What do we miss when a diagnosis becomes the whole story?
Dr. Travis Heath joins Gordon Brewer to explore how narrative therapy helps us understand the stories clients tell about themselves—and the stories their families, communities, and culture tell about them.
Together, they discuss how labels can both offer clarity and limit understanding, why slowing down matters in therapy, and how curiosity can open up new possibilities. Travis also shares ways therapists can reflect on their sessions, question familiar assumptions, and move beyond simply listing a client's strengths to hearing the experiences behind them.
This conversation invites therapists to look beyond the diagnosis and make room for clients to feel more fully seen and known.
In this episode:
• How personal and cultural stories shape identity
• The benefits and limitations of diagnostic labels
• Slowing down and moving beyond either/or thinking
• Asking questions that invite richer client stories
• Staying curious about your own clinical work
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
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Meet Dr. Travis Heath
Travis Heath, PhD, is a licensed psychologist and has been in community practice for nearly two decades. His scholarship has included looking at shifting from a multicultural approach to counseling to one of cultural democracy that invites people to heal in mediums that are culturally near. Other writings have focused on the use of rap music in narrative therapy, working with persons entangled in the criminal injustice system in ways that maintain their dignity, narrative practice stories as pedagogy, and a co-created questioning practice called reunion questions. He is co-author, with David Epston and Tom Carlson, of the first book on Contemporary Narrative Therapy released in June 2022 entitled, Reimagining Narrative Therapy Through Practice Stories and Autoethnography. He has presented his work in 10 countries to date.
Hear more from Travis on his podcast, Therapist Confidential, and explore his conversations and webinars at https://www.psychotherapy.net
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Email: theath@knowfully.com
