic labels and clinical language – often reinforced problem-saturated identities rather than helping people gain distance from their difficulties. They challenged the practice of psychotherapy and how it created and reinforced problem identities, rather than helping people separate themselves from the problem itself.

Why externalising reduces self-blame and guilt 🔗

One of the most immediate and meaningful effects of externalising a problem is a reduction in self-blame. When a client says “I am depressed,” the depression becomes woven into their sense of self. When they instead say “depression has been taking over my mornings lately,” the conversation shifts. The depression becomes an entity they can observe, analyse, and respond to rather than a truth about who they are.

People who seek therapy often view their problems as reflections of something internal, which leads to helplessness, self-blame, and negative self-worth. Externalising directly addresses this by repositioning the problem in its social and relational context, rather than inside the person’s character or biology.

This shift is not a denial of personal responsibility. Externalising reduces guilt and blame, yet still leaves room for responsibility. A person is no longer held wholly responsible for being the problem, but they are still invited to take a stance on how the problem operates in their life – and what they want to do about it.

Clinically, this reframing has a significant impact on a client’s emotional state. Externalisation involves redefining the client’s difficulties in terms of something external rather than a personal or internal one – conceptualising the difficulty as something more like an unwanted influence that can be observed from the outside, engaged with, and confronted.

How externalising works in practice 🔗

The technique moves through a structured series of conversations. Michael White outlined these steps in detail in his book Maps of Narrative Practice, and they remain a key guide for practitioners today.

Step 1: Naming the problem 🔗

The first step is to help the client give the problem an experience-near name – a label that resonates with their experience, not a clinical one imposed from outside. These questions negotiate with the person how they would describe and characterise the problem, using language that is meaningful to them personally. A person struggling with anxiety might call it “the constant hum,” “the tight chest feeling,” or “the what-if spiral.” What matters is that the name belongs to them.

This naming process does more than create distance. It makes the problem feel less like a permanent state and more like an identifiable presence that has been moving through the client’s life. Once named, it can be examined.

Step 2: Mapping the impact of the problem 🔗

Once the problem has been named and externalised, the next task is to map its effects. In this stage, therapists map the problem’s influence and presence in the client’s life, including their environments, relationships, work, sense of self, and daily routines.

This is a careful and thorough exploration. The therapist asks questions like: Where does this problem show up most? Who else is affected by it? What opportunities or relationships has it interfered with? The goal is not to dwell in the negative, but to build a clear picture of the terrain the problem has occupied. This mapping process externalises the problem further – it is no longer a vague inner fog, but something with a discernible footprint in the person’s life.

Importantly, this stage must remain an externalised conversation, not an internalised one. The therapist’s language consistently positions the problem as acting upon the person, rather than as an expression of who the person is.

Step 3: Evaluating the effects 🔗

The third step is significant: the client is invited to evaluate the problem’s effects on their own terms. Therapists facilitate conversations that explore the problem’s actions in the client’s life with questions such as: “Are these effects okay with you?” or “Where do you stand on what this problem has been doing in your life?”

This is a crucial move. The therapist does not declare a verdict on the problem – the client does. This preserves the client’s autonomy and positions them as the authority on their own experience. It is in this step that clients often begin to feel the first stirrings of agency, because they are being asked to form and voice an opinion about something that previously felt like it had total power over them.

Step 4: Understanding the client’s position and values 🔗

The fourth step deepens the evaluation by asking why the client feels the way they do about the problem’s effects. The therapist asks for thoughts about some of the ways the client wants their life to be that are more in line with what is important to them. Questions might include: “What does your unhappiness about this tell us about what you value?” or “What kind of life are you trying to live that this problem is getting in the way of?”

These questions connect the problem to the client’s identity and commitments – not by fusing the two, but by revealing the gap between how the problem has shaped their life and how they actually want to live. This gap is where the motivation for change takes root.

The role of externalising in empowerment and hope 🔗

Across all four steps, externalising does something that straightforward problem-solving rarely achieves: it restores a sense of agency. Externalising creates space for people to have a position in relation to the problem and creates ways for them to take action, rather than being overwhelmed by it.

This matters enormously in clinical work. Clients who feel fused with their problem often struggle to envision change, because changing would mean changing who they are at the core. But when the problem is externalised, change becomes about the relationship between the person and the problem – and relationships can always be renegotiated.

Externalising also makes visible the social, cultural, and contextual factors that have contributed to the problem. Externalising conversations are viewed as providing clients a language to protest the influence of broader cultural discourses – the social expectations, stigmas, and pressures that shape how problems develop and persist. This is particularly valuable when clients have internalised cultural narratives about failure, weakness, or unworthiness.

In couple and family settings, the benefits extend further. When partners or family members can identify a shared external problem rather than pointing fingers at each other, the dynamic shifts from blame to collaboration. The problem becomes something they are navigating together, rather than something one person is inflicting on another.

From externalising to re-authoring 🔗

Externalising the problem is not the endpoint of narrative therapy – it is the foundation for the next stage: re-authoring. Once clients have separated themselves from the problem and begun to see its effects clearly, they can start to identify moments in their lives when the problem did not dominate. These moments – called unique outcomes or exceptions in narrative practice – are the raw material for a new story.

The process of re-authoring involves noticing the quiet, unnoticed stories that support clients’ developing identities as they separate themselves from the problem. These exceptions challenge the idea that the problem is permanent or inevitable. A person who has spent years seeing themselves through the lens of depression might begin to recall times when they felt capable, connected, or creative – and these become the building blocks of a new, preferred narrative.

Externalising problems helps people reclaim preferred stories about their lives and separate their identities from the challenges they face, redefining the therapeutic process and helping them reimagine their relationship to their problems entirely. The client is no longer the person defined by their struggle; they become the person who has been navigating a struggle – and who has resources, values, and a history that the problem has not managed to erase.

Practical applications across contexts 🔗

Externalising is used across a wide range of therapeutic and counselling contexts. It has been applied in work with children – where the playful, accessible quality of naming a problem can be particularly effective – as well as with adults managing anxiety, depression, trauma, eating difficulties, relationship conflict, and grief. Externalising conversations are also used in relation to positive internalised qualities like competence or resilience, not just problems – helping clients recognise and amplify their own strengths.

In educational and community settings, the technique has shown value in reducing stigma and encouraging people to seek help without fearing that doing so means accepting a problem-saturated identity. When a student understands that “the procrastination” is something visiting their study habits – rather than proof that they are lazy – they are far more likely to engage with strategies to change the pattern.

Across all of these applications, the fundamental posture remains the same: the therapist approaches the client as an investigative reporter, curious about the problem’s history and tactics, working alongside the client to understand how the problem has operated and how the client might reclaim ground. The client, in turn, is treated not as someone broken or deficient, but as someone who has been dealing with a real and difficult presence in their life – and who has the capacity to tell a different story about what that means.

What do you think? When you consider the problems people carry into therapy, how might describing those problems as external forces – rather than personal flaws – change both the conversation and the outcome? And in what situations do you think externalising might be especially powerful, or especially challenging, to apply?

References

1. https://dulwichcentre.com.au/articles-about-narrative-therapy/externalising/
2. https://www.arbourcounselling.ca/post/externalize-this-talking-about-problems-as-if-they-are-the-problem
3. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09731342241238096
4. https://reauthoringteaching.com/pages-not-in-use/externalising-conversations-handout/
5. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11832678/
6. https://familytherapybasics.com/blog/narrative-externalizing-reauthoring
7. https://narrativeapproaches.com/making-trouble-for-problems-therapeutic-assumptions-and-research-behind-the-narrative-practice-of-externalizing-conversations/