Narrative Exposure Therapy

(Terapi Paparan Naratif)

 Narrative Exposure Therapy:
What’s your story?
• Developed in US
• Dedicated to soldiers
• Refugees
• People with PTSD (violence's/Traumatic event)
• Narrative Exposure Therapy is about
reconciling (menyelaraskan/berdamai) those
who have gone through that sort of trauma
with their life story
 How PTSD Works
• The more trauma you experience, the larger
your fear network is.
• Your fear network is made up of the emotional
memories that are associated with sensory,
cognitive, and physiological elements. 
• The larger your fear network is, the more
triggers there are that can set off PTSD.
• Fear Network are Triggers
 NET Model
• In Narrative Exposure Therapy, there are two
types of memories associated with trauma:
hot memories and cold memories.
• The hot memories are the ones in your fear network: the sensory details,
emotions, and physiological reactions to the trauma. For example, if you
experienced increased heartbeat and smelled gasoline during the incident,
these would be a part of the hot memories and your fear network. 
• Your cold memories are the opposite: they are the facts. Place, date, time of
day, the people that were there- these are the sorts of things that your
therapist would try and make you remember to make autobiography (life
line).
• By making a chronological autobiography, you link the hot memories to the
“cold”, hard facts to solidify and contextualize the trauma.
• You revisit the traumatic event in a safe environment, this time from the
perspective of your entire life, instead of reliving it as a reaction to stress in the
present.
• Let It Out
 Narrative Exposure Therapy: The Lifeline
• Lifeline is exactly what it sounds like- a line that describes your
life.
• With a therapist, roll out a long piece of rope, ribbon, or string-
one end represents your birth and the other represents your life
that is yet to be lived. There are two objects that you lay down
to represent different events in your life: stones and flowers. The
stones represent shameful, difficult, and especially traumatic
memories, and the flowers represent positive ones. 
• This exercise is usually done during the first session because
using the lifeline you can plan out which ‘stones’ you want to
focus on in your future sessions.
 Main Goal
Over your therapy sessions, you can go through the flowers and the
stones, taking the time to unpack and sort through the stones.
The goal of talking about these traumatic memories is to bridge together
the ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ aspects of the trauma.
The therapist may start by asking the when, what, where and other
contextually relevant things. What were you doing a few hours before
the event happened? Who were you with when it happened? The
therapist may tell you to stay in the past tense when talking about the
trauma so that it doesn’t trigger a flashback or dissociation, but also
they will challenge any attempts to avoid talking about it.
Reconciling (menyelaraskan/berdamai) how you felt about what
happened, the facts of what happened, and how you feel about it all
now is the main goal of Narrative Exposure Therapy.