Narrative Therapy for Multigenerational Households (and Why Story-Based Therapy Needs an Update for Neurodiverse Brains)

Thursday, October 23, 2025.

Every multigenerational family is a library—but lately, the books are stacked in tighter quarters.

Rising housing costs, caregiving demands, and post-pandemic economics have pulled adult children, aging parents, and sometimes grandparents under the same roof again.

It sounds heartwarming in theory: shared meals, mutual support, maybe a built-in babysitter.

In practice, it’s often an anthology of competing values and half-finished sentences.

Each generation brings a different language for love, privacy, and repair—and sooner or later, those languages clash.

Narrative Therapy begins here, in the noise and nostalgia of modern family life.

It treats the family not as a battlefield of personalities but as a set of overlapping stories—some true, some inherited, some long overdue for revision.

Family as a Narrative Ecosystem

Every multigenerational family is a library.
Each floor holds a different decade; each shelf is a small act of remembering.

The grandparents’ volume reads: We endured.
The parents’ chapter says: We’re trying to do better.
The children are asking: Why are you all so weird about Italian Brainrot?

Therapy often begins when those storylines collide.

What looks like attitude is usually narrative dissonance—the clash of competing ideas about love, duty, and autonomy.

Family-systems scholar Froma Walsh calls this meaning-making: how families turn experience into identity.

Meaning-making predicts resilience more reliably than income or education. The stories we tell about our past decide how we face what comes next.

How Narrative Therapy Works

Narrative Therapy, developed by Michael White and David Epston, separates people from the problems that torment them.
It’s not “You’re controlling.” It’s “Control has been visiting this family again.”

White said:

“The problem is the problem; the person is not the problem.”

Or, in plainer language: the plot twist isn’t you—it’s the plot.

• Externalize the problem.
  Name it. Give it shape. “Perfectionism” becomes an over-eager houseguest instead of a moral failing.

• Map its influence.
  Ask which generation invited it in—and who still sets a place for it at dinner.

• Find unique outcomes.
  Notice small deviations from the script: the quiet apology, the moment someone stayed calm.

• Re-author together.
  Draft a story that keeps what’s worth keeping and retires the rest.

“The most powerful therapeutic process I know,” White added later, “is to contribute to rich story development.”
— Kalen Zeiger

When it works, the family doesn’t just solve a problem—they change the narrative grammar they live inside.

The House of Unspoken Rules

Three women, one kitchen, seventy years of inherited etiquette:

• Grandmother: “We kept our troubles private.”

• Mother: “That silence hurt me.”

• Daughter: “Secrets are poison. I’ll talk to the internet instead.”

Together they name their shared legacy The Silence Story.
They trace where it came from, how it once protected them, and how it began to suffocate them.
Finally, they agree on a new line for the family history:

“We honour our past and we speak.”

The refrigerator hums. The kettle whistles. The story begins to loosen its grip, just a little.

Love, Friendship, and the Plotline of Repair

Relationship researcher John Gottman calls friendship the secret weapon of lasting love. Narrative Therapy widens that friendship to include the family’s own story—because you can’t repair what you can’t name.

And Sue Johnson, founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy, reminds us that emotion is the music under every story. When families reconnect through their stories, they don’t just change the script—they change the affective rhythm.

When the Story Meets a Different Kind of Brain

Narrative Therapy assumes a narrator: someone fluent in metaphor, sequencing, and emotional inference. That assumption works fine for neurotypical clients. For neurodiverse minds, it can sometimes feel like trying to write a novel in Excel.

Autism and Story

Here’s the challenge: autistic folks often think in systems, not stories.
A review of narrative interventions found that structured, visually supported storytelling improved communication for young autistic souls.
A systematic review of psychotherapy for autistic adults showed that clear structure, literal language, and sensory predictability made therapy far more effective.

So, the issue isn’t the suitability of Narrative Therapy—it’s attempting improvisation without proper scaffolding.

