Journeys in Brief Narrative Therapy: An introduction to the philosophy, key ideas and practices.

June 4 th  and 5 th, 2021 – 1 PM to 5 PM (CST)

This introductory workshop serves as a threshold for those practitioners interested in the ongoing study of the key ideas and time-sensitive practices of brief narrative therapy. Brief narrative therapy introduces the idea that our lives are made up of multiple experiences that can be strung together into many possible stories.  Stories make it possible for people to make sense of their life experiences. When people enter into therapy, they are often captured up in problem-saturated, self-demeaning, restricting stories that contribute to a sense of personal failure. This workshop will introduce participants to the propositions associated with the narrative metaphor and will invite them to explore the practices of narrative therapy that help people to challenge and break free of problem-saturated stories and assist them to explore subordinated “identity stories” that offer new possibilities for their lives.

These narrative explorations can be viewed as journeys, and therapists are guided in these journeys by a particular posture and a range of conversations and questions that are available to them. Although these scaffolded conversations do not specify the destination, they do provide the therapist and the person seeking conversation with a compass along the way. This multi-storied orientation assists therapists to recognize possibilities that exist in people’s lives and provides a basis for the development of collaborative conversations and meaning generating therapeutic questions that have the potential to speed people toward the purposes and preferred destinations in their lives.

Clear presentation, digitally recorded examples of narrative therapy sessions, experiential exercises, a comprehensive handout package, and a bibliography will be offered to create a rich and interactive brief narrative practice training experience. There will be a particular emphasis on hands-on (practice-practice-practice) micro-skill development and ways of taking this work into your own personal style and practice wisdom.

Participants will be introduced to:

• The guiding assumptions and key concepts of narrative practices.

• Ways of situating our work within the post-structural inquiry.

• The roles of discourse, deconstruction, and transparency.

• Externalizing conversations and, the problem is the problem, not the person

• Ways to get to know the person away from the problem.

• Therapeutic posture and post-structural listening.

• Scaffolding therapeutic conversations across The Zone of Proximal Development

• How to create questions as invitations to generate meaning.

• Narrative ideas and practices that can be applied to your work and life immediately.

CEU’s 

Certificate verifying 8 hours of participation completed will be awarded to each participant.

For more information, please visit jstinstitute.com