Therapeutic Conversations 22
Granville Island, Vancouver, BC, CANADA
Training with Relational Integrity, Creativity, Politic and Purpose
November 7-9, 2024
WELCOME Participants
A Live Skills of Practice Conference Event
Keynote & Workshop Presenters:
Rosa Arteaga (Mexico/Canada), Christine Dennstedt (Canada),Jan Ewing (USA), Julia Gerlitz (Canada), Helene Grau Kristensen (Denmark), Sharon Leung (Hong Kong/UK), Shannon Macintosh (Canada), Stephen Madigan (Canada),
David Marsten (USA), Todd May (USA), David Nylund (USA), Karl Tomm (Canada), Jennifer White (Canada), Tamara Wilson (Canada), Angel Yuen (Canada).
Therapeutic Conversations 22 is a conference designed for participant therapists and students to interact with the world's most creative therapists, theorists, and justice advocates showcasing their latest practice work - LIVE!
All workshop presentations are skill focused, and demonstrated through Live interviewing, session videos, and unaltered client/therapist transcripts.
Cool post conference day gatherings with presenters and participants. Connect, have
a drink, relax, and meet up with colleagues from around the globe.
Dates: November 7-9th, 2024
Location: Granville Island: Arts Umbrella - Centre for Youth and the Performing Arts & the Granville Island Hotel ~ Seating is limited
Conference Hotel Discount: To inquire about special discounted rates at the Granville Island Hotel, please contact Kim Dodge, Operations Manager, 236-521-1772 | kim@gihotel.net
Early Registration Ends June 15th, 2024.
3-Day Conference Pass: $600 CAD
Student and VSNT.live members: $500 CAD
**Student ID will need to be shown at registration check-in.
**Due to conference space and size limitations ~ there are no refunds. Thanks.
Sending you a personal, heartfelt invitation to join us
Meet our Conference Presenters:
Rosa Arteaga, MA, RCC
Rosa works as a narrative therapist, clinical supervisor, trainer, and consultant for local and international organizations. She is the long-time director of clinical practice with an anti-violence non-profit organization in Vancouver and has over fifteen years of experience working from a decolonized, intersectional feminist trauma-informed narrative therapy. Rosa is a VSNT faculty member. and the Clinical Director,
Christine Dennstedt, PhD, RCC
Christine is a VSNT faculty member who has been deeply engaged in the narrative therapy Vancouver narrative community since completing her Master's degree in 2002. By 2010 she'd completed her PhD, and a narrative therapy informed Doctoral dissertation articulated the interconnection between substance misuse and disordered eating in the lives of young women. Christine latest practice interest in linking together narrative informed practices with psychedelic medicines and mental health.
Jan Ewing, PhD
Jan is the founder and co-director of Narrative Initiatives San Diego (NISD) a Narrative training center and clinic and serves as faculty at San Diego State University introducing MFT students to Narrative Therapy. Jan also works with a multi-generational community to practice and extend Narrative principles through mentoring, teaching, supervising, and research. She is a co-author of a chapter called ‘Narrative Neurotherapy: Scaffolding Identity States’.
Julia Gerlitz, MA, RCC
Julia represents narrative's new generation of therapists. She is deeply connected to both the Vancouver and San Diego narrative therapy communities, through VSNT and NISD, and has been practicing narrative since 2011. Julia holds an intense interest in developing new and creative therapeutic letter writing practices that include inviting clients to write letters to clients, using co-created narrative documents in place of group therapy, and the use of letters in supervision. Julia
has published several articles on these innovative frameworks of letter writing and has currently recruited Rock Nylund onto her developing and publishing new ideas and therapeutic letter writing practices team.
Helene Grau Kristensen, MA
Helene is a co-founder of Praksis: The Centre for Narrative Therapy in Denmark and VSNT faculty member. She was originally supervised and trained for many years by Michael White, presents workshops internationally, and teaches narrative therapy courses at the University of Copanhagen. Helene publishes on the issues of Grief, Death, Loss and Hope and her therapy practice specializes in working with parents who have experienced the death of a child. Helene is also a regular interview guest on VSNT.live.
