Narrative Therapy
Narrative therapy, often called storytelling therapy, empowers you to become the author of your own life story. In this collaborative process, we explore the dominant narratives that influence how you see yourself, especially those shaped by marginalization and systemic oppression. Together, we challenge limiting or harmful stories and work to uncover alternative narratives that highlight your strengths, resilience, values, and unique perspective.
At The Hinterlands, narrative therapy creates a space for reclaiming your voice and rewriting your story on your terms, fostering healing, growth, and empowerment.
We offer online narrative therapy for clients in Illinois and Connecticut, in-person sessions at our Irving Park, Chicago office, and hybrid sessions combining both.
Areas of Clinical Specialty
LGBTQIA+: We offer queer and trans narrative therapy that honors your unique story as a LGBTQIA+ person. Our psychotherapists support you in exploring and reshaping narratives around identity, discrimination, dysphoria, coming out, and chosen family, helping you claim empowering stories that reflect your truth.
ENM/Poly Folks: We understand the complex relational narratives within ethical non-monogamy and polyamory. Whether you’re redefining relationship stories, navigating transitions, or confronting stigma, we provide a nonjudgmental space to create stories grounded in consent, autonomy, and authentic connection.
BDSM/Kink Community: The Hinterlands affirms kink as a vital part of your identity and expression. Our kink-aware therapists help you explore and rewrite stories about intimacy and desire without judgment or pathologizing, supporting you in embracing your full self.
Immigrants/Refugees: We provide culturally responsive narrative therapy that honors stories of displacement, resilience, intergenerational trauma, and life in diaspora. We meet you with dignity as you reclaim narratives that affirm your strength and belonging.
Substance Use: We approach substance use through storytelling, supporting you in exploring your relationship with substances without shame or coercion. Together, we create new narratives that foster harm reduction, insight, and self-compassion.
Chronic Illness/HIV: Living with chronic illness or HIV impacts your life story deeply. We support you in rewriting narratives around autonomy, body sovereignty, and care, acknowledging your lived experience without minimizing its complexity.
Autism/ADHD/Neuroqueer: We affirm neurodivergent identities as natural and valuable parts of your story. Our therapeutic storytelling offering respects your sensory and communication needs and helps you craft narratives that embrace your authentic self.
Multi-Cultural/Mixed-Race: Navigating multicultural and/or mixed-race identities shapes complex narratives of belonging and identity. We leverage BIPOC narrative therapy to support you in exploring and integrating these stories, honoring cultural dissonance as part of your unique journey.
Artists/Performers/Craftsfolk: With many of our therapists rooted in the arts, we understand the emotional narratives of creative life. Whether facing burnout, impostor syndrome, or creative blocks, we help you explore and rewrite stories that nurture your creative spirit.
Religious/Spiritual Trauma: We offer space to unpack and transform stories of coercion, shame, or disconnection tied to religious and spiritual trauma. Our narrative therapy approach supports grief, reclamation, and the creation of new spiritual narratives.
Parenting: Parenting shifts your life story in profound ways. We support caregivers through identity changes, intergenerational trauma, co-parenting, and raising neurodivergent children, helping you create compassionate parenting narratives.
Educators: Teaching carries rich emotional narratives shaped by labor, barriers, and leadership. We hold space for educators to explore these stories fully and to find balance, renewal, and meaning in their work.
Activists: Activism can bring both pain and purpose. We support you in navigating narratives of burnout, grief, moral injury, and accountability, honoring activism as a space for healing and transformation.
Mad/Crip Folks: For Mad/Crip individuals, our disability-affirming therapists prioritize autonomy and counter psychiatric pathologization, helping you craft stories rooted in empowerment and resistance.
What to Expect
No two narrative therapy sessions are the same. We begin with curiosity about the stories that have shaped your life—stories rooted in your biography, culture, neurotype, and temperament. Together, we’ll identify the dominant narratives influencing your experiences and explore alternative stories that reflect your strengths, values, and vision for change. Narrative therapy is one tool among many for rewriting your relationship to identity, systems, and the world around you.
Your first appointment is a space for mutual exploration. You’ll get to know your therapist as much as they’ll be learning about you, your language, your metaphors, and your preferred ways of making meaning. By the end of the session, we’ll discuss whether and how to move forward together. We’ll also cover scheduling, payment, and office policies. Our goal is to help you feel at ease as you begin reshaping your story with care and intention.
Narrative Therapy FAQs
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That’s a perfect place to start. Many people come to therapy feeling unclear, stuck, or silenced. Part of narrative therapy is uncovering the hidden, forgotten, or suppressed stories that have always been with you, and imagining new ones that align with who you’re becoming.
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Narrative therapy may be a good fit if you’re curious about how your identity has been shaped by the stories you’ve inherited from family, culture, institutions, or society, and you’re interested in exploring new, more empowering ways to see yourself. It can be especially resonant if you’ve experienced marginalization, feel stuck in a particular life narrative, or want to separate yourself from labels or diagnoses that don’t fully reflect who you are. If you value collaboration, creativity, and meaning-making in therapy, narrative work can offer a deeply affirming path forward.
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The psychotherapists at The Hinterlands are in-network with Blue Cross Blue Shield PPO and Aetna. We are out-of-network with all other insurance providers, including Medicaid and Medicare. Payment is due at the time of service.
If you're using out-of-network benefits, we’re happy to provide monthly superbills and statements to support your reimbursement process. We accept HSA cards, Zelle, and all major credit cards for payment.
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We are committed to providing affordable narrative therapy for our community. We offer a range of cash-pay options, including sliding scale therapy sessions. These rates are based on therapist availability and the type of treatment, and typically range from $25 to the full session fee.
Sliding scale slots are limited and tend to fill quickly. During your intake call, you can ask your therapist whether they currently have sliding scale availability.