Vision

"THERE IS NO GREATER BURDEN THAN BEARING AN UNTOLD STORY INSIDE YOU" -Maya Angelou

Humans are story-telling creatures; it's what makes our species unique. I practice Narratology, which is the study of story; how we give and take meaning from our lives and come to understand our worlds. It is my hope that this practice of voicing and revising our experience can eventually become part of the way all children are raised and taught, and the way all adults approach their work, relationships, and lives. As a clinician and coach, I help people create more coherent narratives. Therapists and neuropsychologists alike have begun to identify the development a coherent narrative as essential to our mental well-being. I developed Coherent Narrative Therapy (CNT) as an amalgam of two approaches: Narratology and Coherence Therapy. Both approaches believe that what happens to us, shapes our [symptomatic] behaviors in ways that are completely explicable, and that when we discover the connections between what we once learned – through experience or modeling – and how we currently behave, we can either radically, (and un-problematically), accept the resulting choices we’ve made, or we can transform them.

CNT takes the whole story that a person holds about themselves, studies it, fills it out, notices patterns and ruptures, inconsistencies, distortions and contradictions, and alchemizes this unsorted data into healing sense-making. An outline of the whole story, rather than only a problematic time-frame, (or the symptom-generating event), is gathered in the first sessions. This global telling focuses, illuminates, and changes the client’s experience of their own story, even before further work is done. A global telling also changes the experience for the clinician, as it informs everything else that is ever shared in subsequent sessions. CNT practitioners believe that we can respond more appropriately if we have the big picture. The whole key to Coherent Narrative Therapy, is full context. (What Gabor Mate, in The Myth of Normal, refers to as, “The compassion of context”). CNT also focuses on the client’s actual text, the words they speak both spontaneously, and in response to the clinician’s questions, and key words or phrases that they use are also assigned for between-session free-writing to deepen meaning, and access memories. CNT results in a more fully integrated transformation, and a more balanced narrative.

I practice at the intersection of text analysis, clinical training, emotionally intelligent communication, & mindful awareness as a writer, coach, clinician, and educator, (and separately as an artist). This blended background, which I have practiced across the lifespan wherever people were interested in discovering who they really were and how they really wished to be, led me to develop this time-tested process of articulation and revision called Coherent Narrative Therapy. (and Coaching) Using Coherent Narrative work as a guided form of self-discovery, I help clients uncover where and why they're stuck, and what's been misunderstood or forgotten in their own life stories. I help them access their own knowings, and then give voice the them.

CNT holds at its core, the belief that giving voice to ourselves is the greatest expression of our self-hood and that, although the story we hold about our selves defines us for better and for worse, these stories can be re-viewed, re-thought, re-membered, and re-vised at anytime in our lives. CNT allows us to achieve flow in our narratives and in our lives. In addition to mindfully explored spoken dialogue with one another, in the Coherent Narrative process we can also observe, articulate, and revise our lives through writing meditations. Writing itself is an act of reflection. It is a practice. Writing is a way of beginning a relationship with yourself, and when we share this writing with an attuned respondent, we come alive.  We recognize our experience, and our sense of "self", with greater clarity and honesty.

ONCE WE HAVE THE STORY OF WHAT HAPPENED TO US…AS SEPARATE FROM WHO WE ARE…WE BECOME FREE TO JUST BE PRESENT…IN THE PRESENT!

"I call myself a narratologist and the sharing of story has been the organizing principle of my life."

Biography

Gail Noppe-Brandon, LCSW, MPA, MA has over 25 years of experience in narratology. Her method has been used by universities, social service organizations, and individuals to bring authenticity, empathy, and clarity to dialogue…with self, and with others. Additionally, through her former non-profit, Find Your Voice, Gail helped hundreds of people (including entrepreneurs, managers, clinicians, educators, students, parents & artists) discover their voices.

Gail served as Assistant Dean of Arts & Science at NYU and holds an MA in Writing, an MPA in Organizational Development, and an LMSW in clinical social work. A graduate of LaGuardia HS for the Arts, in addition to being an SSDC theatre director, Gail is a published playwright and was the first ever recipient of the Drama League’s Grant for new Works. She is author of three books, several chapters and many articles on voicing and revising coherent self-narratives. She is a featured Communication Coach on PBS, and a documentary film about her work received the Chris Award at the Columbus International Film Festival in 2008. Her Narratological method has been endorsed by such organizations as the Heyman Center for Philanthropy, Bank Street and Hunter Colleges, the New York City Department of Education, and The Society for Professional Marketing Services. Noppe-Brandon is a master teacher who has received five Carnegie Awards for Excellence, as well as an award from the President’s Council on the Humanities. She has given talks and trainings at: National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP), The Jewish Board of Family & Children’s Services (JBFCS), The Constructivist Psychology Network (CPN), and The Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center (PPSC). She was in clinical practice for five years at the JBFCS Manhattan Greenberg Center, and currently provides coherent narrative therapy, coaching and training to individuals and groups privately. Gail”s CEU-bearing Coherent Narrative workshops for healers are accredited by the NY State Department of Education

Gail's Narratology practice evolved out of her non-profit organization, Find Your Voice (FYV), which used dramatic writing as a source of self-discovery. For 25 years, FYV helped people of all ages and backgrounds articulate and revise their stories, and develop the flexibility to change their lives. The award-winning FYV method, which used the tools of acting, playwriting, and singing (visit www.gailnoppemusic.com to hear her recent albums), also enhanced emotional intelligence and boosted communication skills.  See here for more history on this organization.