Narrative Newsletter January 2026: Best of Teaching/Travel List, Individualism's Trifecta, 1989 Protests, Relational Ontology + More
- Vancouver School For Narrative Therapy VSNT
- Jan 29
- 16 min read
"If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less, but to dream more, to dream all the time."
~ Marcel Proust
Hello everyone. Hoping you and your loved ones are all doing well. I’ve missed our contact, your feedback, and connection.
There is so much going on and so much to write about. The first 2026 newsletter includes a best narrative teaching/travel list + field notes on Individualism's trifecta, Brené Brown commentary on self-help/wellness space, Relational Ontology, learning for Europe's 1989 protests, story of my 1st job in mental health, new VSNT conference, training courses, faculty writings, and more.
Let's begin slow and easy.
Living on Bowen Island during late November through mid-February is contemplative, meditative, and at times, rainy dark and exigent within the isolation. Takes a little getting used to. It certainly has, for me. Not sure if deep silence and stillness is for everyone.
Our yearly family and friends December holiday in Toronto offers a large top up in the social connection department. The Madigan family gathers up our combined collection of friends who can only be described as a wild, outspoken, creative horde. Never at a loss for words. Loving, storying, and fun.
Much to my relief, whenever I return home, no one (except for my big sister Anne whose background is a family physician + fab narrative therapist), asks about the intimate particularities of my client work. I really appreciate this! Everyone has some knowledge about what I do, have all (through the years) reached out for assistance, but they/we keep all this private.
What my friends and family are intrigued with are asking questions and hearing stories about narrative therapy teaching and travel escapades.
On The Road Again ~
a bit of background.
I began travel-teaching narrative therapy workshops after my MFT doctoral program. The first few years were pretty much confined to BC, other Canadian cities, and various American therapy conferences. Early on AAMFT chose my narrative therapy informed ‘anti-anorexia’ workshop a ‘top 5’ conference presentation. I was also writing a lot. And things slowly blossomed from there.
Then in 2008, (tragically and suddenly) Michael White died. In 2011 APA published my 1st best-selling narrative book alongside a series of 6 practice videos. The teaching/traveling life was sealed.
For the last 14-15 years, I’m out on the road, a lot. Travelling and teaching across 5 continents and meeting with an incredible range of people, cities and cultures. A deep commitment to teaching narrative theory and practice makes this way of life a good fit. But I’m not quite sure it’s for everyone.
If you’re thinking of taking up a teaching/traveling lifestyle - long trips, jetlag, and being away from home can be challenging. This is offset by exhilarating teaching experiences, an inherent push to grow your work, life-long personal connections, and introductions to diverse cultural landscapes.
A (Partial) Best Of List ~
A few curious narrative therapy workshop travel questions answered.
Longest workshop lunch: Bordeaux, France. Always 2-hours minimum (with wine – but of course).
Longest travel: Capetown and Pretoria South Africa. From Vancouver that’s 10,229 miles (16,461 kilometers), with no direct flights. The amazing SA organizers – hard working Chene Swart in Pretoria and Cape Town’s narrative teacher/leader extraordinaire Elize Morkel invited me many times – flew 12 hours direct to Cape Town out of Zurich (connected after other Euro city teaching).
Largest in-person workshop crowd: 500+. Tokyo, Japan.
Best food: This is super close (Mexico City, Valencia, Tokyo) However, the nod has to go to Hong Kong. Angela Tsun and Sharon Drave are the brilliant long-time 25-year leaders of the robust Hong Kong narrative scene who are also incredibly kind hosts and restaurant companions (like SA, I began yearly teaching here back around 2012-2013). I‘m flying back to teach in late February 2026.
Longest continuous training without a break: 3 weeks in Palestine. Taught narrative theory/practice foundations in the capital of Ramallah for the first week. Then travelled to therapist/social workers home cities to supervise live therapy sessions (alongside Arabic translators) in Hebron, Nablus, and Jenin. Then returned with each city group for more teaching/group reflections in Ramallah. Many thanks to TRC, David Denborough and Cheryl White.
Best ride to a workshop: For years I’ve loved teaching across Spain (Cáceres, Madrid, Valencia, etc.) and meetings with its palmy narrative therapy scene. Believe I’ve taught each year in Barcelona since 2012. The host and narrative leader/professor is super cool guy Adrian Montesano. His hotel pickup and narrative workshop delivery method involves throwing me on the back of his big motorcycle and weaving in and out of crazy mad rush hour traffic. Barcelona is of course also in the mix for best food category.
