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NIRI: Narrative Therapy Informed Relational Interviewing

New ways of working with Highly Conflicted Couple Relationships

Course Overview

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In this course you will learn: 

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  • Why NIRI sessions begin with remembering relational values and the origin story of the couple relationship (before the partial story of the conflict) to engage a double description and difference

  • The use, structure, grammar, politic, and purpose of relational remembering and reauthoring questions

  • To identify the influence of relational and cultural contexts shaping and influencing couple relationship practices

  • The process of re-authoring responses to expressions of couple conflict as loss and grief of the relationships pre-problem values

  • The NIRI process of asking questions and writing therapeutic letters directly to the Couple Relationship

Day 1

8:15 AM – 11 AM

Ecology of the Receiving Context NIRI Receives Conflicted Couple Relations Into:
 
1 a) Learn new relational ideas about: memory, relational values, norms, suffering narratives, partial stories/partial history, double description and difference, relational grief, conflict, and loss.
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1 b) Learn how NIRI couple therapy involves a deliberate political and ideological practice shift towards an ecology of interlocking ideas and therapeutic practices supporting:
 
 

  • non-individualism/non-essentialism

  • relational-contextual inter-connectivity

  • me to we consciousness

  • cultural and contextual complexities 

  • social rituals, governing norms, and dominant beliefs

  • structural inequalities, power relations

  • relational responsibilities, obligations, and expectations

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Day 1 

12:00 PM – 3 PM

Session Video Demonstrations
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Discussions on a NIRI couple therapy practice framework

Day 2

8:15 AM – 11 AM

Session Video Demonstrations:
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New Ideas about Relational Conflict, Grief and Loss
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1)  A relational response to relational distress 
2)  A relational protest in support of a preferred relational ethos and, 
3)  A relational desire to recover values of importance that have been lost 
 
Couple Relationships Relationship to Other Relationships
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Demonstrations of reconnecting the intimate relationships relationship to include all the many contextual and culturally inspired relationships their relationship is under the influence of and in relationship with - work, extended family, children, politics, religion etc.

Day 2 

12:00 PM – 3 PM

Session Video Demonstrations
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Writing letters of consultation directly to the couple relationship​​​​​​​
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"I was in tears throughout this NIRI workshop. The relational and contextual understandings Stephen has of the couples relationship , skill of his writing letters and questions directed to the relationship and compassion shown by these conflicted couples to one another was remarkable!! It also had me re-appreciating my own intimate relationship. Absolutely amazing and life changing!"  
 
- Participant, London, UK,  2025
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