Holding the Line in Narrative Therapy: Ethics, Politics, and Community
Recently a therapist who did her training at California Family Institute pulled me aside at a Narrative & Pizza event and asked me a question. The question? How does she hold onto her narrative therapy ethics and politic in systems that are pulling her in all different directions of ideas and therapy models.
She’s not the first person that has asked me this question.
In the ever-expanding marketplace of psychotherapy, new modalities, frameworks, and “evidence-based” certifications emerge almost weekly, each promising to make us better, more competent, and more marketable therapists. The pressure to keep up is relentless. Yet, what does it mean to hold the line as a narrative therapist in a profession that thrives on our insecurities and sells us training after training, subtly reinforcing the idea that we are never quite enough?
The Machine of Professional Insecurity
The therapy world has become increasingly entangled with neoliberal logics, individual optimization, professional branding, and a hunger for more credentials. Many of us are navigating systems that demand we market ourselves, meet productivity quotas, and demonstrate legitimacy through certifications, often just to stay employed or build a sustainable practice. And to be fair, some trainings and credentials can be meaningful, they can sharpen our skills, open up new ways of thinking, and help us feel connected to a community of practitioners. These spaces can offer real support in a profession that can feel isolating. But we also need to stay alert. When the pursuit of training becomes driven by fear, comparison, or the sense that we are never quite enough, we risk losing touch with the ethics and politics that ground our work. We can honor the realities of needing to make a living while refusing to let the market entirely shape how we measure our worth or imagine what’s possible in our practices.
The Ethics of Holding the Line
Holding the line as a narrative therapist means resisting the impulse to turn toward formulaic solutions, quick-fix interventions, and manualized approaches. It means staying committed to relational ethics over professional prestige and resisting the allure of certainty in a field that thrives on the art of inquiry. To hold the line is to trust in the power of conversations, and the possibilities of a good question. It is to recognize that no certification can replace the slow, ethical, and politically aware work of being present with people as they make meaning of their lives. It is to remain critical of therapeutic trends that individualize suffering while ignoring structural realities.
Selling the Cure to an Insecure Profession
There is an irony in how the therapy field, seemingly committed to alleviating distress, often manufactures its own anxieties. Many therapists feel they are never “good enough” and seek reassurance in the next big training. But who benefits from this perpetual insecurity? If narrative therapy teaches us anything, it’s that the stories we tell shape our realities. And the dominant professional story being told is one of insufficiency, an ever-receding horizon of mastery. Perhaps the most radical thing we can do is to refuse this narrative.
A Different Way Forward
Instead of accumulating more certifications, what if we leaned more deeply into the ethics of narrative practice? What if we spent less time chasing expertise and more time refining our ability to listen, to be curious, to co-author new stories alongside those we work with? Holding the line is not about resisting growth but about refusing to let the market and its systems dictate the terms of our professional worth. It is about staying faithful to the politics and ethics that drew us to this work in the first place.
And we don’t have to do this alone.
At Liminal Lab, a project of the California Family Institute, we’re cultivating a space for therapists and practitioners committed to intentional, and creative narrative practice. It’s a place to resist the grind, re-member our commitments, and be supported by a community that values depth over performance, curiosity over certainty, and collective learning over competition. All while supporting our mission to make therapy accessible to those that can’t access it.
If you’re looking for a place to hold the line with others, we invite you to join us.
Peace.
Thank you. I needed to read this today.