Schedule: 9:00am-4:30pm Friday, September 20th and Saturday, September 21st. Registration begins at 8:30am on Friday, September 20th. Refreshment will be provided for the morning and afternoon breaks. Participants will be responsible for their own lunch. Pay for parking.
About the Workshop
Stories of trauma can contribute to a sense of hopelessness for persons of all ages, as well as the service providers they are consulting with. Narrative Therapy approaches to traumatic experience assist people to redevelop/develop a sense of personal agency and suggest that there is always another story. These are often subordinated stories of connection, hope, cherished values, and unacknowledged ways in which people respond to hardship.
This 2-day introductory workshop will:
· Provide an overview of the ideas that shape Narrative Therapy
· Offer a beginning knowledge of narrative practices (externalizing, double-listening, re-membering)
· Explore the taken-for-granted understandings of trauma and PTSD
· Offer ways to engage in conversations about trauma that are not retraumatizing
· Discover people’s responses to violence and oppression
· Examine the broader power relations and small ‘p’ (political) practices that can be brought into the counselling room and community work
· Share hopeful stories of persons reclaiming their lives from the effects of abuse
This workshop is for those new to, or on a beginning journey with, narrative practices. It will be relevant for a diversity of service providers including counsellors, therapists, community workers, child protection workers and mental health practitioners working in settings such as private practice, hospitals, women’s shelters, sexual assault centers, schools, Violence Against Women (VAW) organizations, and other community-based and social service agencies.
About the Speaker
Angel Yuen M.S.W., R.S.W. works as a narrative therapist in private practice in Durham region. She is also a faculty member and narrative supervisor for the NTC of Toronto, and a member of Dulwich Centre international faculty in Adelaide, Australia. Her previous work for twenty-five years was in inner-city schools and communities.Many children, young people and adults Angel has worked alongside have been subjected to abuse, violence and oppression. In her faculty roles she has had the privilege of sharing double-storied accounts that honour the injustices that many of them have experienced as well as their skills, knowledges, acts of resistance and responses.
Angel has a newly released book by Dulwich Centre Publications titled’ Pathways beyond despair: Re-authoring lives of young people through narrative therapy, and she is co-editor with Cheryl White of the 2007 book Conversations about gender, culture, violence and narrative practice: Stories of hope and complexity from women of many cultures. Angel has also published the following papers re: narrative ideas and responding to trauma: “Discovering Children’s Responses to Trauma: a response-based narrative practice” (2007) and “Less Pain More Gain: Explorations of responses versus effects when working with the consequences of trauma
