What is Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET)?
Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) is a short-term treatment for people with PTSD who have experienced multiple traumatic experiences. In NET therapy, the life history is central.
Memory
NET addresses the way we store memories of trauma in our memory. Shocking experiences are usually not embedded in time, place, and space, in other words, within the context in which they belong, because they were too overwhelming at the time. The goal of NET is to integrate the often disjointed memories into the memory so that a coherent story emerges. So that the past no longer lives on in the present.Â
Meaning
You can also gain insights that give a different meaning to the events. You can look back at your past in a ‘different’ way and develop a sense of control over your own story.
How did NET come about?
A group of German psychologists, including Maggie Schauer, Frank Neuner, Elisabeth Kaiser and Thomas Elbert (affiliated with the University of Konstanz and the NGO Vivo), The NET was developed by them. Their first scientific studies on NET were conducted in refugee camps in post-conflict areas. Â
Ruud Jongedijk, psychiatrist, psychotherapist and psychotrauma therapist, has been trained by Schauer and her team at NET since 2007. He has implemented and further developed the Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) as a treatment method in the Netherlands. In 2011, he, together with doctor and psychotrauma therapist Gerdie Eiting, set up the Dutch-language NET training and supervision.Â
What does a NET treatment look like?
It is a treatment that follows a fixed number of steps:
1: The first time, your therapist explains what trauma is and how NET works.Â
Together, a decision is then made as to whether NET can help you.
- Next time, together with the therapist, you will explain the life line. This is done using a rope or ribbon that represents your life line. The life line starts at your birth and ends at the present moment, with another piece of rope in a curl that represents the future.Â
- Then you place a number of symbols along the life line in chronological order.
- The most unpleasant and shocking events are symbolized by stones. The pleasant moments, the highlights, flowers. You place the stones and flowers yourself. You give the stones and flowers a word, for example ‘accident’, ‘marriage’, ‘abuse’, ‘birth’. There are also other symbols that you can place, such as candles for loss and grief.Â
2: Next, attention is paid to the narrative exposure and the memories are reviewed.
In the following sessions, you work with your therapist to chronologically go through the life line. At the stones, there is an imaginary, narrative exposure: together, you go through your memories in detail. This does not focus on the most frightening details of the shocking event, but rather discusses the entire event in detail, from beginning to end. Thoughts and feelings from then and now are thus connected in the overall context of the traumatic event of that time.
3: TestimonyÂ
At the end of each session, the therapist writes a brief report of the most important events discussed, always in the first person and in the past tense. This report is read out at the beginning of the next session. Then there is space to experience how and where you can place these events in your life. This way you will go through all the stones and flowers in your life.
The reports are compiled at the end, and you will receive these along with a photo of your family tree as a testament to your life history.
For which complaints is NET available?
NET is specially designed for people with PTSD who have experienced multiple psychological traumas in their lives, such as refugees, people with early childhood trauma, long-term domestic violence, children from war zones, and veterans.Â
NET therapy can also be used for specific target groups. For example, in the case of:
- children with trauma (KIDNET)
- perpetrators of violent crimes (FORNET)
- people with traumatic grief (NET-TR)
- In addition, there is a high-intensive variant (HI-NET)
- Furthermore, NET is also very suitable for older people.Â
Where can I undergo a NET treatment?
There are various institutions, centers, and psychotherapists that offer NET. ARQ Academy maintains a quality register of NET therapists. A NET therapist is registered with BIG, has completed the four-day NET training at ARQ Academy, including official NET supervision on multiple NET treatments.
It is very important that you trust the therapist, that you feel comfortable and are confident in his or her professional competence.Â
NET therapy can also be done (partially) online.Â
Where can I find more information about NET?
Websites with information
Reading tips
- Life stories and psychotrauma – Ruud Jongedijk
- Narrative Exposure Therapy. Ruud Jongedijk (2020). In: Exposure Handbook; pp 207-232. Editor: A. van Emmerik, A. Greeven. Boom Uitgevers, Amsterdam.
- Jongedijk, R.A., & Eiting, G.E. (2022). Narrative Exposure Therapy: NET. GZ-Psychology.
- Narrative Exposure Therapy. Maggie Schauer, Frank Neuner, Thomas Elbert.
Watch/Listen Tips
Listen tip
Narrative Exposure Therapy with Ruud Jongedijk
Podcast Joost and Yonda Trauma show
Reading tip
Life stories & psychotrauma
Ruud Jongedijk
In collaboration with
Ruud Jongedijk
Psychiatrist, psychotherapist and psychotraumatologist, affiliated with ARQ Centrum ‘45 and ARQ Academy, instructor and author.
