Latest / 100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project / You Don’t Have to Live the Story | Chris Hoff

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You Don’t Have to Live the Story | Chris Hoff · 100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project

• Paige Williams: Welcome to 100 Stories, the Narrative Intelligence Project. I'm Paige Williams. I'm talking with 100 thinkers, creators, researchers, leaders, and people shaped by profound change as I explore the emerging field of narrative intelligence. At the center is one question: How malleable are the stories we live by? And what does it take to change one? What I learn will help shape the field in the foundational book that I'm writing about it. This is one hundred stories. Today I'm speaking with Chris Hoff, who is a narrative therapist. He has a book coming out titled Contemporary Narrative Therapy with his co-author, Lindsey Hampson. I'm speaking with Chris today because he's interested in restoring the imaginative capacity with the people he works with and he does this through futuring sprints. Chris, I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for sharing with us. Chris Hoff: Yes. Thanks, Paige. Thanks for having me. Paige Williams: I'd love for you to tell me a little bit about the work that's most shaped how you see yourself in the world. Chris Hoff: there's a couple of things. Narrative therapy, I'm a person in recovery, so I'm always interested in how people change. I'm a Zen Buddhist practitioner. Paige Williams: Mm. Chris Hoff: I've become very interested the last several years in futures thinking. So you put all these things together and that's what you get with me. So Paige Williams: All right, I already have a million questions. Chris Hoff: Okay. Paige Williams: What led you into narrative therapy? What does it mean? And what did you discover from the rooms about narrative therapy? Chris Hoff: when I started my graduate program to become a therapist, I thought I was gonna be an existential therapist. You know, I thought meeting making was everything. I was influenced by people like Yalom, Viktor Frankl. and so I w I thought I was gonna kinda go the existential route, but when I I got involved with a group on campus. I went to Pepperdine for my master's degree, a group called the Social Justice Collaborative, and I had a mentor through that and and so I started to understand how for some folks meaning making is constrained and it's often constrained via the isms, like the racisms and the sexisms and the stuff like that. So about that same time I discovered this thing called narrative therapy, which had a rich philosophical depth to it, every everywhere from anthropology to philosophy to critical theory. and and it it attended to all the things that I thought was important in existential therapy, but it also attended to the larger social cultural contact context that, you know, creates problems in people's lives. And so I thought I found it. This is and it's and I loved how it situated me as a therapist. It didn't I didn't have to be the expert. I was just a co-creator. I was somebody who was de-centered but influential in the work and and it just really fit my worldview and I be I came to understand and I and this is I'm sure your interest as well, you know, I came to understand the power of narrative, how how we organize our lives around story. Our lives, our careers, our romances, all of it. and I thought and I believe that, you know, and I believe that language creates real I believe in talk therapy. I still believe in talk therapy. I believe, as Wittgenstein says, language creates reality. And so I thought it would be pretty important to get to dive deep into this way of working with others. So Paige Williams: What have you found through that work? Chris Hoff: I found that often that many, many people, people that are probably listening to this are limited by the stories they tell about themselves. Right. And and they're not real. And we have a and we are that we are multi storied beings. And oftentimes when people come to therapy, the problem story is the dominant story, right? And so it is our job, I think, as narrative therapists, to help people access the the therapist the the stories that have been pushed to the margins by the problem story. And it doesn't mean and I love how narrative therapy, like unlike maybe a CBT, it isn't really like a reframe. It's actually tapping into people's real lived experience that they kind of temporarily get blinded. from because of problem stories. So so I sit with a lot of people who are stuck in problem stories. That's what I've learned. And and it's my task to help access something else. Paige Williams: Yeah, I think a lot about getting hooked. I think about Pema. Yeah, and getting hooked. Chris Hoff: Yeah. Paige Williams: And you know, I can have obsessive thoughts that just start spinning and when I when I can come to understand that that's what's going on, I imagine a problem in my head that is this obsessive spinning picture a wheel, a bicycle wheel, and I I stick a a little piece of wood through it to just stop it. And it changes my relationship to the story. It doesn't change the story. Can you talk about that moment? Chris Hoff: Well yeah, I think that's important you point that out because oftentimes I think well, I had a mentor of mine say, No good problem story lays down easy, right? So Paige Williams: Well we'll say that again, no? Chris Hoff: no