Sharon Leung, PhD
Sharon teaches, practices and supervises narrative therapy in Chinese/Cantonese and English. She first became an elite student of Michael White's in 2001 and over the two + decades since, Sharon (alongside Dr Angela Tsun) was the narrative therapy teaching and training leader in Hong Kong. Up until August 2020, she taught Social Work at Hong Kong Baptist University and was the Director of the Centre for Youth Research and Practice (CYRP). At CYRP, she organized and taught the One-year intensive narrative therapy training programme, supervised graduate students, and ran numerous collaborative projects with service users, practitioners and NGOs in Hong Kong. Sharon is a VSNT faculty member and now lives and trains out of London/UK.
Shannon Macintosh, MSW, RSW
Shannon Macintosh MSW, RSW is a family therapist, member of the Calgary Family Therapy Centre, and a supervisor at Woods Homes in Calgary, Alberta and sessional instructor in the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Calgar. Shannon is devoted to strengthening relationships, building resiliency, and applying advocacy, collaboration, and creativity in her systemic work. She enjoys using metaphors, expressive arts, and experiential learning to bring forth relational healing.
Stephen Madigan, PhD, RCC
Stephen is an award winning Couple and Family therapist and best selling author of the books Narrative Therapy in 2011 and 2019 (3rd Edition is out Fall 2024). He wrote the first doctoral dissertation on narrative therapy, is the Director of the Vancouver School for Narrative Therapy, content manager for narrative's largest online interactive learning site VSNT.live, and longstanding consultant supervisor to international High Conflict Couple Therapy Teams. Stephen enjoys teaching, consulting, and supervising therapy teams ~ world wide.
David Marsten, MA
David is the Clinical Director of Miracle Mile Community Practice in Los Angeles, California and has practiced narrative therapy for 30 years. He is the co-author of the highly praised book: Narrative Therapy in Wonderland: Connecting with Children’s Imaginative Know-how, and longtime faculty member with the Vancouver School for Narrative Therapy. David teaches narrative therapy workshops internationally through session videos, unaltered transcripts, and live interview demonstrations.
Todd May, PhD
Todd May is the resident teaching philosopher and faculty member with the Vancouver School for Narrative Therapy. Todd is the author of seventeen books of philosophy, including Michel Foucault (2006) and Gilles Deleuze (2005) and in 2022 he published a beautiful book on the Philosophy of Care. He continues to be highly active in grassroots political movements in immigration rights and anti-racism campaigns and was also the philosopher advisor to the hit TV show The Good Place on NBC and philosophical consultant on the New York Times best-selling book How to Be Perfect. He has a new book coming out on 09/06/2024 entitled Shall we go extinct?
David Nylund, PhD
David “Rock” Nylund, MSW, PhD is a Professor of Social Work at California State University, Sacramento, the Clinical Director of the Gender Health Center, and a faculty member of the Vancouver School for Narrative Therapy. He is the author of several articles and books on Narrative Therapy and Cultural Studies and gives workshops and supervision for mental health professionals worldwide.
Karl Tomm, PhD
Karl is a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Calgary where he founded the Family Therapy Program and directed the Calgary Family Therapy Centre for 50 years. He is interested in systems theory, narrative theory, social constructionism, and bringforthism. He focuses on interpersonal patterns of interaction and a transformative thinker in developing different kinds of questions in therapy.
Jennifer White, EdD
Jennifer White is a Professor in the School of Child and Youth Care at the University of Victoria. Jennifer is interested in studying contemporary discourses on youth suicide prevention. Through critically informed, relational approaches to inquiry, she seeks to explore alternatives to the standardized, expert-driven, one-size-fits-all, risk factor-based approach to youth suicide prevention.
