Enacting shared narratives in work counselling

Work counselling is complex and challenging. Research highlights the importance of user involvement and client-professional relationships for successful counselling outcomes. In this narrative case study, we explored how work counsellors may support service users in the process of returning to work, by focusing on meaning-making processes in counselling. We created data through a narrative interview and conducted a narrative analysis of the data. Our findings show how counsellors may support users through being open for multiple understandings of the situation, in particular users’ ongoing narratives. Further, our findings show how believing in, and acting on, users’ ongoing plots, may help in the process of returning to work. We discuss how our findings of counsellors’ role in meaning-making processes may shed light on how user involvement can be put into practice, but also how this may involve some dilemmas.