good problem story lays down easy. And so Paige Williams: Yes, yes. Chris Hoff: our job is to not disappear the problem story, it's to create it's to create other stories to stand against or up to or, dissolve the s problem story a little bit with an understanding that it'll it'll rear its ugly head every once in a while. But when it does, we can meet it with awareness, going t to the Buddhist practice thing. And we can meet it with an awareness and do the I I see you, but you're not you're not in the driver's seat, right? Kinda thing. No. Paige Williams: Yeah. Yeah, it really changes everything when I can stop that. will you talk a little bit about how you work with people on so if if you become aware and you discern, maybe this is just a story and I can work with this and Chris Hoff: Okay. Paige Williams: maybe there's a new story or something else I can imagine here. And then if I actually have the flexibility enough to choose a new story, enactment. Of a new way of being. how does a person who's struggling in a story move into actually living a new one? Chris Hoff: Yeah, I think it's done step by step, right? It's we call it in narrative therapy scaffolding, right? I oftentimes when I meet with n I'm gonna be lecturing to some new students, I get guest lecturing to some new students later today. And often what I tell them, you know, I'll say to them, How many are you of you are here because you're that person in that everybody goes to for advice? And inevitably, you know, they all raise their hand and And I say, how many times is somebody here and they come to you for advice and you say, just do that, right? And then they'll say, Yeah, and then I say, Well, how many people do actually just do that, right? And everyone shakes their head, no, nobody does that. So, and and oftentimes that's why advice doesn't work, 'cause you're not attending to that space between the known and familiar, what Michael White, one of the co-creators of narrative therapy, would say. The known and familiar and the possible to know. And there's a lot of space in between there. And people need to be scaffolded through that. And in in in the narrative therapy, the scaffolding takes a lot of different forms. you through questions, through trying to name intentions and values and commitments, and then mapping those intentions, values, and commitments, and then And then seeing if there's action to be taken on those things and what that might be. And also, I I don't care what the problem is, it grows in isolation, right? So how do and how do we connect people to others people that can be helpful in those journeys, out of the known and familiar, right, to s to something possibly new. Paige Williams: Yeah, that's emp it l how much does it require seeing w someone with lived experience to be able to imagine a new story? Chris Hoff: Well, and I think well that's one of the benefits of recovery, I think, in some ways, right? When you're when you're in a community of travelers that have gone down the road a little bit further, I mean, it's really helpful. And I think and especially in recovery circles, there's a ton of folk wisdom to be accessed in these journeys of change. And so how do we create those sorts of communities of concern maybe somebody's not in recovery or or is feeling isolated in a particular moment. narrative therapy calls it circulating stories. How do we help circulate people's stories in a way that they can tap into maybe somebody down the road a little bit? W w well oftentimes I run a nonprofit community counseling center here in Southern California and and one of the things we'll do with clients who kind of graduated from therapy we'll ask them if they will be on our consultant consulting list. so if somebody comes in with a similar kind of problem, would they be willing to come back and consult with that client about their journey? And people love being positioned as a consultant, And we have drawn on on those people to bring them in and just share their journey and what it took and that kind of thing. So there's lots of different ways to do it, but yeah. Paige Williams: That really resonates with me. I think I one of the reasons I started going down this path was because I felt sorry for people who didn't have the rooms of recovery. And I was Chris Hoff: yeah, okay. Paige Williams: like, there's so much goodness that happens there in sharing story with a common experience. But the rest of the world doesn't really get to experience that unless they've hit a bottom sufficient for recovery. And so that's that's really cool that you're doing that in your work. I commend you. It's awesome. I think a lot about third spaces because of that. Chris Hoff: Yes, yeah, yeah. And we're trying to I I'm always act I just did a three day event called at UCI and here in Southern California University of California Irvine. we did a three day we hosted a three day event called Dangerous Stories a Therapy Salon. And really one of the main drivers of that was to create another third space, right? Like w we're losing them, so how can we create more of them? So, yeah. Paige Williams: Yeah. Well, I'm always happy to be a part of in any way. Just let me know. Chris Hoff: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Paige Williams: will you tell me a transformational moment in your life where you were living a story, you hit a bump. It gave it was a big enough bump to allow you to look at the story differently and change your relationship to the