Narrative Therapy Statement of Position Map Worksheet: Externalizing Problems & Mapping Effects

This worksheet operationalizes the Statement of Position Map 1, a foundational scaffolding structure in Narrative Therapy designed to guide clients through the four essential categories of inquiry required for thorough case formulation. It directly targets the cognitive fusion, internalized blame, and existential helplessness that manifest when a client’s identity becomes completely taken over by a problem-saturated description. The intensive four-page workbook guides the therapeutic dyad through a rigorous, post-structuralist questioning sequence spanning four distinct movements: Naming the Problem, Mapping the Effects, Evaluating the Effects, and Values When Thinking About Effects. By requiring the client to explicitly document their relationship to the challenge, the tool facilitates a transition toward metacognitive de-centering and active personal agency.

The structured layout is designed to support Externalizing Conversations by moving the client from clinical, experience-distant labels (e.g., “I am depressed”) to rich, experience-near descriptions (e.g., “a black hole of emptiness”). Page 2 and Page 3 facilitate a thorough multi-system audit, tracing the problem’s influence across friendships, internal affect, and its impact on other people’s lives, while forcing a critical evaluation of the problem’s character and intent. Research into constructivist and relational therapies implies that evaluating these effects helps the client shift from a passive viewer of their suffering to an active judge of it, expanding their Window of Tolerance. By concluding on Page 4 with a forensic values alignment mapping, the worksheet establishes the cognitive scaffolding necessary to uncover the client’s latent “absent but implicit” desires and reinforce Self-Leadership and organismic self-support.

This clinical resource draws significant inspiration from the foundational, evidence-based manualization established by Michael White, the co-creator of Narrative Therapy, who developed Statement of Position Maps to help individuals discover an alternative place to stand outside of their problems. By moving this advanced linguistic protocol into an actionable, four-page workbook, the form assists practitioners in maintaining an “influential but non-centered” stance, leaving the absolute authority of interpretation and goal formulation entirely with the client. This process is foundational for ensuring that the therapeutic journey leads to increased self-efficacy, the dismantling of pathologizing socio-cultural introjects, and the successful crystallization of an empowered, preferred life story.

How This Worksheet Can Be Used

Initiating Externalization (Initial Phase Map 1):
Therapists use Page 1 during the early intake or assessment phase to convert internalizing pathologies into external entities. Prompts regarding the size, shape, color, and personified name of the distress create the immediate psychological distance necessary for the client to discuss highly traumatic material without becoming somatically flooded.

Tracking the Problem’s Strategy (Middle Phase):
The “Mapping and Evaluating Effects” sections are highly effective for deconstructing a client’s chronic symptom cycles. The structured prompts force the client’s brain to analyze the problem’s tactics, expose its hostile motives, and recognize that the problem’s interests are fundamentally opposed to their own well-being, which shifts the client from compliance to active resistance.

Extracting Subjugated Values (Re-authoring Phase):
Clinicians utilize Page 4 to bridge the gap between problem-separation and preferred identity thickening. Investigating *why* the problem’s effects are unacceptable allows the therapist to extract the client’s hidden life purposes, core values, and counter-plots, providing a functional baseline to anchor a new behavioral change plan.

Benefits of the Narrative Statement of Position Map

• Operationalizes White’s standard Statement of Position Map 1 protocol across a rigorous 4-page workbook.
• Promotes experience-near descriptions to ensure the client maintains full authorship over their story.
• Maps the problem’s systemic effects across the client’s thoughts, behaviors, and interpersonal network.
• Shifts the client from a passive recipient of distress to an active judge of the problem’s character.
• Identifies direct contradictions between the problem’s intentions and the client’s highest personal values.
• Provides a structured, trauma-informed format for professional intake notes, case maps, and progress logs.

References

• White, M. (2007). Maps of Narrative Practice. W. W. Norton & Company. (The definitive guidelines for externalizing conversations and Statement of Position Maps).
• White, M., & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends. W. W. Norton & Company.
• Morgan, A. (2000). What is Narrative Therapy? An Easy-To-Read Introduction. Dulwich Centre Publications.
• Freedman, J., & Combs, G. (1996). Narrative Therapy: The Social Construction of Preferred Realities. W. W. Norton & Company.