08/07/2026
In this conversation, we’re speaking about the Response-Based Model within narrative therapy. This model reframes our understanding of how we as individuals respond to trauma, both during and after, and invites therapists to look at trauma responses through a different lens. There is a lot more to this model than a short caption or video can describe, but here we discuss it’s application in terms of de-shaming trauma responses and recognizing them as expressions of agency, rather than evidence of passivity or failure.
We are taught, both as clients and clinicians, that pain is a problem to fix - not always in such explicit terms, but implicitly through social cues we absorb throughout our everyday lives. And as mentioned in this video, pain absolutely is something that brings real difficulty and suffering that deserves care. But this model asks us to hold alongside that: that the ways we survive hard things are often intelligent, resourceful, and courageous, even when they don’t look like what we’d typically call “coping well.”
In practice, instead of seeing pain only as a set of symptoms, this perspective asks: What has this person been doing to survive what happened to them? How have they protected themselves, preserved their dignity, resisted harm, maintained connection, or adapted when choices were constrained?
The answers to these questions are often overlooked, because survival responses can appear on the outside as the very behaviours we identify as problematic - withdrawal, anger, numbness, hypervigilance, silence, and so on. But when we look more closely, each of these responses often carry their own logic.
This isn’t to say that every survival response will serve us well in the long run. Some responses that once protected us can become costly over time. But before we ask ourselves to change, there can be something profoundly healing about recognizing how hard we have already been working.