story and how that influences your work now. Chris Hoff: Yeah. Yeah, I'll tell you a story. I I have started telling that I didn't tell for a long, long time. And it was when a transformational moment for me was when I was a young man, I was probably twenty-five, maybe twenty-six, and my mother gave me a cassette tape of Wayne Dyer. And I was at this period at that time in my life I was really in a not great place. I wasn't in recovery yet. I I was n professionally not going anywhere, personally not going anywhere, you know, relationships were f falling apart around me. Not in a great place. And I in my I don't know what happened, but my mother gave me this tape and I had this p job that I would commute to at the time and I started listening to it and it was was Real Magic was the name of the tape. And I I started to listen to it and I started to listen to the stories he told. And I started to say, I wonder to myself, could I could I live into those kinds of stories, right? Could I make some sort of change? And so I started to trying to practice telling a different story about myself, right? And telling a different story about you and telling a different story about the people around me. And it was maybe six months later I entered recovery. And six months after that my professional life kind of took off and I went back to school and I started a business and I just like my whole life changed. 180 degrees from what it was what it was. to what it was. And I think it was somebody telling me I didn't have to live the story I was living any Paige Williams: Hm. Chris Hoff: longer. And it was just a matter of like accessing a different story about myself. Paige Williams: So you said you just started telling that story. Chris Hoff: Yeah. Paige Williams: Can you talk about that decision and why all of a sudden you are? Chris Hoff: excellent question. I think Paige Williams: 'Cause to me that's a shift in your relationship to the story to choose to Chris Hoff: Yeah. Well I you know, what I did what I think kinda silenced it in a while 'cause I entered academia, right? So I ended up going back to school, getting a master's degree, getting a PhD, all in the therapy stuff. And I think there is a I a prejudice towards maybe some some other ways of thinking about life and stories and those kinds of things. And so yeah, so I've just felt like I I just keep that story to myself. Yeah. Paige Williams: And what shifted so that you tell it now? Chris Hoff: Because it's my story. And I'm and I'm getting at the age where, you know I don't care anymore. Took Paige Williams: Good for you. Chris Hoff: a minute. Took a minute, but yeah. Paige Williams: It always does, those hard ones. Chris Hoff: Yeah, right. Paige Williams: What changed for you when you move from individual therapy toward what you now call cultural architecture and will you talk about that cultural architecture? Chris Hoff: Yeah, thanks. Well, I think I think it's coming to understand that individual therapy, like I said, love talk therapy. Individual therapy is awesome. no problems about it. But we live in a larger cultural social context which has a lot of constraints built into it for folks and and I became inter and it it kind of forecloses ideas about w about what might be possible in people's lives. And so I became interested in how we don't just attend to the personal, but we attend to the public and we attend to our clients' lives outside of that therapy room and how it might look or be expanded or how they might access other arrangements that, would benefit their life. Paige Williams: Yeah, I'm finding in these interviews that culture, power and identity inform so much about narrative, per internal narrative and external narrative. Chris Hoff: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Can't escape it. You you can't escape it, you know. It's like yeah. Paige Williams: W say that again. Right. So how does cultural architecture I imagine y that's the exact piece that you're dealing with in that? Chris Hoff: a lot of these systems are hard to change, but what cultural architecture does is it examines what the constraints are and and it and it works toward accessing personal agency in the face of what might be seem seeming that are seemingly intractable problems, right? And so Paige Williams: Yes. Chris Hoff: yeah. And I've always felt like, my practice, no matter what's going on, is helping people to s restore personal agency. Yeah, no matter what's going on. Paige Williams: Yeah, Chris Hoff: Yeah. Paige Williams: that's awesome. What's different about changing a personal story, an internal story, versus changing a collective or cultural story? Chris Hoff: well I'm also become interested in that. Like how do we I think we've come through a time and I don't I hope I'm not being controversial here, but I think we've come through a time identity is really important and and it needs to be acknowledged and it needs to be honored and all of that stuff. But I think if we are going to create real collective change in the world, we are going to have to background subjectivity a little bit, meaning we're gonna have to background identities. I think there's been a lot of organizing around identity in the recent years that I don't think created much political power or ability to change. And I think what we need is a bigger collective. And what's that's going to require is and even only temporarily, how do we background subjectivity for the F in the effort of trying to get