Best workshop crowd: Oh boy this is tough (Dublin, San Francisco, Port of Spain/Trinidad, Copenhagen). So many to choose from but - I’ll have to go with a NIRI couple therapy workshop in São Paulo, Brazil!! The energy, response to the work, and love from over 250 participants was over the top. Thank you to big-hearted friend Marilene Grandesso – Brazil’s narrative champion.
Longest continuous ongoing supervisor/training relationship: Since 2014 I’ve enjoyed working with a dedicated team of High Conflict Couple therapists in Trondheim (Norway’s 3rd largest city). Involves ongoing live NIRI couple therapy demonstration teaching visits with additional zoom supervisory days several times a year. Many (many!) thanks to Elin Bjóru, Stein-Roger Brothseth, Elin Jermstad and the whole entire team!
Most remote workshop stop: The town of Alice Springs sits inside the vast Australia central desert, approximately 1,500 km (930 miles) from the nearest major cities of Darwin to the north and Adelaide to the south, with roughly 1,200 km to the nearest ocean. Fantastic group of narrative therapy informed nurses and social workers who each week from Monday to Thursday load up their trucks with government required amounts of water and fuel and drive out to remote indigenous Aboriginal communities. Absolutely amazing group of people.
Furthest northern narrative workshop: Reykjavik, Iceland. Have a hilarious story involving a craft beer bar owner, great Norwegian pal Ottar Ness, and the reason why we drank two days for free . . . perhaps a telling for another time.
Furthest southern narrative workshop: Buenos Aires's latitude (approx. 34.6° S) places it a bit further south than Cape Town (approx. 33.55° S). Marvelous host Karin Tavernier invited me down a few times. Loved every minute.
OK enough (:
Brené Brown on the Self-Help/Wellness/and Advice-Giving Space
In a widely read interview with popular American academic, writer and podcaster Brené Brown, she (uncommonly) eviscerates the self-help/self-improvement and wellness marketplace. Stating how the space is a composition of, A) 30 percent well-meaning, well-intentioned, and well-trained people, B) 30 percent of people who want to be/try to be in that self-improvement, wellness space but - are underqualified and, C) 40 percent of the operators in the space she considers as - "sheer grifters offering predatory advice-giving."
Brown also expresses how she’d always tried to be “very, very careful” in the self-help/wellness/advice giving space and eventually made a “very specific tactical get the hell out of Dodge” decision to not be anywhere near, that space.
Individualism's Burgeoning Trifecta
The Vancouver School’s 2025 narrative newsletter season wrote numerous commentaries on how distressing and difficult it is to draw clear distinctions between present day popular psychotherapy frameworks, self-help, and the wellness business.
Various narrative colleagues refer to the phenomenon as . . . ‘The stunning homogenization’ and ‘difficult to find discernible difference between’ 1) popular/dominant psychotherapy practice, 2) self-help literature and 3) the wellness industry.
One reader replied: 'Sadly, the trifecta is becoming one big hyper-individualist happy self-blaming neo-liberal family!'
"A critique does not consist in saying that things aren’t good the way they are. It consists in seeing on just what type of assumptions, of familiar notions, of established and unexamined ways of thinking the accepted practices are based. To do criticism is to make harder those acts that are now too easy."
~ Michel Foucault
Historically, numerous family therapy/social work/counseling journals alongside various conferences (Psychotherapy Networker and AAMFT etc.) clearly critiqued and separated their practice frameworks off from the self-help/wellness/advice giving space. But the gap of difference is closing.
We now find a culture defining mental health trifecta - advocating a return to unchecked taken for granted structuralist/humanist/functionalist individualist ideas; disembodying client suffering from political/cultural/social-economic interconnectivity and context; and a generalized acceptance of medicalizing/diagnosing underlying deficit structures of individuals. I feel for the client world.
"There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him it is right."
~ Martin Luther King
Substack
A practice of narrative therapy requires therapists becoming acutely engaged with the popular, cultural and ongoing political shifts taking place - as these are the influences that indelibly shape client lives. What is occurring daily inside our therapy rooms is not separate from all that relationally surrounds us.
I was a late arrival to the Substack universe. In October 2025, I signed up for, and began following, a dozen or so newsy offerings. It was amazing but I soon realized each Substack was engineered and purposed to become its own media empire. Rolling out a full slate of daily videos, essays, and interviews. The sheer volume of information required full-time commitment.
After the first week, I’d reduced my following to 4 Substackers including Heather Cox-Richardson, an American historian out of Boston College (whose 2023 book Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America I’ve gifted to numerous friends). In a recent interview she states her yearly Substack writing output was now the equivalent of writing “10 books”. My-oh-my.
