The role of storytelling in counselling for opiate use disorder
Format Type
Plenary
Format Type
Paper
Start Date
12-1-2021 1:30 PM
End Date
12-1-2021 1:50 PM
Abstract
Previously we explored storytelling for women recovering from opiate use. We examined the effect of using an Amazonian motif of strong women stories on subsequent recovery. We expanded our sample from 13 women to 41 people, including 8 men. We used the Northwestern University Life Story Interview at the initiation of our process along with the Adverse Childhood Events Scale. We sought the story people told early in their treatment to explain their opiate use. The psychotherapists working with these patients were encouraged and supported to tell stories about people having agency and making choices and taking actions to overcome adversity. We provided the psychotherapists with samples of stories from traditional cultures (many of the patients were Native American), popular culture, and literature. Following a minimum of six months of treatment, we looked again at the stories people told to explain their relationship with opiates. We applied an iterative, constructivist, grounded theory approach (inspired by Charmaz) to find the prominent themes of these collections of stories. Analysis continued to support previous findings that the stories told presented opiate use as reactive to life circumstances, justified by those circumstances, with a passive style of coping that minimized agency. Stories told after participation in treatment showed increasing levels of agency and sense of choice and often included examples of stories told by the psychotherapist. We concluded that continual repetition of heroic stories of characters with agency shifts perspective in that direction.
Keywords
opiate use disorder, grounded theory, storytelling, psychotherapy, agency
The role of storytelling in counselling for opiate use disorder
Previously we explored storytelling for women recovering from opiate use. We examined the effect of using an Amazonian motif of strong women stories on subsequent recovery. We expanded our sample from 13 women to 41 people, including 8 men. We used the Northwestern University Life Story Interview at the initiation of our process along with the Adverse Childhood Events Scale. We sought the story people told early in their treatment to explain their opiate use. The psychotherapists working with these patients were encouraged and supported to tell stories about people having agency and making choices and taking actions to overcome adversity. We provided the psychotherapists with samples of stories from traditional cultures (many of the patients were Native American), popular culture, and literature. Following a minimum of six months of treatment, we looked again at the stories people told to explain their relationship with opiates. We applied an iterative, constructivist, grounded theory approach (inspired by Charmaz) to find the prominent themes of these collections of stories. Analysis continued to support previous findings that the stories told presented opiate use as reactive to life circumstances, justified by those circumstances, with a passive style of coping that minimized agency. Stories told after participation in treatment showed increasing levels of agency and sense of choice and often included examples of stories told by the psychotherapist. We concluded that continual repetition of heroic stories of characters with agency shifts perspective in that direction.