a large group of a large collective moving in the same direction, right? And then and and I can lip service, you know culture and context and all that. But I've become really interested in like coalition building and collective building and not so much community, but more, you know, building coalition across difference and temporarily subjecting identity for the sake of political power and change. Paige Williams: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Chris Hoff: Mm-hmm. Paige Williams: Because the identity was separating us versus putting us together in a common Chris Hoff: Yeah, I just think that's naturally what do and it's okay. we all want belonging and we all want to be connected to something, but I also want to expand that too. And I also want to make us not just one story. We're not just this, right? We're multi storied people. And where do our where do our stories connect with other people that are headed in the same direction? Paige Williams: And if we and if we got everyone connected, moving Chris Hoff: Ha ha ha. Paige Williams: in the same direction, what might happen as a result? Chris Hoff: that people would access health care that needed it. People would not go hungry, children would not go hungry, you know. I could there's a long list of demands. or a long list of I think possibilities that could be accessed if we could pull that off, right? Paige Williams: Right. And so will you talk about the connection of how narrative informs that freedom for us? Chris Hoff: Well, it's all a story, right? And is it and is it a story that inspires or is it a story that divides or is it a story that connects us in some way? Is it a story of a future that we could get behind, you know? I mean it's all story. Mm-hmm. Paige Williams: Yeah, that's right. How much agency do we have over our stories when culture, systems, and power are shaping them as well? Chris Hoff: Well, I think we have a lot. I think once we become aware of what's happening, I I think you call it narrative intelligence, right? Once we become aware, Michel Foucault, a kind of a critical theorist, critical historian, said that wherever there's power, there's resistance, right? And and I believe that to be true. And I'm always interested in how do we access that resistance or the response to whatever though that power or discourse or whatever is doing. And once we make the invisible visible, then people can access agency. Right. Oftentimes a lot of these forces are go on go invisible. You know? People Paige Williams: Yes. Chris Hoff: don't even know that that these things are happening to them. Right. Paige Williams: Right. Right. Chris Hoff: Yeah. Paige Williams: So tell me about your book that's coming out. What are you what are people gonna take away from it? What's it about? Chris Hoff: Well, it's it's a we well we me and Lindsay wanted to write a book about some ideas we had about narrative therapy for contempor for the c the challenges of today, which are like acceleration. I've been influenced by Byong Chou Han's book, Crisis in Narration, where we live in a culture of information, not meaning making, and there's no gaps for meaning making anymore in our lives. And so it's a book that draws on we l we look at new theorists that can inform our present moment. And then we look and then Lindsay and I outline some practices that, you know, we're doing to meet this moment, this contemporary moment. Paige Williams: Yeah, that's great. You you work with people to imagine viable futures and you said I'm thinking about that a lot. futuring sprints, the way you work with them in that. Chris Hoff: Yeah. Yeah. Paige Williams: What makes a future feel possible enough to begin acting toward it? And how do your sprints work? Tell me about that work. Chris Hoff: Sure. well I'll tell you how the sprint sprints work and then I can talk to you about defuturing because I think it's really, really important before Paige Williams: Yeah. Chris Hoff: before so it's a four-week process that I take people through, groups and individuals, and it starts off with what we call the defuturing week. So then that isn't an analysis of I become interested in design philosopher. He's an Australian design philosopher, Tony Fry. And he talks about defuturing, like the forces that defuture us, right? And so but it's a four week program, defuturing signal scanning for our own individual lives, scenario building, and then experimenting and prototyping. But your question was around how how to help people move through when they're kind of at a threshold or something like that. Yeah. Imagining a future thing. Paige Williams: Yeah, imagining a future. Which I won which makes me curious about the word defuturing, if you could talk about that. Chris Hoff: I've done a lot of work with people that are at a threshold, either on them through like a divorce or a job loss or something like that, or wanting to kind of at a threshold but wanting to enter into change, and that's like starting a business or changing doing a career change or something like that. And what I've discovered is that it is a mistake to treat the future like a blank slate. That what Tony Fry might say is that the future is populated with the past and the present. And and and unless we attend to those things, it's going to be really, really hard for people to actually step into it. And what I mean by that are all the defuturing forces of what are people gonna think? do what will this do to me financially? you