ADHD and the Nonlinear Arc

People with ADHD live in jump cuts.
A 2025 scoping review found that Narrative Therapy reduced symptoms when therapists reframed “disorganization” as a storytelling glitch rather than a character flaw.

Neuro-Affirming Story Work

At the Dulwich Centre, David Denborough’s Travelling Down the Neuro-Pathway reframes Narrative Therapy for neurodiverse clients: externalize burnout, not neurology.
He writes, “Neurodiverse clients don’t lack narrative; they innovate it. Their minds build mosaics, not monologues.”

Where Story Therapy Trips Up

• Metaphor overload. Dragons and castles may delight one client and baffle another.

• Executive fatigue. “Tell me your life story” can be a cognitive marathon.

• Identity confusion. When “the problem story” sounds suspiciously like “you.”

When that happens, therapy stops being narrative and starts being neuro-normative cultural imperialism with soft lighting.

Making Story Work Accessible

• Draw the plot. Use diagrams or whiteboards. (Bernier Lab Guide)

• Structure the arc. Provide scene cards or timelines; predictability is mercy.

• Borrow special interests. Let clients narrate through code, music, or fandoms.

• Speak concretely. Define metaphors, summarize in writing.

• Keep sensory consistency. The story can change—the environment shouldn’t.

As Narrative Therapy practitioner Courtney Olinger puts it, “Co-authoring doesn’t mean inviting someone into your story; it means learning the grammar of theirs.”

Culture, Class, and Whose Version Endures

In collectivist cultures, family stories are communal property—told aloud, revised in public.
In individualist cultures, they’re seen as private assets.
Narrative Therapy straddles the middle ground, helping families decide whose version survives, and whose is quietly redacted.

Stories Are Neurological, Too

Every therapy model is a metaphor for cognition:
CBT says thoughts lead to feelings.
Somatic work says the body remembers.
Narrative Therapy says identity is storied—and editable.

For neurodivergent clients, that story might look more like a database than a diary. That’s not a flaw; it’s a different syntax.

The goal isn’t to turn clients into poets, it’s about returning to authentic authorship.

What People Actually Ask

“Can Narrative Therapy work if my dad won’t come?”
Yes. Change one narrator and you change the story.

“What if I don’t think in stories?”
Then we use charts, memes, or playlists. Meaning matters more than medium.

“Does talking about the past make things worse?”
Sometimes, but for most folks, only briefly. Then it makes room to your feelings to breathe.

Final thoughts

Working in a Narrative Therapy Model with multigenerational or neurodiverse families is less like being a detective work and more like being an executive co-editor.
You’re helping your clients to restore their missing chapters, correct attribution errors, and let everyone in the family system re-enter the story authentically as themselves.

Narrative Therapy, done with humility, isn’t literary—it’s architectural.
It helps families remodel the emotional houses they’ve inherited without tearing down the load-bearing walls of identity.

Stories are how we stay human. Narrative Therapy just helps us edit.

If your family’s story feels outdated or written in someone else’s hand, I can help with that.
Perhaps we’ll start a draft of a new story that finally fits.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

REFERENCES:

Bernier, R., et al. (2017). Trauma and ASD Reference Guide. University of Washington. TF-CBT

Denborough, D. (2008). Collective narrative practice. Adelaide: Dulwich Centre Publications.

Denborough, D. (2022). Travelling down the neuro-pathway. Dulwich Centre

Morgan, A. (2000). What is narrative therapy? Adelaide: Dulwich Centre Publications.

Walsh, F. (2021). Strengthening family resilience (4th ed.). New York: Guilford Press.

White, M., & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. New York: W. W. Norton.

White, M. (2007). Maps of narrative practice. New York: W. W. Norton.

Systematic Review: Psychotherapy Adaptations for Autistic Adults. (2024). Frontiers in Psychology, 15. PMC

Scoping Review: Narrative Therapy for ADHD. (2025). Journal of Psychotherapy Integration. PubMed