Tamara Wilson, MSW
Tamara Wilson, MA, R.Psych., is a registered psychologist in Calgary, Alberta and currently practices as a full-time family therapist at the Calgary Family Therapy Centre, where she also provides clinical supervision and training. Tamara has a passion for Social Constructionism, Systemic Therapy, Nonviolent Resistance, and Narrative therapy. She is particularly interested in socio-cultural discourses related to parenthood, race, ethnicity, gender and the ways in which they implicitly become entangled with families and their relationships.
Angel Yuen, MSW
Angel Yuen MSW (she/her) works as a narrative therapist, supervisor, teacher and consultant in alternative-private practice in the Greater Toronto Area and is one of the co-founders of the Narrative Therapy Centre. She is the author of the 2019 book ’Pathways beyond despair: Re-authoring lives of young people through narrative therapy’.
BIG Conference Daily Schedule
Under construction (:
Daily Schedule: November 7-9th, 2024
(Registration 7:15am - 8:00am)
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
8:00am - 8:45am
MORNING TRAINING WORKSHOPS
9:15am – 11:45am
Lunch 11:45am – 1:15pm
AFTERNOON TRAINING WORKSHOPS
1:15pm – 4:15pm
Day One
First Nation Welcome to the Land.
Welcome with Stephen Madigan.
MORNING TRAINING WORKSHOP A
9:15am – 11:45am
Therapeutic Letter Writing + Live Counter-Story Demonstration Interview
David Rock Nylund (USA)
This workshop explores the historical roots, writing frameworks, and practices of therapeutic letter writing. As part of the workshop, Rock will conduct a live counter-story interview demonstration. Participants are then invited to craft a therapeutic letter in response to the interview they have just witnessed.
MORNING TRAINING WORKSHOP B
9:15am – 11:45am
Narrative 101:
Christine Dennstedt (Canada) + Guests
In this dynamic and interactive workshop environment Christine and guests encourage participants to collectively decide what narrative therapy practice topics they would most like to discuss. Topics covered may include, note taking practices, how to begin interviews and how to proceed, developing narrative questions, types of narrative therapy questions, letter writing, and best learning resources.
MORNING TRAINING WORKSHOP C
9:15am – 11:45am
Narrative Approaches to Sexualized Violence
Angel Yuen (Canada)
Narrative Therapy approaches assist people in reclaiming their lives from the effects of sexualized violence and suggest that there is always another story. These are often subordinated stories of responses, skills in living, and resistance. What might seem an ever-so-small form of resistance to sexualized violence may not only be significant, but also can elevate personal agency.
LUNCH: 11:45-1:15
AFTERNOON TRAINING WORKSHOP A
1:15 pm – 4:15 pm
Understanding Client Stories through the Lens of the ‘IPscope’
Tamara Wilson (Canada)
Shannon McIntosh (Canada)
The workshop demonstrate our systemic and narrative work with families through the lens of the ‘IPscope’ framework. We’ll reveal how we de-centre the problem from the person from an interpersonal lens and we’ll review our process of deliberately looking and listening for the ways in which larger socio-cultural influences are showing up in our therapeutic work with families.
AFTERNOON TRAINING WORKSHOP B
1:15 pm – 4:15 pm
Don’t Let Go: Let the relationship guide you
Helene Grau Kristensen (Denmark)
In my work I help people reclaim their grief and their relationship to the deceased. In this process the deceased become the guide helping those left behind navigate the complexities of grief infused into modern societies by Freud and his followers. By retelling stories about the deceased, it is rendered visible what they give value to, and how those value can help those left behind. The workshop will demonstrate these narrative informed practices and share case examples.
AFTERNOON TRAINING WORKSHOP C
1:15 pm – 4:15 pm
The darkening of the landscape and the preservation of dignity
David Marsten (USA)
Unless the circumstances people find themselves in are demanding and even impossible there is no call for ethical consideration or origination. There is no need for a protagonist. There is no story. This workshop will consider how darkening the landscape can contribute to rich story development and shore up a person’s sense of dignity and agency.