know, what how how is my identity gonna change in in this effort of what I'm doing, you know. and it's all different for everybody and some of them are s the same, of course. but we need to have a defuturing analysis, what are the landmines out there waiting Paige Williams: Yeah. Chris Hoff: for you? Because if we d if we treat it like a blank slate and say, just go, nobody's gonna go. We have to like clear the way and we have to like let people know what are the things waiting out there to get them that are gonna keep them from stepping off the threshold into the liminal space. So That's the defuturing analysis. and I think that if you and I think a lot of people make the mistake, it's like the advice giving. Just do that, right? Nobody's does nobody just does that. Because we're not attending to the fear that's sitting out there for them, whatever it might look like. And and the thing I learned, like I call some of my workshops futuring the present. And that's because the thing I learned is how you talk about the future. It's going to influence your present. And and you start to see change. If we begin to have more hopeful futures or see more possibility in the future, our present will change. Paige Williams: How much do you think your work is dependent on the other person's spirituality? Chris Hoff: that's a good question, actually. I don't know if I can speak for the other person, but I I think it's informed me a lot, you know. But it's made a lot of the risky changes that I did in my life or the the journeys into liminal space, both voluntarily and and the ones that were imposed on me, I I think made it made them easier. But I think I've been I've been reviewing my relationship with hope lately. I I my staff a couple years ago bought me a coffee cup that said hope betrays because I used to tell them that like hope be careful with hope 'cause it can set you up. And and now I'm thinking about the necessity of hope in some ways, like a wise hope but I've been thinking about that and I think spirituality's kind of part and parcel of that, of like Paige Williams: Mm. Chris Hoff: of 'cause sometimes, you know, and I'm sure you've had your own dark nights of the soul or walks through the desert, right? And I think sometimes we need somebody with us then in those moments. Paige Williams: Yeah, I wrote a book Chris Hoff: Yeah. Paige Williams: called The Twelve Creative Keys, and I looked at the things I did whenever I hit a dark night of the s soul, like a desperation key zero, right? And then what did I do to get to the other side through that hallway moment is what I call it. Chris Hoff: Mm-hmm. Paige Williams: Whether that's a creative project or a dark night of the soul. And I found that it's the same process. Key three is hope. But I Chris Hoff: Yeah. Paige Williams: completely understand. Past Chris who said, Be careful with hope. Hope can get you in trouble. Did something happen in your story where you went from coffee mug holding be careful with hope to maybe hope has purpose if it's in wisdom? Chris Hoff: Well, I think the more I've been doing this futuring work, I think we I think we need all the resources at our Paige Williams: Yes. Chris Hoff: right. So and hope being one of them, not the only one hopefully, but hope being one of them Paige Williams: Yeah. Chris Hoff: I think is important. Because just because these journeys, you know, if we're not gonna shut down and r and oftentimes, you know, what gets called relapse or self sabotage or whatever I I call turning back to the known and familiar, right? Paige Williams: Mm. Chris Hoff: And oftentimes people will start journeys into the liminal and then it'll get a little shaky and though the the the urge to go back to the known and familiar is all you y it's like why do I keep going back to the same person? This relationship has never worked you because you know how to do it. You know what it looks like, you know what it tastes like, you know what it feels like. But this other thing You don't and you have to you have to sit in uncertainty and ambiguity and nobody wants to do that, right? So, yeah. That that's our j it's our job, I think. How do we help people Paige Williams: Yeah. Yeah, it's not fun. Yeah. Chris Hoff: tolerate that, right? Paige Williams: I know that there is no change in my life that would have come or creative project that would have come into being if I didn't have some hope for it. It Chris Hoff: Yeah, sure. Paige Williams: would have just died on the vine. I like that. Chris Hoff: Yeah, and this event we just pulled pulled off. if I were honest with myself, I was hoping for the best. So And it came it came off Paige Williams: Yeah. Yeah, do the leg work. Chris Hoff: better than I th than I hoped for. So was Yeah. Yeah, right. Paige Williams: That's great. That's great. It's data, right? You can put in the hope bucket. Where does the idea that we can author our future become too individualistic? I don't even know if I like that question. I don't maybe that question means more to you than it means to me. Chris Hoff: Sure. Well, I think we live in a culture that has individualized us to such a point, right? And you know, the people I train I see I train therapists, train and supervise therapists. That's my job basically. I they have to hear me say it all the time. I don't care what the problem is, it grows in isolation and and in some ways and maybe I think that's by design, you know, if we're going back to your kind of question about the political