# Narrative Therapy and Metaphorical Cards: Externalizing the Story Narrative therapy separates the person from the problem — and metaphorical cards make that separation physical. How cards support externalizing, finding unique outcomes, re-authoring, and re-membering. Narrative therapy rests on a premise that changes everything once a client takes it seriously: the problem is not the person. People arrive carrying stories about themselves — "I'm the anxious one," "I've always been a failure" — and those stories, told often enough, start to feel like identity rather than description. The work is helping someone loosen a thin, problem-saturated account of themselves and find the richer one underneath. Metaphorical cards suit this approach unusually well. Here's how they support the core narrative moves. ## Externalizing: Giving the Problem a Face The signature narrative move is externalization — shifting from "I am anxious" to "the Anxiety visits me." Language does a lot of this work, but images do it faster and more vividly. When a client chooses a card to represent the problem and places it on the table, the separation becomes physical: the problem is now over _there_, and the client is here, looking at it. That small distance changes what's possible. You can ask questions of a card that would feel absurd asked of a client's identity: _What does this thing want? When did it first show up? What does it feed on? When is it strongest, and when does it lose its grip?_ The client answers readily, because they're describing something outside themselves rather than confessing something about who they are. ## Finding Unique Outcomes The problem story is always incomplete. Somewhere in a client's history are moments the problem didn't win — narrative therapy calls these unique outcomes or sparkling moments, and they're the seeds of an alternative story. The difficulty is that clients rarely notice them; the dominant story filters them out. Cards help surface them. Invite the client to choose an image for _a time this problem didn't have you_, even briefly. The image often calls up a specific memory the client had genuinely forgotten. From there you can thicken it with the usual questions: what did that require of them, who else would have noticed, what does it say about what they value? ## Re-Authoring: Building the Alternative Story Once unique outcomes appear, the work turns to linking them into a coherent alternative account. This is where a spread of cards earns its place. Lay them out as a timeline — the problem story on one line, the emerging story on another — and you have a visible, rearrangeable map of two competing narratives. Clients can move cards, add to them, decide which belongs where. The physical act of building the alternative line often does more than describing it would; the story stops being an idea and becomes something they've assembled with their hands. ## Re-Membering: Who Else Is in the Story Narrative work often invites clients to reconsider who has a place in their life's "club of members" — the figures whose voices matter. Cards make this concrete. Ask for images representing people who saw the client differently than the problem story does, or who contributed something they still carry. Arranging those cards around the client's own is a quietly powerful way to reconnect them to supportive witnesses, living or not. ## Why the Images Have to Be Meaningless Something worth flagging, because it matters for this modality more than most: metaphorical cards carry no fixed meanings. There's no system, no interpretation, nothing predicted — a client sees whatever they see. This is precisely why they fit narrative practice. Handing a client a card with an assigned meaning would be handing them another external account of themselves, which is the opposite of the work. Cards that mean nothing on their own leave the client as the sole author. It's worth saying this to clients too, briefly, when you first bring cards out. It's not tarot, nothing is being read, and there's no right answer — a framing that lands well with clients already suspicious of being told who they are. ## A Simple Session Structure - **Name it.** A card for the problem — externalized, on the table, with a name the client gives it. - **Map its influence.** What it does, when it's strongest, what it costs. - **Find an exception.** A card for a moment it didn't have them. - **Thicken it.** Explore that moment fully — what it reveals about the client's values and skills. - **Lay the alternative.** Cards for other moments that belong to the emerging story, arranged as a line. - **Look forward.** A card for how this story might continue. ## Working Remotely Narrative card work depends on the client arranging things themselves — externalization is weakened considerably if the therapist is the one moving the pieces. For online sessions, that means a genuinely shared board rather than screen-sharing: the client needs to place the problem card, build their own timeline, and move things where they belong. You can see how a shared session works on the [**collaborative sessions page**](https://mindtrays.com/collaborative-mode). Saved layouts are useful here too — an alternative story built over several sessions can be returned to and thickened rather than rebuilt each time. ## Bringing It Into Practice Open, evocative imagery serves narrative work best. [**Figures**](https://mindtrays.com/decks/mindtrays-figures) is useful for re-membering and relational positions, [**Resources**](https://mindtrays.com/decks/mindtrays-resources) for the skills and values inside unique outcomes, and [**Essence**](https://mindtrays.com/decks/essence) for the problem story itself. [**Explore the decks on MindTrays**](https://mindtrays.com/decks) _— MindTrays Team_ --- [View on MindTrays](https://mindtrays.com/blog/narrative-therapy-metaphorical-cards)