Therapeutic Conversations Conference 23
October 9th- 11th, 2025
Sacramento, California
Practice. Politics. Purpose.
~ A World Class Narrative Therapy Affair ~
October 9th - 11th, 2025
8:30 AM - 5 PM
Registration 7:30 - 8:30 AM
Photo: Danielle O'Connor Akiyama
DAILY CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
8:30 - 9:30 AM
MORNING TRAINING WORKSHOPS
10:00 AM - 12 PM
LUNCH
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
AFTERNOON PLENARY
1:30 PM - 2:30 PM
AFTERNOON TRAINING WORKSHOPS
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
THURSDAY - Day One
Conference Welcome
When the World Walks into the Therapy Room
Stephen Madigan (Canada)
MORNING TRAINING
WORKSHOP A
10:00 AM - 12 PM
Crafting Therapeutic Letters + Live Counter-Story Demonstration Interview
David (Rock) Nylund (USA)
As one of our narrative communities world class therapeutic letter writers, Rock's skills-based-hands-on highly interactive workshop explores the historical roots, writing frameworks, therapeutic values, and unique practices/categories within the craft of therapeutic letter writing. He follows up the slide show discussion with a superbly textured Live counter-story interview demonstration. Course participants are then invited into the Live practice interview experience and taught how to craft a therapeutic letter ~ in response to the interview they have just witnessed.
MORNING TRAINING
WORKSHOP B
10:00 AM - 12 PM
Understanding Family Stories through a Systemic Family Therapy Lens + Live Demonstration Interview
Tamara Wilson & Shannon McIntosh (Canada)
Both presenters have worked alongside Karl Tomm for many years and discuss how they practice narrative therapy with families using a systemic therapy framework. Discussed is how they de-centre the problem from the person from an interpersonal lens and review a process of deliberately looking and listening for the ways in which larger socio-cultural influences emerge in their therapeutic work with families and how these can be illuminated. A Live practice interview will conclude the workshop allowing participants to witness narrative and systemic work woven together that amplify sets of family values, culture and meaning.
AFTERNOON TRAINING
WORKSHOP A
3:00 PM - 5 PM
The Dramatization of Life: Narrative Family Therapy with Children + Live Interview
David Marsten (USA)
In a story of merit, we are drawn in by the protagonist, a compelling figure who faces the impossible. We root for them and count on them to defy prediction and beat the odds. It is no different with the young people we meet inside the therapy room. Given the chance, they can win our hearts and exceed expectations. Through the use of slides, magical letters, and a Live demonstration of Wonderfulness Interviewing, David demonstrates the potential of children to face challenges and apply their imaginative know-how under even the most demanding conditions.
AFTERNOON TRAINING
WORKSHOP B
3:00 PM - 5 PM
Gender Violence and Trauma
Live Clinical Supervision Demonstration
Rosa Arteaga (Canada/Mexico) + Guests
Using therapeutic session transcripts as a reflective interactive surface, Rosa demonstrates her framework of clinical supervision to assist therapists working in area of trauma and gender violence. The workshop highlights a unique narrative therapy informed, intersectional feminist, anti-oppression framework through a Live supervision demonstration with a group of therapists working in the gender-violence field that is further supported by an outsider witness team of participant therapists.
MORNING TRAINING
WORKSHOP A
10:00 AM - 12 PM
The Girl Who Bakes: Re-authoring Past Experiences of Gender Based-Violence through Inviting Stories of Strength and Creativity to Shape New Pathways
Rosa Arteaga (Canada/Mexico)
In this highly intimate workshop Rosa guides participants through a step-by-step scaffolding of her race, gender, and violence-informed therapeutic interviewing craft. She integrates narrative therapy and relational interviewing to explore the bodies response and specific survival strategies developed over time to deal with the impacts of gender-based violence. Rosa also highlights an original approach to externalizing conversations that she frames as “invisible strategies for ongoing survival.”
MORNING TRAINING
WORKSHOP B
10:00 AM - 12 PM
The Newly Strange: Poetics, Politics and Identity - embracing beauty during turbulent times
Todd Disney (USA)
Poetics influence how we experience everyday life. On the one hand, experience is created in the daily pace where discourse is being performed in a pre-storied way, and on the other hand, there is an opportunity for an immense amount of agency and beauty in our day-to-day moments. Todd's workshop explores how poetics is both a political act and one that enhances the lived experience of those who consult us as therapists. Participants learn how to bring poetics into narrative therapy conversations by a) disrupting the ordinary, b) developing poetic questioning, and c) bringing the idea of contingent histories to poetic 'memorying'.
AFTERNOON TRAINING
WORKSHOP A
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Testimony therapy: Why Black therapy matters for decolonizing mental health
Makungu Akinyela (USA)
The workshop challenges participants to think critically about what decolonizing practice looks like in the face of rising fascism and literal oppression. The workshop highlights how the impact of social, cultural and political violence impacts the daily lives of oppressed people and the role of therapists to create “brush harbor” safe spaces for therapeutic conversations that contribute to helping people who come for help to move beyond limited situations and alienation toward being participants in a more democratic society.
AFTERNOON TRAINING
WORKSHOP B
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Responding to Trauma through Group Therapy and Narrative Writing Practices
Julia Gerlitz, (Canada)
There are traumatic experiences in people’s lives that feel unspeakable and not safe enough to voice in group settings. Julia’s narrative informed approach to trauma introduces participants to the art of crafting therapeutic letters that 1) give voice to the unspoken, 2) a practice of anonymous group writing and, 3) co-creating documents that foster connection and new meaning making. Participants also learn how Julia's practice supports clients by relationally externalizing problems, re-authoring and reclaiming preferred identities, and creating communities of care and concern through contributing to another’s story and new understandings.