question of like What about all these forces at work? can we really access agency in the face of these systems and stuff? I would say it's harder when you're operating as an individual, but when you're getting connected to other people, a lot of magical things can happen. So Yeah. Paige Williams: Well that's true. Chris Hoff: And and I think there is a lot of forces at work. I'm not a conspiracy theorist or anything like that, but I do think the the forces of our contemporary moment are about individualizing us to such a point, that we can't it makes it harder and harder for us to come together collectively. And and I would argue that's by design. Paige Williams: Yeah. I think in doing these interviews I've been thinking a l a lot about being inheritors of narrative. Chris Hoff: Mm-hmm. Paige Williams: And then I'm coming into the world with a story already, epigenetics and or the story of my family and ancestors. So some of it's DNA, some of it's just hearing it in the womb and coming out. Chris Hoff: Yeah. Yeah. Paige Williams: a lot of that it gets into identity and culture and and then also just DNA. But how do you work with people? Does that come up in your work in training therapists and in doing therapy about what they're bringing to the table just almost naturally in our ability to shift our story even from just who we are based on our genetics and our and our culture? Chris Hoff: But the stories we tell affect our our DNA, right? Or the stories we tell affect our genetics, right? And so the stories that get passed down to us, the sport the stories that are, so I'm a story guy. I'm like, we are socially constructed multi storied people. And so change the story, change your life. It's that's really w what I believe. And but I do think, there is we are we do inherit stories. And some of them are really worthwhile and influential. And some of them we have to like take a look at. And and as a narrative therapist, I'm not there to say this is a good story, that's a bad story. I'm there to say, how do you want to be in relationship with these stories? That's what I'm there to say, you know, and Does this story still serve you? some of the stories we carry into adulthood were stories we needed to survive our youth, right? And can I tell a story? Okay. Paige Williams: Yes, always. Chris Hoff: So this was a story that influenced me. I when I was about 11, 12 years old, my best friend Richard called me up, and all my friends were over at Richard's house. And I And I s hung up the phone and I he said, Come on over, Chris, we're all over here. I ran over, I knocked on the door, and all my friends were on the other side of that door laughing at me, ridiculing me, and making fun of me. And I knocked and I knocked and they never opened the door. And I remember walking home from that experience and I said to myself, That is never gonna happen to me again. And what I did I became very I've become I have a chapter on Mikhail Bakteen's chronotopes, right? These ideas of space time and how they formulate our life, our narratives. And and I said to myself, I'm never gonna let that happen to me again and from that moment and well into my adulthood, I put a door in front of everybody, right? And people call the other metaphor people use are a wall, you know. I was not gonna let anybody get close to me. I was I wasn't gonna hurt like that again. And so that is a power of a story. And it and it's helped me, I think, survive a particular moment of my youth. But when you're in a relationship with somebody, they don't really dig it, you know, that you're not interested in that you have this wall or this door in front of it. And so or you're keeping everybody at arm's length. And so, you know, there's narratives that we've inherited over time that we need to reevaluate. How do we want to be in relationship with them? What about it was life sustaining? What about it is life draining, right? And that's you know, it's not good bad stories. I don't traffic in good or bad stories. I traffic I traffic in how do you want to be in relationship with these stories. Paige Williams: Yeah. If you were writing the definition of narrative intelligence, what do you think it it would be? Chris Hoff: well I think it starts with understanding how we organize our lives with stories. That they're just stories. Sometimes they feel like deep truths, but they're just stories, right? Paige Williams: Yeah. Yeah. Chris Hoff: And I think once you could get your head around that, then you can change everything, right? And it's like what Paige Williams: How would you Chris Hoff: story what story do you want to craft? You know, and then there's a Paige Williams: Yeah. Chris Hoff: lot there's a lot of freedom and agency in that. Yes, there are constraints to Paige Williams: Yeah. Yeah. Chris Hoff: storing lives, right? And freedom is une evenly distributed in our culture, you know, money, housing, safety, discrimination, institutional authority, all of that stuff. But people still exercise agency within those conditions, period. Paige Williams: What would you think is the difference between and is there a difference between narrative therapy and narrative intelligence? Chris Hoff: Well, I think narrative intelligence is an understanding and I th would say narrative therapy is to begin to work with that understanding. Paige Williams: Mm. Yeah. Have you ever worked with someone who could not understand that their reality perception of life was a story, was a narrative, and