Drinking problem...what’s your story? with Narrative Therapist Tessa Freeman

My guest this week is narrative therapist Tessa Freeman.

Narrative Therapy is very much in line with our approach at Tribe Sober - because it’s about separating a person from their problem

It’s about ditching the guilt and shame along with the alcohol

I’s about enabling people to realise that they should not label themselves or see themselves as broken or the problem or powerless

Tessa and I have both had a lot of experience of working with groups and agreed that the magic of community is that we can gradually replace our addiction with connection.

In this episode

• When Tessa lost her father she needed support so had some narrative therapy
• This piqued her interest to such an extent that she decided to train as a narrative therapist herself
• She is now a Narrative Therapist specializing in addiction
• Tessa explained that (a bit like coaching) narrative therapy is based on the fact that the client is the expert and the therapist walks alongside them (rather than in front of them)
• When working with alcohol dependent clients Tessa will always separate the problem from the person which will reduce any feelings of shame
• We agreed that addiction can be very isolating but once we join a group we realise that we are not the only one and we feel so much better – eventually connection with the group begins to take the place of the addiction
• At Tribe Sober we encourage our members to write a “Goodbye to Alcohol Letter” and you can see some examples on tribesober.com under the podcasts, blogs and more menu
• Tessa also uses an analogy explaining that if two women who had been in an abusive relationship with the same man were to meet – they would have an instant bond and realise the damage that relationship had caused.
• That makes me think of that beautiful quote by CS Lewis “friendship is born in the moment when one person says to another “you too? – I thought I was the only one”
• When I first started working in this field 7 years ago I was amazed by the bond I could see developing so quickly between our members – complete strangers from all over the world but their common experience enables them to be vulnerable and open with each other
• We talked about the shares that take place at the beginning of each of our Tribe Sober workshops – when each participant will share just how unhappy alcohol has been making them – these shares demonstrate the power of story telling….
• Story telling is of course the foundation of narrative therapy and Tessa explained that we make sense of our lives by the stories we tell ourselves…. And when we share our stories we are bearing our souls and showing who we really are….and also demonstrating the power of vulnerability
• We talked about the many false narratives in the public domain and Tessa gave us the example of her friend explaining that if Tessa wanted to have children she would have to have to start drinking because – as her friend put it:-
  "It takes a vineyard to raise a child"
• These kind of stories are so common that eventually we internalize them and look for confirmation bias to convince ourselves they are true
• This way they become limiting beliefs
• Which are shared by our friends and that’s how a global trend like “mommyjuice” is born
• I asked Tessa to explain how she would use narrative therapy to overturn this belief that her friend was holding
• The belief that it takes a vineyard to raise a child
• Her approach would be to deconstruct the belief ie to stay curious about it and to challenge it
• Tessa would take her friend back to a time before she drank when she didn’t hold this belief
• She would ask her to think about who she is without alcohol
• Tessa would help her friend to externalize her story by searching for good stories – a period in her friend's life when alcohol was not present
• She would also remind her that in fact she parents for most of the day without alcohol and she would help her to explore alternative ways of reducing the stress
• and then to co-author a new belief which would alter her friends identity
• It’s so important to remember that you are never the problem, rather you are the person with a problem
• Focussing on the clients strengths make it easier to separate them from the problem
• It’s about building and strengthening the alternative stories we can hold about ourselves
• Many of us who were/are alcohol dependent have low self esteem from all those years of trying (and failing) to cut down or quit so focusing on our strengths will help to rebuild our feelings of self worth.
• I often say that the path to sobriety is about learning to love and nurture ourselves again, about learning to put ourselves first rather than last!
• I asked Tessa what she had learned during her time working in the addiction field
• She told me that when she started her job she was expecting to be working with a lot of homeless or unemployed people so it was a big surprise that most of her clients were high functioning with good careers.
• That’s when she realized that addiction was not a rarity – in fact it had gone “mainstream”
• So she learned that addiction doesn’t discriminate between rich or poor, between race or gender – anyone can fall victim to alcohol dependence
• In fact the stats tell us that 20% of social drinkers will become dependent over the years
• We agreed that although hard drugs are demonized the socially acceptable legal drug called alcohol kills far more – in fact 3M people a year die from alcohol related causes
• If you listen to the Tribe Sober podcast interview with Professor Stockwell you will hear his theory that the figure is actually far higher – due to the way the deaths are reported – you can listen to that podcast here.
• We talked about the power of group sessions and the relief that people feel when they realise that they are not alone 
• Tessa likes to help alcohol dependent clients with a mix of individual and group therapy.
• People are often nervous to join a group due to their guilt and shame but Tessa works 1.2.1 with them so they can see the guilt and shame are just tools the addiction is using to prevent the user from seeking help.
• We agreed that even when people have clocked up some months of sobriety it’s still important to stay in the group
• As Tessa says other problems may pop up and cross addiction sometimes happens
• We need to keep adding to our toolkit to ensure that we not only stay sober but we start to build an alcohol free life that we love
• We need to make sure that if FAB (fading affect bias) hits and we hear that voice saying that surely we can have just one now….. that we have our community reminding us that actually no we can’t ever have just one – we have to rather use that energy into creating a life we don’t want to escape from
• What we’ve seen at Tribe Sober over the years is that from our 400 members we have a core of members who have been sober for years but who stick around to help and inspire the newer members.
• Friendships have formed between these members who are in different countries with different life experiences and who all have each others backs
• So if you’d like to try the power of community just to go tribesober.com and hit join our tribe
• You can reach Tessa via her website www.santcoll.co.za         or via her email which is tessa@santcoll.co.za  
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