Day One
AFTERNOON PLENARY
Angel Yuen (Canada)
Co-discovering skills and knowledges of navigating the loss of a loved one to violence
The loss of a loved one to violence has been referred to as ‘when the unthinkable happens.’ This plenary address will share how narrative therapy approaches can support people to live beyond violent loss. The skills and knowledges of persons navigating the loss of their loved ones will be shared.
Day Two
MORNING PLENARY
Jennifer White (Canada)
Sustaining Our Collective Co-existence: Exploring Communal, Creative and Political
Responses to Suicidality
Suicidal thoughts and behaviours are inescapably social and relational phenomena. By recognizing our deep inter-dependence and co-existence with all living things, expressions of suicidality can be a provocation to mutually consider other possible worlds and futures, leading to more communal, creative and political forms of engagement that are aimed at sustaining our collective life.
MORNING TRAINING WORKSHOP A
9:15am – 11:45am
Including Physiology in Narrative Conversations: Supporting Preferred Identity States
Jan Ewing (USA)
Narrative informed work is often concerned with supporting person’s changing identities. This workshop will explore how including client’s physiology in our Narrative conversations can support sustained change from one experience of identity to another. Using a concept of “Identity States” an intentional set of practices are proposed whereby we notice, include, name, thicken and depend on physiology to guide and support change.
MORNING TRAINING WORKSHOP B
9:15am – 11:45am
Responding to Trauma through Innovative Letter Writing Practices
Julia Gerlitz (Canada)
Sometimes what’s happened to people is unspeakable and deemed not safe enough to say aloud in a group. With diagnoses of PTSD on the rise, viewing trauma through a structuralist/medicalized lens can create problem-saturated identities, which keep people silent and disconnected. Julia responds to these challenges by building communities of concern through the use of therapeutic letters and co-created narrative documents in place of traditional group therapy.
MORNING TRAINING WORKSHOP C
9:15am – 11:45am
NIRI: narrative therapy informed relational interviewing with conflicted couple relationships
Stephen Madigan (Canada)
Todd May (USA)
NIRI is viewed as an ideological, political, and emotionally compassionate creative step forward away from popular internal state psychological practices of couple therapy. Presenters discuss the relational ecology of ideas informing NIRI and use session videos to demonstrate how the therapist receives and responds to conflicted couple relationship stories.
LUNCH: 11:45-1:15
AFTERNOON TRAINING WORKSHOP A
9:15am – 11:45am
Internalized Other Interviewing
Karl Tomm (Canada)
If one comes to view the psychological ‘self’ as constituted by an internalized community, it becomes coherent to interview any member of that community within the self. In so doing, a therapist potentially has access to a significantly wider range of possible therapeutic interventions to enable change.
AFTERNOON TRAINING WORKSHOP B
9:15am – 11:45am
Live Clinical Supervision. A Narrative Approach Discussing Gender-Based Violence and Trauma
(Rosa Arteaga Canada/Mexico) + Guests
The workshop is a live supervision demonstration where the audience is engaged to participate.Rosa invites a team of counsellors from diverse backgrounds to the workshop who all work and support survivors of gender-based violence in their work. She demonstrates a method of live supervision with these workers, while also inviting a response team to respond back to the counselling team being supervised.
AFTERNOON TRAINING WORKSHOP C
9:15am – 11:45am
Narrative Therapy: It may not quite be what we always thought it was
Stephen Madigan (Canada)
Todd May (USA)
This workshop guides participants through a puzzling, thought provoking, and always enjoyable discussion regarding common mis-readings, mis-conceptions, and mis-interpretations about narrative theory and practice.
Day Two
AFTERNOON PLENARY
Helene Grau Kristensen (Denmark)
Reclaiming our grief, reclaiming our loved ones
In1995 Michael White published the paper Reclaiming our stories, reclaiming our lives. In this paper he demonstrates how narrative ideas can be applied outside the limited context of therapy and embedded directly into the communities that form people’s lives. In this keynote I will expand further the possibilities for narrative informed community work related to grief.
