My own White Knight in Shining Armour - Part 1 of 3

About 3 maybe 4 years ago I completed this really cool little workbook from Janet Whitehead, Musings and Mud. It was called "The Demise of Noshud Hafta". It prompted you to complete a “story of a hero in pursuit of a dream, a villain who interferes, and the inevitable confrontation.” I loved the prompts and enjoyed doing it and found it revealing and it certainly helped me. I had forgotten about this until I wrote my journal a few days ago, this time prompts were from a different source – a Visual Journalling book – Going Deep than Words, Barbara Ganim & Susan Fox.


I am fortunate to be a third way through a Post Grad Diploma in Counselling, Narrative Therapy, which is all about ‘your’ story and where we get the ideas of the story we live from. What impact this has on us, belief’s etc. It also externalizes whatever the problem/issue is, believing in the person, the problem/issue is the problem/issue, not the person. Anyway, this is of course informs all I do and raises awareness.

What I realised as I wrote this other story was that in my previous story the villain was a person and I really did have a little of that magical thinking. Not exactly the Knight in Shining armour coming to rescue me, eg something out there would be the answer, well kind of. When I wrote the story I really was in the fairyland story, which was great. I LOVE metaphor, stories, they enable so much, not only insights but also strategies etc and they are really quite fun and allow the imagination to run wild, if we allow it.

What I realise in my current story is that in fact the villain if you like, even the language ‘the villain’, not ‘my’ villain was clearly identified as an inner critic and not so much a big bad villain just belief’s, perceptions etc that really are not serving me. I was so surprised to see that I was now able to let go of the who, which enabled me to deal with externalizing, whether that be a who, an inner critic, a belief that no longer serves me, does not matter because when you can name it, see it more clearly then you can see what you have control over, what you do not and certainly learn the wisdom to know the difference.

What I realise over the last few years since my first story, is that I have been able to grasp more of a balance of the story, as it truly exists and to understand, having more empathy, compassion and also forgiveness. I have also realised that only I could do whatever needed to be done. I am my own hero in my story, I am the White Knight in Shining armour, having said that, there is no way I would be writing this now had it not been for all the love and support from others and actually using everything I advocate for, everything I use in my coach practice, I have experienced.

This will be the first of three blogs, somehow it feels that it needs to be that. I want to write the second about my villain now, naming it, externalizing it, so then identifying some strategies to work with it, alongside it, whilst leading my life the way I see it. In the third, I would like to amalgamate some of the training of narrative therapy, storytelling in a creativity, coaching way – um I feel like I will create an ebook with this.

I would like to finish with saying that no matter what your story is, it needs to be seen, heard, most importantly by you. It really does not matter what metaphors you use, how you see it. No judgment, just playing, imagination, no rules, break the rules, go on an adventure. It helps to externalize it then you have something to work with, so once upon a time …..