Guided Narration - Theory and Practice of a Counseling Model in Grief Situations
by Nicola Ferrari, Franco Tosi
Grief and aid relations: presenting a new methodology for supporting who is experiencing a loss.
- It's like a tunnel, it's all black.
The young mother, mourning her son's suicide, has a look with no horizons.
- And, at the bottom, can you see an outlet?
She answers quickly, sharply, with absolute resolution:
- No, I don't see a light at the end of it.
- A path without an end, how do you call it?
She lowers her eyes, then looks up, to her left, she searches the word, the real word, the one which cor-responds. Seconds tick, they keep on passing and we remain there, waiting for a noun, an adjective, maybe a verb or even a phrase, a metaphor.
- A dead end.
She says it firmly, almost astonished for having succeeded to find the right term: it's a sort of inner liberation. Now her devastation can be named with clear words, well defined: finally, we can start walking on this path. Together.
The Guided Narration is a method to discover, through shared analysis of the written and spoken language, new alternatives for life when, during a mourning, other strategies have proved to be inefficient.