What is Mindfulness Based Narrative-Existential Therapy?

Hi, I’m Jess, and I developed MBNET through years of helping people learn new ways of relating to the painful parts of life so they can move past the struggle and start living out their values.

It all starts with mindfulness

Mindfulness is at the core of everything I do, and here’s why: You can’t change something you’re not aware of. It has to start with awareness of who you are, what you’re doing, and where you want to be instead.

I like to use the language of mindfulness because it’s focused on noticing without judgment. Trying to shame yourself into change just doesn’t work. At first, it’s hard. The more you observe your patterns, the more you see yourself doing the things you don’t want to do over and over and over again. But noticing unlocks the power to change.

Acceptance is a key component of mindfulness. And it’s often one of the hardest things at first. We often think of acceptance as approval when really it’s just letting the facts speak for themselves. More on that later.

Narrative therapy shows the power of language and story

One thing I’ll be looking for as we learn and practice mindfulness is the way you talk about things. The stories we tell about ourselves, others, and the world shape our perception and by re-storying or shaping language differently, we can change the way we relate.

This touches on all parts of your experience. The way you think, how you handle emotions, the weight of your expectations, where you place responsibility- all this is important. We’ll focus on the things that are most relevant to you and your goals.

Existential therapy is about how you relate to life and absolutes

Some things in life are inevitable. We’ll all have to face pain, death, change, and questions about purpose and meaning. Life is inherently uncertain and unfair, and people often react to that by trying harder and harder to control the outcome, avoid pain and discomfort, and create narrative systems to explain the unexplainable.

Acceptance comes back here. All our attempts at control, avoidance, and creating narratives only lead to more pain and suffering. But this is what we call secondary pain. The primary pain is the difficulty of life. That pain is unavoidable. Secondary pain is all the additional suffering we inflict on ourselves as we try to avoid feeling the primary pain.

MBNET in Action: Case Study of Anxiety

This case study is based on generalizations. No specific client details are listed, and any similarity to your individual experience is unintentional.

Anxiety is one of the most common reasons people seek therapy. The worry is just too much. You have trouble sleeping some nights, you spend a lot of time on the what-ifs, and you rehearse social interactions before and after they happen.

In therapy, we start with your history. Were you always anxious even as a kid, or did it start later in your life? What was going on at the time? Were either of your parents anxious people?

I’ll also ask about how you experience anxiety. For some people it’s like a constant mental chatter. Other people feel it in their bodies as muscle tension, upset stomach, or headaches. You might feel it emotionally as worry, sadness, or even anger.

We’ll start with mindfulness. We might go over a recent incident where you felt particularly anxious, really getting into your thoughts, your emotions, and your body feelings at the time. I’ll ask about what happened at the moment you first noticed your anxiety, the moment it started feeling worse, and how long it lasted.

Then we’ll explore your relationship to anxiety in general. We’ll look at the ways anxiety has been helpful to you, the purpose it serves in your life. One common thing I hear is a fear that without anxiety as a constant presence, you might not be prepared for whatever comes up or you might not get things done.

Next we’ll explore how anxiety is getting in the way. All those things you avoid because you don’t want to feel anxious. The values you hold but don’t live out. The ways anxiety affects your trust in yourself and the way you relate to others.

The rest of the work from there is individualized depending on your unique circumstances, history, and goals. But I hope that gives you a taste of what it might be like to work with me using MBNET.