A Comprehensive Introduction to Brief Narrative Therapy: key assumptions, operating principles, ethical practices.

With Jim Duvall

WORKSHOP HOURS:

Friday, November 4th, 1:00 pm – 4:30 pm and Saturday, November 5th, 9 am – 12:30 pm, 2022 (CDT – US Central Time)

This introductory workshop serves as a threshold for practitioners interested in the 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 therapy, they are often captured up in problem saturated, restricted 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 Brief Narrative Therapy.

Ways of situating our work within 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 7 hours of participation completed will be awarded to each participant.

WORKSHOP HOURS:

Friday, November 4th, 1:00 pm – 4:30 pm and Saturday, November 5th, 9 am – 12:30 pm, 2022 (CDT – US Central Time)

REGISTRATION FEE:

Early Bird Fee: $170.00 (Register by October 9th,  2022).

Regular Fee $200.00

Student Fee: $115.00 (Must show proof of status with a student card if requested)

CANCELLATION:

Full refund minus $30.00 cancellation fee until October 9th 2022.

50% refund between October 10th and November 4^th, 2022

No refund  November 4^th and thereafter.

NOTE: Zoom log-in information will be provided to the email you registered with close to the workshop dates.

JIM DUVALL, M.Ed.

Jim Duvall is Co-Director of JST Institute and Editor of Journal of Systemic Therapies. His experience as a therapist, educator, consultant, speaker, editor, and author spans over four decades. He has spent over 300 hours studying and collaborating with Michael White in training, writing and community projects. His work aims to integrate time-sensitive narrative practices within social justice principles.

In addition to numerous articles, book chapters, Jim co-authored a policy paper (Duvall, J., Young, K., Kays-Burden, A., 2012), No more, no less: Brief mental health services for children and youth. His co-authored book (Duvall & Béres, 2011), Innovations in narrative therapy: Connecting practice, training and research, WW Norton and Company is the first book to integrate training and research with narrative therapy resulting in compelling practice-based evidence. He is the co-editor (Beaudoin & Duvall, 2017) of Collaborative therapy and neurobiology: Evolving practices in action.

He has offered hundreds of workshops, courses, and keynote presentations with organizations throughout Canada, US, Australia, Asia, and Europe. Other times Jim can be found playing music with his friends or boating on the Gulf of Mexico with his partner, family and their dog, Sailor.