Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET)


What Is NET?

NET is a short-term, evidence-based therapy for people who have lived through multiple or complex traumas. It offers a gentle, structured approach to process difficult life experiences by helping you weave fragmented traumatic memories into a coherent, chronological life story. This process helps both in reducing PTSD symptoms, such as flashbacks and nightmares, and reconnecting with a stronger sense of identity and continuity.

Rather than focusing on a single traumatic event, NET guides you through your whole life story in chronological order, integrating both positive and painful moments. This structured narration helps place traumatic memories in context, weaving fragmented experiences into a coherent narrative. Because NET addresses the full spectrum of a person’s experiences, it is especially effective for processing repeated or prolonged traumas, such as childhood abuse, domestic violence, war, or displacement. By creating a safe space to revisit these painful experiences and understand them within the broader arc of your life, NET supports you to move forward with greater sense of dignity, resilience and emotional clarity. Many people also find the testimony element of NET deeply meaningful, especially when speaking aloud experiences that have remained unspoken until now.

Core Principles

  • Life Story Reconstruction: Through narrating your entire autobiography, focusing on traumatic events in chronological order

  • Integration of Memories: NET connects “hot” memories (sensory, emotional, physiological fragments of trauma) with “cold” memories (factual, contextual details like time and place)

  • Exposure & Testimony: It combines elements of exposure therapy (reliving trauma safely) and testimony therapy (bearing witness to experiences)

  • Reconnecting with Identity: By contextualising trauma, survivors reclaim dignity, coherence, and a stronger sense of self

How It Works

  • Constructing the Lifeline: We use visual aids (e.g., stones for traumatic events, flowers for positive events) to create a ‘bird’s-eye view’ of a chronological life-map

  • Detailed Narration: We then spend time narrating the lifeline events in detail, focusing especially on recounting the most impactful traumatic experiences, with attention to emotions, bodily sensations, and thoughts, while ensuring you are anchored to present safety through grounding and careful pacing

  • Processing & Meaning-Making: Traumatic fragments of past memories that often still feel present and perpetuate a sense of threat are transformed into a narrative that situates them in the past, reducing flashbacks and other intrusive symptoms

  • Written Autobiography: A written testimony is documented throughout our therapeutic process, which you may choose to keep, or even use for advocacy for human rights purposes if you wish to do so

Key Benefits

  • Reduces PTSD symptoms like flashbacks, nightmares, hyperarousal, and protective strategies that have become limiting over time

  • Restores autobiographical continuity and identity

  • Fosters a sense of empowerment by giving your experiences a safe space to be voiced, witnessed, and honoured through the testimony process

Who It’s For

This approach is most suited to those with cumulative trauma histories, for example:

  • Those who have experienced childhood or domestic abuse, for example physical, sexual, or emotional abuse

  • Those who experienced prolonged bullying, for example at school or in the workplace

  • Those who may have experienced a number of disconnected traumas and adversity over a period of time, for example accidents, assaults and traumatic bereavements or loss

  • NET is widely used with survivors of torture or war, including in humanitarian and post-conflict settings


NET at The Reframe Room

Starting NET can feel like a meaningful step toward understanding your story in a fuller, more compassionate way. Many people arrive feeling unsure about revisiting painful memories, and that hesitation is completely natural. NET is paced carefully, with grounding woven throughout, so you never move faster than feels safe. We take time in our initial sessions to understand how processing memories reduces PTSD symptoms, and to build tools that support managing distress before exploring any past experiences.

My role is to walk alongside you as we make sense of what you’ve lived through, honouring the strength it took to survive and the parts of your story that may have remained silent for a long time. Taking time to acknowledge the positive moments or periods that may have been overshadowed is also an important part of exploring your life as a whole.

If you’re curious about whether NET might be a good fit, we can explore this together at your own pace, and you’re welcome to bring any questions or uncertainties. The Reframe Room is a space where your story will be held with dignity, care, and clarity.

“We can’t release pain alone; it softens when it’s witnessed” - Dr. Gabor Maté