@awakenedpotential hi i kinda wanted to take a crack at this as a baby therapist who did some reading on narrative therapy in school :)
SOOOO disclaimer: i have no formal training in narrative therapy and would not say in any official sense that i have definitively utilized a strict narrative therapy approach with clients, However most of my training was in the creative arts / expressive therapies many of which utilize narrative-centered approaches and have many overlapping concepts, which i Have used in some capacity.
Okay! so as far as i understand it there is no central unified structured process for narrative therapy, but there are some core concepts, such as externalization of the problem, searching for unique outcomes, and developing a preferred alternative story (it was killing me trying to answer this without citing an academic source so i gave in to my Good Student impulse and found one, free pdf from sagepub here)
narrative therapy is inherently client-centered, which means The Problem is only The Problem as the client defines it. ofc the therapist's job can be to Help the client to clearly see the problem so as to define it. with that in mind, the question of "separating themselves from their coping mechanisms/self-destructive behaviors" would start with having them identify what Problem they see in their life (which likely won't always be a problem they see themselves as the primary active contributors of) and helping them to externalize it (i.e. encapsulate it in a clear narrative or metaphor) so they can see it clearly. anything that they are Doing also gets encapsulated in that and separated from Who They Are (one common phrase in narrative therapy is "the person is not the problem, the problem is the problem").
let's do shane cuz i have an easier time picturing how this would go with him. i'm going post-TLG. when identifying The Problem, depending on where we are in the timeline (and also depending on how he ends up coping with things), there's a few different things he might say. he could go the route of focusing on Others external to him as the problem, such as "i was outed against my will and everyone on the team i spent my entire adulthood winning for thinks i tripped on purpose and i'm being made out as a laughingstock by homophobic hockey fans and now i'm on a team that has no legacy where i'm not captain anymore and i don't know anyone except my husband." if that was the case, part of defining the problem that i would do would be to inquire Why all those things feel like a problem to him, i.e. what they make him feel. likely, what it would all boil down to is "i feel out of control."
i could Also see him coping via dissociation and Acting like none of those things are in fact a problem, he's doing fine thank you very much :) in which case The Problem as he defines it might be one of the Side Effects of his emotional repression, such as "yeah i'm doing fine but coach thinks i have a problem with rage on the ice" or "ilya is insisting i have a problem with food but i swear it's a normal performance diet". OR/also, it could be less of someone else's idea, where he's still coping w dissociation but does indeed Recognize that Something is a problem; maybe he's been having night terrors or sleepwalking episodes, maybe he's starting to acknowledge his issues with food or random rage spells. i would take the same approach of questioning Why any of these things feel troublesome for him specifically. if it's about other people thinking he's Not Fine, what distress does that make him feel? maybe it's something like "no one understands me" or "I don't know / can't trust what's real". if it's him noticing his own dysfunction, it could be "I'm afraid of / can't trust myself". which allll would boil back down to not being in control.
so, as far as Externalization goes, depending on how creative the client is, it could range from telling the story quite literally to coming up with metaphors to literally putting it in some kind of art. since shane is not a particularly artistic person i would probably go the more literal route, and the externalization would come in the form of how the conversation is framed - meaning, he's not just saying "i'm out of control, i'm a failure, i'm never going to be what i was again" and feeling like shit and staying there. rather, the therapist's job would be to help provide a sense of narrative containment to help him frame all of this as The Problem - the problem is that I had a lot of unexpected things happen and be taken away from me, and the things I used to do to have control are no longer working, so now this is creating a fear of xyz.
this could then also be connected to the larger story of his life, by prompting for questions about what his relationship to control and the things he lost used to be. he could end up with something like: for most of my life, the most important thing in the world to me has been hockey. being good at hockey required me to be very controlled, and i was very good at it. then i fell in love, which threatened everything, but i eventually decided it was worth it, that ilya was the most important thing in my life. then everything fell to shit, and i lost the thing i used to care about the most, and even though it was worth it i don't know how to live without being in control. we could even distill the core problem narrative into that last sentence: i don't know how to live without being in control.
just getting to this point could take many sessions btw. depending on a lot of factors. but let's say we get there. if the problem narrative is i don't know how to live without being in control, then one of the next steps we could take would be to "search for unique outcomes", aka times when that wasn't true or wasn't the only story. in other words, i would ask a question along the lines of "can you think of any times in your life when you have been able to live, and feel some kind of peace, without being in control?"
this is where it could get fun, cuz i bet we can allllll think of something for how shane could respond to that. cough submission cough cough. alternatively, one of the other questions that could be asked is "has there been anything good in your life that has come from not being in control?" and guess what! there is!!! in fact the most important thing in his life is something/someOne who he only acquired by allowing himself to Lose control to his desires!! wow would u look at that.
so these Unique Outcomes form alternative narratives, such as "losing control feels good when its with someone i trust" and "the most important experiences in my life have come from me choosing to give up control"
some important words there i would then point out: trust and choosing. in these situations where not having control is good, the thing that makes it good is the feeling of trusting someone and the feeling of trusting himself to choose it. (and adjacent to that, when he's choosing it for a greater purpose, such as love.)
so, when we move into developing the preferred alternative story, we're essentially integrating all of these things. we might end up with a statement like i can trust myself to choose what's right for me. we might also try to find ways in which he can experience the feeling of trust more on a daily basis (ilya would definitely come in. handy. for that.) we could also explore more of the greater purpose angle - if letting go of control to his desires is the thing that got him ilya, what greater purpose could come from letting go of control of his hockey persona? is there anything important he cares about that could make that worth it? (possibly a controversial take but i actually think shane has a strong potential to turn towards some activism here, with irina foundation or scott hunter's Club of Nice Hockey Players thing).
one of the pros of narrative therapy is that because there's no specific structure, it could be easily integrated with other therapy approaches, so we could be doing all of this while also building a strong therapeutic rapport, incorporating some trauma-focused or somatic techniques, etc.
i'm kind of running out of steam on this post now but that's essentially how i would incorporate some of the concepts of narrative therapy for shane AS I UNDERSTAND THEM. big disclaimer again for all of that. i'm sorry i don't have the energy to do ilya lmao this was way longer than intended but i hope it was helpful/interesting <3