therefore had no flexibility in shifting it? Chris Hoff: Well, I think I think sometimes we get really wedded to our stories. You know, we get attached to them. And we have to be careful because removing a story from somebody could leave them really vulnerable in some ways, right? And so yes, the answer to that question is yes. People come all the time, like Not ready to change. Not ready to step off that threshold. Not and and the problem is, is I think people think you could just create a new story, but I think stories get cr I think sometimes action has to hap happen first and then stories get created. And that action happening first sometimes is really, really difficult. And because of the stories people hold and And hold closely, Paige Williams: What do you think happens to an individual who never lives an examined life and and comes to understand that their perception of reality is based in a story? Chris Hoff: w all of a sudden they realize it or they just never Paige Williams: Yeah, what happens to a person who who can't ever get out of that you know, the allegory of the cave if they what what happens Chris Hoff: No. Paige Williams: if we never leave the cave? Chris Hoff: That's a chapter in the new narrative book too. Yeah. Paige Williams: Really? Chris Hoff: Yeah, Lindsay writes a chapter on the allegory of the cave and and Paige Williams: Can't wait to read it. Chris Hoff: and uses it in a in a narrative therapy process. But So yeah, to answer your question, that's one of the hard parts of this work, you know, sometimes but I think there's a reason f for it that they need to hold on to it and I try not to you know I try Paige Williams: Yeah. Chris Hoff: to I try to understand that maybe like why does that need to stay in place and What it what are they hoping for? What are they standing up for? What value is putting this? I still think there's maybe ways to you know, p cha real change is hard. It's it's really hard. I mean you know, that's the truth of the matter. And and I've sat with a lot of people that are that come to therapy because somebody thought it was a good idea, but when they're confronted with what they might what's required or what they're gonna be talking about or what they're gonna do. They're like, I can't do this you know. And they leave. And and I don't know what happens to them. And you know, and but I keep trying, I'll keep showing up, I'll keep you know, 'cause Paige Williams: In your experience, those who do go through change, what is required of them? What creates change? Chris Hoff: another good question. I it's all different kinds of reasons. All different kinds of reasons. It's pff if I had to I think people just get tired of living the way they're living or doing what they're doing or and I think they come to I don't you know, I think I think it's nearly impossible alone and this is why I love talk love talk therapy, coaching, communities, colla you know, whatever it is. But I think if you're with other people that are headed in a direction, it makes it a lot easier. And And then there's a something powerful in relationship or groups or whatever that makes it easier to change 'cause you don't feel like you're doing it alone. Or y you don't feel like if you do change you're gonna get kicked off the island or you know, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Paige Williams: Yeah, I bet when you're defuturing you have to think about that a lot with people. Chris Hoff: All the time, yeah. Paige Williams: will I be in isolation if I change? Am I gonna lose my people? Am I gonna lose my family? My friends? Yeah. Chris Hoff: Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. And some sometimes they will. but you know, what will you who will take their place, for example? Who will who will stand in for them for you? Paige Williams: Chris, this has been an awesome conversation. Thank you for sharing your experience and your wisdom. Appreciate it. Chris Hoff: Paige, thank you for the in Thank you for the invitation. Yeah, I appreciate it. Paige Williams: Here's what I'm taking from today's conversation about narrative intelligence. Chris gave me language for something that keeps showing up in these interviews. Seeing a story does not make it disappear. As one of his mentors told him, no good problem story lays down easy. And the story can come back. What changes is our relationship to it. We can recognize it, understand what it's doing, and decide whether we want to keep letting it drive. I also keep thinking about his idea of defuturing. The future is already populated with the past and the present, our fears, our identities, relationships, money, culture, power, all the things that shape what feels possible or impossible. And sometimes those forces need to become visible before we can imagine something different. And sometimes action comes first. We begin moving differently, and the story changes around what we discover. Chris also reminded me how relational change is. Problems grow in isolation. Change gets easier when we have people around us who can help us imagine what comes next, stay with us in uncertainty, and make room for who we are becoming. So I'll leave you with this question. What story is shaping the future that you think is available to you? Subscribe to One Hundred Stories, the narrative intelligence project, wherever you listen or watch, and if this conversation made you think of someone else, please share it with them. This is One Hundred Stories.