Another one of the ‘Substack 4’ is Nobel prize winning American economist Paul Krugmen. We may not politically agree on everything, but as a Canadian citizen, experiencing this time of sneaky, shaky, slimy, shifty, scorched-earth, insecure, geo-political-economic ~ shockery, Krugman helps by breaking down critical economic principles and readable policy analysis - for neophytes like me.
On the Shores of Relational Ontology
Relational ontologies refer to a particular understanding of ontology that gives primacy to the relations between entities as a constitutive element of their existence.
Put another way, entities are what they are because of their wide range of relations with other entities.
A narrative informed therapist would see relational ontology as a philosophical and practice view asserting that relations between entities are more fundamental than the entities themselves, contrasting with traditional views where objects/individuals - are primary.
In principle, narrative therapy’s embrace of a relational ontology shifts our focus from "what is it?" to "what does it do, what is it in relationship with, how does it connect, what is it shaped by?".
Narrative therapy takes up relational ontology when it suggests that nouns (person, places, things) are defined by their interwoven connections, interdependence, and interactions, emphasizing fluidity and emergence (this can also be applied across physics, theology, and social sciences etc.), to understand our lived experience - not as isolated bodies/substances but as interconnected networks.
For our purposes, the key constituent is the primacy of relationships where entities (like people, objects, or particles) are what they are because of their relationships, and not because of their independent (disembodied) essences.
Where the idea of interdependence challenges the idea of self-contained beings and highlights how everything is constituted through its encounters and interactions with others.
"Relationship is not internal to the single person. It is nonsense to talk about ‘dependency’ or ‘aggressiveness’ or ‘pride,’ and so on. All such words have their roots in what happens between persons, not in some something-or-other inside a person."
~ Gregory Bateson
Relational Interviewing Practice
The starting place for VSNT’s narrative therapy informed Relational Interviewing (NIRI) couple therapy practice holds an ideological practice premise that: Relationships are Relational (and cannot be considered otherwise).
A central feature of NIRI stands against the practice of individualizing couple relationships - e.g. limiting the focus of therapy to structured-based attachment approaches, unhelpful personal thinking patterns and behaviors, interpersonal conflict management etc.- by recognizing the overwhelming relational and contextual factors shaping and influencing every facet of intimate couple relationships.
This post-structural consideration of relational identity turns the focus of therapy away from the individual and towards relational practice questions regarding the intimate couple relationship’s relationship to innumerable cultural norms and expectations.
I’m sure all of us can relate to, and at times become stressed by, the sheer volume of the collective’s complex influences, demands and shaping’s on our intimate relationships.
These include (but are not limited to): work (schedules, timelines, money, surveillance, competition, etc.), children (school, sickness/health, activities, meals, etc.), family (parents, siblings, pets, crisis/problems, extended family, birthdays, holidays, etc.), elder parents (illness, homecare/aftercare, hospitals, finances, etc.), friends (socializing, problem solving, phone calls, coffee dates, trips, holidays, etc.), finance (balancing budgets, money worries, rents/mortgages, groceries, etc.), faith (rules, social demands, identity expectations), social media (average 140minutes a day?), fitness (workouts, gym time, sport teams, etc.).
The list of norms, expectations, obligations and responsibilities shaping intimate relationships are vast, and most often, at some point, become all-consuming and overwhelming. This is usually the relational turn towards coming to see someone like me, in couple therapy.
Clearly, across all configurations of intimate relationships (I converse with in therapy), couples outline how their intimate relationship’s engagement with other relationships are always demanding so much of the couple relationships time and, often to the point of exhaustion.
And as much as couples report the central importance of other relationships, providing immense sources of joy and connection, these other relationships are also proving hazardous to the intimate couple relationship. This threat is generally described by the couple relationship as having to ask their relationship to step aside and wait for time, love, care, and attention - until all other responsibilities and obligations had been met.
Vancouver School for Narrative Therapy 2025 Faculty Writing
A few personal favourites are:
~ Christine Dennstedt (Canada): Psychedelic-assisted therapy from a narrative therapy perspective: A map for practitioners.
~ Lorraine Hedtke (USA): Love in the Face of Grief (Book).
~ Helené Grau Kristensen (Denmark): A) Reclaiming Identity Through Re-membering Conversations: A Relational Response to Traumatic Grief.B) The Reality of the Relationship Will Surpass the Definitions Imposed Upon It.
~ David Nylund (USA): A) Regulating Emotion, Regulating Selves: A Critique of the Emotion Regulation Discourse in Psychotherapy,B) Unmasking the Real Impostor of Imposter Syndrome: Reauthoring Early Career Therapist Identity.
