BRIEF NARRATIVE SHORT STORIES: Single-Session Practices and Just Beyond

More professionals are now turning to time-sensitive, competency-oriented practices as a viable short-term approach for providing services to people. These practices can be taken into therapeutic conversations in brief, single session, walk-in, or longer-term environments.

In this workshop Jim will offer a detailed journey through the guiding brief narrative assumptions and principles that inform single-session practices. In addition, he will introduce fresh, and innovative concepts that expand the pioneering narrative work of White and Epston. Clear and specific connections between these concepts and how to put them to work in single-session practice will be described.

A time-sensitive response to peoples’ requests for service is both ethical and practical, offering them the help they need, when they need it. Research demonstrates that a promptly delivered, collaborative, single therapy session has the potential to sufficiently meet the hopes and needs of people who consult with us.

To implement useful brief services such as single-session, brief consultation, and walk-in counselling, we need to significantly shift the way we view the children, youth and families who come to us for help. Doing therapy briefly does not mean doing traditional long-term therapy faster – it’s not Rush Therapy. Providing consultation in a single session is about adopting a different set of assumptions, principles, and practices about how to work with people and how people transform. Taken-for-granted “more is better” practices that are present in many environments are called into question. Conversely, more is not better. Better is better. Single-session practices encourage a relational posture and are time sensitive, rather than time driven. Not one session more than required and not one session less,

Single-session practices include a rapid engagement process and tap into peoples’ local knowledge, skills, and abilities to create movement toward preferred directions in their lives. Professionals form a clear partnership and a strong sense of purpose with people that consult with them.

In this workshop, there will be an emphasis on skill development through “hands on” practice and how to apply these ideas to ‘real world’ settings. Skill building exercises, clear presentations, detailed transcripts, recorded examples and a comprehensive handout will all be included to provide you with a rich and engaging training experience in brief narrative single-session practices. This will be a valuable training experience for hardworking newcomers as well as advanced practitioners. This energizing training experience will help you move your understanding of time-sensitive practices to exciting new territories.

You will explore:

• How to begin, maintain and end the therapy process, even in one session
• How to conduct accessible, ethical and viable consultation in one single session.
• How to work with people to decide how much is “enough”.

• An innovative framework for constructing storyline to upload significance and meaning in conversations.
• How to move questions from information gathering exercises to generative, meaning making dialogues.

• Narrative micro-maps for navigating purposeful therapeutic conversations.
• Ways to unpack real time pivotal moments that influence the therapeutic process.
• An energizing approach that you can apply to your practice immediately.

Certificate verifying 6 hours of participation completed will be awarded to each participant.

WORKSHOP HOURS:

Saturday, May 4^th, 9 AM to 4 PM (US Central Time). Includes 2 short breaks and one hour for lunch.

REGISTRATION FEE:

Early Bird Fee: $150.00 (Register before March 31).

Regular Fee $175.00 (April 1 and after)

Student Fee: $100.00 (Must show proof of status with a student card if requested)

CANCELLATION:

Full refund minus $30.00 cancellation fee until March 31

50% refund between April 1 and May 3.

No refund after May 3

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.