Acceptance and Change as Dialectic of Recovery: Examples of Storytelling, Fairy Tale and Psychopharmacotherapy as Therapeutic Modalities.

"Narative medicine" promotes theraputic healing and recovery using fairy tales and traditional folk stories. Individuals are capable of shaping their lives through various narrative strategies and re-authoring alternative stories that are concerned with different aspects of acceptance and change. Psychotherapy through the eyes of stories and fairy tales can have two perspectives. Firstly, fairy tale acts like a weft around which the very story/script of the patient is formed, which in itself becomes the basis for interpreting the occurrence of a mental disorder. The second perspective is the perspective of healing or getting out of a "fairytale" story/script by changing an incoherent life narrative into an alternative coherent narrative (reframing). The aim of this pilot case studies approach was to use a narrative approach based on stories and fairy tales in order to promote psychological growth, meaning in life, resilience, self-realization and improved well-being and highlight the dialectic of recovery, an interplay of acceptance and change (reframing). With properly applied personalized narrative psychopharmacotherapy, the patient is capable of changing their beliefs in order to reach a new meaning of life, and thus to facilitate the lowering of symptomatology, its dissaperance and possibly even a cure, whatever that may mean for an individual. Considering its promising results, clinical implications and possible further applications are discussed.

Psychopharmacotherapy and the Hero's Journey: Mental Health Medicines and Script Change.

The concept of a script in Transactional Analysis (TA) can be considered as the basis for the occurrence and duration of mental disorders. As such, a script change can be the solution leading to improved mental health and well-being. In addition to redecision therapy, offered by TA, there are other techniques for changing the script. One of them is the psychotherapeutic technique, The Hero's Journey, by Robert Dilts, developed from Joseph Campbell's idea of a single myth; i.e. a monomyth, which is in fact the narrative of all narratives. It is this model of all myths that is actually a story about the meaning of life, which is exactly what gives the patient the power to achieve the goal. This goal is also the cornerstone of all existential psychotherapeutic modalities. Life can be viewed as a journey in which each chooses their own path by choosing their own goals, in any sphere of life; private, professional, or other. Misalignment of goals or failure to achieve them can cause mental disorders, leading to a loss of the meaning of life and with this loss, one's goals. When illness appears on the journey, the treatment itself becomes the journey. By applying personalized psychopharmacotherapy and removing the symptoms of the disease, further treatment aims to help the patient enter stabilization and socialization. In this phase of treatment, the hero's journey becomes a therapeutic journey. Through setting new goals and thus changing the meaning of life, the patient is introduced to the last phase of disease prevention, where health becomes a life goal through metaphors of achieving various personal goals. The synergy of both approaches can bring the patient into a state of remission that becomes a permanent state as the patient has established their own goals, felt fulfilled and found their own meaning and purpose in life using motivation, creativity and their forgotten or neglected resources and potentials.