Day Three
MORNING PLENARY
Karl Tomm (Canada)
An Invitation to Bringforthist Therapy
Bringforthist therapy is a version of systemic therapy that has been inspired by Humberto Maturana’s theory of knowledge (which is grounded in both biology and culture). The basic phenomenon of ‘loving interaction’ is regarded as foundational and serves as a major guide in the therapeutic process.
MORNING TRAINING WORKSHOP A
9:15am – 11:45am
Queer Informed Narrative Therapy with Trans Youth and Families.
David Rock Nylund (USA)
Rock demonstrates his narrative therapy informed 5-step relational interviewing approach working with trans youth and their families that brings forth parental/caregiver affirmation and community support of trans youth. As part of the workshop, he will conduct a live demonstration of an internalized other interview that helps parents to step more fully into supporting their trans child.
MORNING TRAINING WORKSHOP B
9:15am – 11:45am
Narrative Therapy and Psychedelic Medicines
Christine Dennstedt (Canada)
The workshops highlights Christine's work with psychedelics and narrative therapy. She demonstrates how the two practice frameworks work together as a way to externalize problems and thicken preferred stories in a person's life. This innovative workshop walks participants through the process of preparation, the psychedelic-assisted therapy session, and integration, and shows the use of a narrative therapy framework and questions used in each of the three phases of the work.
MORNING TRAINING WORKSHOP C
9:15am – 11:45am
Knowing despair: How parents of children struggling with drug use issues sustain hope.
Sharon Leung (Hong Kong/UK)
This workshop explores how a narrative therapy approach can support parents of drug users to remain hopeful despite facing health, financial, legal and other challenges. The presenter shares collective work she has done together with parents in a self-help community in Hong Kong.
LUNCH: 11:45-1:15
AFTERNOON TRAINING WORKSHOP A
9:15am – 11:45am
Relationship Therapy: Narrative therapy informed relational interviewing (NIRI) with conflicted couple relationships
Stephen Madigan (Canada)
Todd May (USA)
The workshop outlines a wide ecology of interlocking post-structural non-individualist ideas through NIRI's relational and contextual response/questions to conflcited couple relationships. Where relationships are viewed as relational and cannot be divided off from the cultural beliefs, norms, obligations, responsibilities, structural inequalities etc. the relationship is imbedded within. Relationship video sessions are demonstrated and discussed.
AFTERNOON TRAINING WORKSHOP B
9:15am – 11:45am
Coming Soon!
AFTERNOON TRAINING WORKSHOP C
9:15am – 11:45am
Questions about Questions
Stephen Madigan (Canada) & David Nylund (USA)
This unique Live-interview supervision workshop is designed to create more meaningful therapeutic questions through understanding the purpose, direction, politic, intention, context, history, and relational meaning of narrative therapy questions. Participants engage with presenters live counter-story interviewing, close up supervision, discussion, and focused support of their questions and therapeutic letter writing.
Day Three
AFTERNOON PLENARY
Rosa Arteaga (Canada/Mexico)
Conversations about Trauma and Violence: Re-establishing relationships with the body through re-writing
agreements with survival strategies
What do we do as narrative therapist when we witness our consultants' past intruding their present lives while it holds them back from being the person they desire to become? Rosa’s plenary shares a narrative therapy informed approach that supports our consultants to investigate how the past impacts of violence, trauma, and abuse in their present and the possibilities on how to re-negotiate with their survival strategies.
The Gunnar Martinsen Scholarship
VSNT faculty lost their very close friend and narrative colleague Gunnar Martinsen of Bergen Norway who died on July 1st, 2022. To celebrate and remember his wonderfully full-hearted and passionate spirit, we are happy to offer five scholarships to our October 27-29 conference.