Also enjoyed (good guy) Chris Hoff’s recent Radical Therapy podcast with VSNT Faculty Members:
January 11th, 2026, ~ David Nylund Interview: Regulating Emotion, Regulating Self (as a Cultural demand!)
January 16th, 2026, ~ Todd Disney Interview: Poetics, Politics and the Art of Therapy
Uh Oh! Sign of Things to Come?
The Province of Ontario Canada have plans in the works to lower training requirements for psychologists (yes you read this correctly.) The amendments proposed by the College of Psychologists and Behaviour Analysts of Ontario (who regulate psychologists, psychological associates and applied behavioural analysts in the province, representing the largest collection of psychologists in Canada), are advocating for significant reductions to education, training and supervision standards.
**The plan ~ Advocating, encouraging, and reducing the required amount of supervised work for registrants without doctoral-level training to 12 months from four years (WOW!). Other changes include the discontinuation of an oral exam.
However, the Ontario Psychological Association has warned the plan would “reduce the quality of psychological services, undermine public trust, and create significant risks for patients and clients” and - compromises safety in the name of greater access. The CPBAO’s proposals, it said, “strip away educational standards and safeguards, flooding the system with undertrained clinicians and putting the public at risk.”
Community Unity
Going against the continuing Canadian/European tide to forgo US travel, the Vancouver School for Narrative Therapy hosted its first American based Therapeutic Conversations Conference (Sacramento, California) in October 2025. Our value driven choice of location was to stand alongside our narrative colleagues south of the border. Many special thanks to all the many California based participants who attended and co-hosts David Nylund + the Gender Health Centre crew.
2026 VSNT Training & Conference Events
VSNT Conference 2026 ~ October 2nd– 4th
The Vancouver School’s annual Therapeutic Conversations conference dates are locked in – October 2nd-4th. We are happy to be back at our old stomping grounds - the Granville Island Hotel in Vancouver. Presenters and topics are yet to be decided but what we do know is: All are day-long workshops discussing new narrative theory and Advanced practice; Demonstrate Live session practice; Workshops involve multiple co-presenters teaching on singular topics (eg. Trauma, Death and Grief, Gender Violence, Relational interviewing with couples and families, etc.). Stay tuned.
3rd Edition Narrative Therapy
APA published the 3rd Edition of my book Narrative Therapy in October 2025. Introduces veteran narrative therapists, psychologists, next generation practitioners, and Graduate students to a wide range of fresh and exciting theoretical and relational interviewing practice advances the Vancouver School faculty and their colleagues have created over the last five years. Exciting stuff! Sold through Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, APA, Barnes and Noble, Indigo, Abe-books, Books-a-Million, etc. – and bookstores + online across Europe.
Recent Amazon Reviews:
Dr. Madigan has done it again! This third edition is brilliant as it provides a deep dive into Narrative Therapy while bringing forward new ways of meaning making for our current landscape. His use of therapy transcripts brings the reader into the beauty of Narrative Therapy and the transformation it creates. 3rd Edition is a must read!
Madigan offers a rare balance: rigorous theory made accessible through vivid transcripts, therapeutic questions, and rich case examples. The updates—on relational responses to trauma, psychedelic-assisted therapy, grief and loss, collective ethics in suicide prevention, narrative work with trans youth and families, and more—reflect both the evolution of the field and Madigan’s continued innovation.
The real trick of narrative practice is synthesizing complex sociopolitical philosophy into a question or a conversation with someone seeking help in therapy. Stephen’s book not only achieves this conceptual alchemy but does so in a concise and accessible way, without sacrificing the heart and depth of the practice.
Foundations I: Narrative Therapy Theory & Practice
Online Certificate Training Course
Skill based, purposeful, and theoretically driven training. Guided by one highly imaginative continental philosopher + six world-class narrative therapists. Experience live therapy demonstrations, client videotaped sessions, and transcripts that prepare you for the therapy room.
30 CE credits granted by CCPA
"The 5-day Foundations course was exceptional and offered far more practical skill learning than I ever expected! The whole 5-days felt like I was sitting in the therapy room with the faculty members. Confidence Building! Life Changing!"
~ Foundations Participant, Vancouver, BC, February, 2025
Foundations II: Applied Skills of Narrative Practice
Online Certificate Training Course
Amazing live Supervision interview skill-based learning course with legendary narrative therapy Supervisors Stephen Madigan & David Nylund.
18 CE credits granted by CCPA.
"I feel so much more confident! Skills of Practice supervision training was challenging, pushed me beyond my therapeutic limit, and I learned a ton of new practice skills.
