Narrative Exposure Therapy Part 2

Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) is a trauma-focused therapy that’s used to treat people who have experienced multiple traumas, allowing them to make sense of the context in which traumatic events have happened, often across their lives. NET has been shown by research to be effective for treating PTSD.

At Combat Stress, NET is delivered to veterans by our psychologists and psychotherapists both online and in-person. Before a veteran starts NET, they will be equipped with knowledge to help them understand the impact of traumas on peoples’ lives and the clinical rationale behind the treatment.

In the first NET session, a veteran will create a lifeline of the significant life events in chronological order, using different symbols to represent different events, including stones and sticks for traumas, candles for losses, and flowers for positive experiences and relationships. Each therapy session is used to work through a traumatic event, and this is also done in chronological order of events throughout the lifetime.

At the end of each NET session, the psychologist or psychotherapist will write a summary narrative of the traumatic event that has been explored. This is read back at the beginning of the next NET session and reflected on. The last NET session entails reading back the entire narrative across the lifeline jointly developed by the veteran and the clinician through therapy. This is reflected on and hopes for the future discussed.

The veteran meets with their clinician three months after therapy, as typically improvements in PTSD continue in this initial period after NET has finished. This provides an opportunity to check on further progress made.