Narrative Couples Therapy, Volume 1
Video
with
Tom Stone Carlson, PhD, Sanni Paljakka, MSc., RPsych
Video 3.5 CE Credits

Narrative Couples Therapy, Volume 1

Couples often enter therapy caught in cycles of defensiveness, blame, and conflict. In Volume 1 of Narrative Couples Therapy, renowned clinicians Sanni Paljakka and Tom Stone Carlson demonstrate a brief intervention that creates space for conversations about longing, love, and lived experience. Watching them work, you'll see how to use Intimate Witnessing, a Narrative Therapy practice, to help partners move beyond blame and defensiveness, and reach for one another's experience instead of defending their own. You'll come away with a fresh framework for helping couples foster deeper understanding, relational accountability, and the freedom to speak openly. Length: 3h 42m
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COURSE DETAILS

Overview

Many couples seek therapy because they feel trapped in repetitive arguments about everyday issues. Even approaches that strengthen interpersonal skills or deepen psychological insight can leave unspoken the deeper questions of longing, love, and lived experience. How do therapists help partners move beyond fault-finding, psychological labels, and defensive justifications to speak more openly about what matters most?

In this first volume of Narrative Couples Therapy, Sanni Paljakka and Tom Stone Carlson introduce the philosophical foundations of their approach in two clinical sessions with Raysa and Johnathan, a couple struggling to reconnect. Through the practice of Intimate Witnessing, they guide the couple beyond discussions of who is right or wrong and into conversations about feeling loved and unloved, their deepest longings, and the moral messages in everyday interactions. Along the way, they illustrate core narrative practices such as relational accountability, collaborative inquiry, therapeutic documents, and the importance of helping clients find the freedom to speak truly.

By watching this video, you’ll learn how to shift conversations away from professionalized language and toward clients’ own stories, invite partners to imagine one another’s inner experience while respecting agency, and facilitate richer, more meaningful conversations that deepen connection rather than simply resolving surface-level conflict.

You’ll discover how to…

  • Listen for longing beneath conflict
  • Help partners speak more openly about what matters most
  • Turn conversations about chores into conversations about care
  • Invite accountability without blame
  • Prioritize client language to create a shared understanding
  • Create the conditions for the “freedom to speak truly.”

What you'll learn

  • Describe the philosophical and ethical foundations of narrative couples therapy, including the concepts of relational accountability and the shaping effects of therapeutic conversations.
  • Explain the purpose and clinical rationale of intimate witnessing and how role repositioning can help reduce defensiveness while increasing mutual understanding between partners.
  • Apply narrative interviewing practices that help couples move beyond blame and behavioral complaints toward conversations about longing, meaning, care, and relational responsibility.
  • Differentiate narrative interventions that emphasize the relational effects of partners' actions from approaches that focus primarily on intention, explanation, or fault-finding.
  • Evaluate the use of narrative practices—including collaborative inquiry, therapeutic documents, and reflective conversations—to strengthen empathy, accountability, and connection within couple relationships.

About the Experts

Tom Stone Carlson, PhD
Featured Expert

Tom Stone Carlson, PhD

Tom Carlson, PhD, is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Professor and Branch Director of the Couple and Family Therapy Program at Alliant International University, San Diego. He serves as Co-Editor of the Journal of Contemporary Narrative Therapy and is recognized for his contributions to narrative therapy, pedagogy, LGBTQ-affirmative therapy, relational accountability in couples therapy, and pro-feminist approaches to supporting women impacted by patriarchal violence. Dr. Carlson has published and presented extensively in these areas. His recent works include Reimagining…

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Sanni Paljakka, MSc., RPsych
Featured Expert

Sanni Paljakka, MSc., RPsych

Sanni Paljakka is a psychologist and the Director of Training at the Calgary Narrative Collective. Her professional work intersects clinical practice and the training of emerging Narrative therapists. She contributes to the field as a writer and co-editor for the Journal of Contemporary Narrative Therapy with a particular interest in the construction of therapeutic documents, the concept of love and its absence in contemporary relationships, and the complex ethical and therapeutic dilemmas encountered in practice and education. She is the primary…

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