Using Narrative Therapy to combat shame

Dr Anni Hine Moana's mother spent the first year of her life in a children’s home after being removed from her mother.

It is a heartrending truth that deeply affected both women’s lives.

“My mother developed a harmful relationship with alcohol after discovering more about her origins in her mid-forties,” Dr Hine Moana explains.

“Following my mother’s death in the 1990s, I read some letters that she had written to my father while undergoing therapy for depression and a problem with alcohol. I learned that she experienced high levels of shame, which she associated with her drinking,” the academic and psychotherapist adds.

Personal and challenging stories such as these are not unique.

While working with Australian Aboriginal, Maori and Torres Strait Islander women, Dr Hine Moana identified a common theme in the shame and stigma they experienced in relation to social identity and harmful alcohol use.

“This was strongly related to the stories the women had been told about themselves by others,” Dr Hine Moana says.

This realisation led to her interest in Narrative Therapy approaches and her PhD topic, which explored the relationship between shame and problems with alcohol through the narratives of Aboriginal women.

It is a journey that has not only helped others heal but has also helped Dr Hine Moana uncover new opportunities for herself to heal.

“During my journey as a researcher and a Narrative Therapy practitioner, I began to feel better about myself,” she says.

Growing awareness of the importance of culturally appropriate practices

In addition to her work as a counsellor and counselling supervisor, Dr Hine Moana is an academic who works at Monash University in the Graduate Program of Addictive Behaviours.

Last month, she was awarded an Advance HE Fellowship via Monash University’s Teaching Excellence Program, which formally recognises dedication to excellence in learning and teaching practice.

Students enrolled in the program benefit from her specialised expertise, including her recorded lectures on Narrative Therapy and working with First Nations Australian people.

Dr Hine Moana was recently invited to be the Convenor of the Australian Counselling Association’s Melbourne Chapter and presented at the Oral History Conference in Melbourne on the importance of “Looking at Our Own History Books” when working with First Nations people.

“I am very grateful to have been mentored throughout my academic career by Aboriginal ethnographer Dr Janet Hammill AM, and over the past 10 years by Aboriginal elder and senior counsellor Aunty Suzanne Nelson,” Dr Hine Moana says.

Dr Hine Moana has worked on a variety of participatory action research projects with Australian Aboriginal communities and was headhunted to work as a First Nations Specialist psychotherapist and counsellor.

Later this year, she will present at the Australian Counselling Association Conference on approaches for counsellors working with Australian Aboriginal women.

Her experience in applying culturally appropriate therapeutic approaches is attracting interest.

With good reason.

Why are culturally appropriate therapeutic approaches needed?

Despite being effective for many people, mainstream approaches to alcohol and other drug counselling may not be appropriate for all clients.

“If the individual’s cultural and social factors are not considered, the counselling provided may be inconsistent with their worldview, priorities and values,” Dr Hine Moana explains.

As a result of this inconsistency, the treatment can be ineffective and may be damaging to the individual’s cultural and social identity.

“For Aboriginal women, whose voices have been historically silenced, the importance of listening to them and aligning the therapy with their worldview, priorities and values is even greater,” Dr Hine Moana says.

How do narrative therapeutic approaches help people?

Narrative therapeutic approaches support clients to look beyond the idea of a “problem with alcohol” to the context of the social and political landscape and consider the ways that transgenerational trauma, stigma and discrimination all contribute to the situation.

In other words, the clients come to see that alcohol is only one of many stories that could be told about their lives. This allows space for new stories to emerge – stories of resilience, strength and courage in the face of oppression and trauma.

From that place of reframing an individual's personal “history book”, transformation is possible.

“In the process, the women uncover new opportunities to heal, not only for themselves and other Aboriginal Australians but also for non-Aboriginal Australians – including myself,” Dr Hine Moana adds.

“The shame that I had always felt pretty much disappeared.”

Find out more:

• Dr Hine Moana’s work: The Ethnographer Unbared: Looking at My Own History Book and On the relationship between shame and problems with alcohol through the narratives of Aboriginal women.
• Monash University’s graduate program of Addictive Behaviours
• The Dulwich Centre, A home of narrative therapy and community work, including their free introductory course in Narrative Therapy
• The University of Melbourne’s Master of Narrative Therapy and Community Work

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