Thanks a million!"
~ Applied Skills Participant, Victoria, BC, May 2025
Lessons from 1989
I believe I can speak for many Canadians of the tremendous shock and sorrow experienced looking over the border towards our American friends and family. Last week’s demonstrations had me remembering European civilian protests of 1989. I suspect a significant gang of you were not yet born in 1989, and others may not remember. Briefly . . .
During 1989, a wave of political change swept Central and Eastern Europe, ending long-standing oppressive communist rule in many countries.
Everyday people—students, workers, churches, unions, artists, and communities—played crucial roles, and their (massive) collective participation helped sustain momentum.
Nonviolence was common, and legitimacy rested on shared ideals/values of dignity, freedom, and liberty, even when police/army violence occurred. Remarkably, the civil protests accelerated the decline of the Cold War order and opened pathways to democracies and Western integration.
Key 1989 civilian movements include: Solidarity in Poland, the fall of the Berlin Wall in East Germany, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, and border openings in Hungary (highly recommend a further read and trusting you find hope within these movements!).
And finally . . .
Recently I went out to a pub with a few boyhood friends. Some things never change (!) You may recognize the scene – loads of historical slagging, early on travel stories, remembering concerts, belly laughing, troubles we got into, asking questions on left-wing positions etc.
During one of the rounds, we arrived at first job story connected to our current profession. All of us (and everyone else we knew) began part-time work at age 13-14 and collectively held a range of hilarious jobs. The new category proposed was interesting – regarding a position I’d forgotten all about.
Background: I’d just turned 18, on summer break from university, and living at home for the summer. My father connected me with someone he knew at Catholic Children’s Aid Society. Soon after I began working as a highly inexperienced childcare worker (not much older than the kids in care).
True first day on-the-job story: I borrowed the family car and drove to the ‘house/residence’ located in my neighborhood (about 4 miles away). When I pulled up, there was a fistfight going down on the front lawn – between a resident boy of maybe 16 and a childcare worker of maybe 24. Big lads slugging it out. A crowd of workers and kids stood watching. Some cheering. I was shocked. Almost turned the car around.
Instead, I walked into the house to sign employee forms at an office marked ‘Supervisor’ where upon a huge bodybuilder of a man, named Garry, asked me to take a seat. He was smirking and smiling and asked, what (I think) he thought was a chummy/bonding opening question: ‘So, can you take care of yourself?’. I was so pissed and asked him if he got his jollies from beating up troubled kids in his care. He stared back at me all bulgy and muscley. Didn’t say another word. Walked out. I felt pretty confident I’d lost the job.
Like many others I knew growing up, I’d learned how to box and ‘take care of myself’. However, there were key lessons/rules we had to adhere to. Most important was a strict implicit ‘code’ to never (ever) take advantage of kids smaller or much younger than yourself.
I suppose a larger context supporting my anger that day - was also in play. My father and a few of his friends (who were always out helping the poor and dispossessed – true Socialist Catholics I suppose? Ha!), had helped set up the first Summer Camp north of Toronto for ‘inner city’ impoverished kids and families. The values of the camp (and I don’t have any reason to think otherwise), were the same as my families - be kind and caring to people especially the disadvantaged (or as my Irish dad would say ‘people who are just a bit down on their luck’).
After filling out the forms with the supervisor I went home and spoke to my father. He could see I was upset and, he wasn’t happy with the story I told. Said he’d make a few calls. I’m not exactly certain what was said but, within the week Garry was removed (and replaced by veteran supervisor Carol) and I didn’t experience childcare worker violence, again.
The rest of the summer was quite remarkable. The best part was Learning how to connect and support kids who were trying their best to survive a range of horrendous relational contexts including poverty and poor education. Who much to their credit (gradually) began opening up and reporting on how much their ‘life sucked’.
I remember myself and 2 other counsellors took 6 rough and tumble 14 to 17-year-old kids camping for a week into the wilds of Algonquin Park (about 3 hrs. north of Toronto).
I was looking forward to canoeing, swimming, long hikes and campfire stories. However, not one of the youths had ever (ever!) experienced being in deep nature. The first couple of days were bumpy.
One stayed in the car for 3 days and nights – terrified. Most were petrified of the dark. One ‘accidently’ punched me in the face. Two got lost in the forest trying to run away.
However, by weeks end, no one wanted to return to the city. We, all of us together, created an ecology of care, equity, trust, alongside loads of fun (and yes, we eventually got ourselves into the water, canoeing etc.) To this very day, I still think about those kids and the learnings they made possible.
Comments