MORNING TRAINING
WORKSHOP A
10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Telling the Stories of Ongoing Love in the Face of Grief:
Lorraine Hedtke (USA)
Drawing from stories in her upcoming book, Lorraine will discuss how stories of love remain in the face of grief and death. Not only are these stories of our dead available but fostering them with clients and in our lives stands against the iatrogenic despair that conventional grief psychology produces. This workshop will be a heart-felt journey into relational worlds where love uplifts the stories of the dead for the bereaved to posthumously claim what was never lost.
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MORNING TRAINING
WORKSHOP B
10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Narrative Practice and the Therapeutic Use of Psychedelics
Christine Dennstedt (Canada)
The workshop highlights Christine's latest work integrating psychedelics and narrative therapy. She demonstrates how the two practice frameworks work together to relationally externalize problems and thicken preferred stories in a person's life. The innovative workshop plans to walk participants through the: 1) process of session preparation, 2) the psychedelic-assisted therapy session, and, 3) the integration phase of the session, by outlining the use of narrative therapy informed practices and the therapeutic questions used in each of the three phases of the work.
AFTERNOON TRAINING
WORKSHOP A
3:00 PM - 5 PM
ROUND TABLE: Narrative Therapy Responds to Trauma Informed Therapy
Rosa Arteaga (Canada), Rachel Feldman (USA), Helené Grau Kristensen (Denmark)
Presenters discuss their response to the fields most popular ideas, meanings, and practices in the area of trauma informed therapy. They then lead participants through the difference of what a non-individualist narrative therapy informed theoretical response to trauma means and what this practice involves working inside the therapy room with clients.
AFTERNOON TRAINING
WORKSHOP C
3:00 PM - 5 PM
ROUND TABLE: The Use of Narrative Therapy Letters in Supervision
Julia Gerlitz (Canada), Rock Nylund (USA)
Both presenters write therapeutic letters to clients in their everyday practice. This roundtable explores the creative ways they use letters by developing skills to craft meaningful and respectful practices of the written word based on supervisory conversations Drawing from narrative therapy supervision models, participants learn how to a) integrate letter writing in supervision to enhance meaning-making, 2) support therapist skill development, and 3) thicken the supervisory dialogue to support the client(s) the supervisee is working with.
MORNING TRAINING
WORKSHOP C
10:00 AM - 12 PM
A Philosophical Framework
for Thinking About Narrative
Therapy Practice
Todd May (USA)
Michael White strongly believed that "without an intimate understanding of philosopher Michel Foucault's post-structural ideas a therapist’s understanding of narrative practice would be severely limited" (VSNT.live). Todd is the resident VSNT philosopher who has a remarkable ability to explain the conceptual complexities of Foucault's post-structural ideas in a way that is easy-to-understand for therapists. He'll guide participants through non-individualism, expert knowledge, modern power, and the relational intersection of practices, values, norms, normalization, and normativity.
MORNING TRAINING
WORKSHOP D
10:00 AM - 12 PM
Ghazal of Life: Narrative Belonging
for LGBTQIA Muslims
Tamar Said Mostafa (USA)
LGBTQIA-Muslim intersection in America is one that continues to be stigmatized and erased by both hegemonic Muslim communities, as well as Western, LGBTQIA spaces. This systematic erasure trickles down into mental health treatment and therapy, where LGBTQIA Muslims are not being met with culturally responsive care. Tanner demonstrates his original Ghazal of Life Project that interweaves Narrative therapy practices with poetry and storytelling to explore identity within Muslim-American LGBTQIA communities.
AFTERNOON TRAINING
WORKSHOP C
3:00 PM - 5 PM
Eco-Narrative Theory and Practices in response to Climate Change
Stephanie Disney (USA)
Numerous social and political practices have systematically separated us from our inherent connection with our planet. This has allowed for the objectification of nature and a 'non-relationality' that furthers our communities experiences of passivity and powerlessness. Stephanie shows how narrative therapy informed practices like ‘Remembering’ and ‘Internalized Other’ interviewing bring forth a capacity for connection, 're-relationality', and re-storying to address the negative effects of climate change for therapists and the people who walk into our therapy room.
AFTERNOON TRAINING
WORKSHOP D
3:00 PM - 5 PM
ROUND TABLE: Michael White Up Close: A Non-individualist Narrative Practice
Helené Grau Kristensen (Denmark),
Lorraine Hedtke (USA)
Stephen Madigan (Canada)
Todd May (USA)
Three veteran narrative therapists + one continental philosopher designed a highly interactive round table and discuss why narrative therapy stepped away from 100+ years of internal state psychology and stepped towards post-structural and non-individualist ideas. Through a breath taking range of Michael White's teaching and session videos participants watch, reflect, make meaning, marvel, and enjoy narrative's non-individualist work together.
MORNING TRAINING
WORKSHOP C
10:00 AM - 12 PM
Disordered Eating: Narrative therapy informed Anti-anorexia/bulimia practice
Christine Dennstedt (Canada)
Christine wrote her groundbreaking doctoral dissertation (2010) on: Narrative therapy, disordered eating, and substance misuse. She guide’s participants through her more than two decades of cultural, contextual and non-individualist informed Anti-anorexic practice. Learning is taught through a series of slides, case stories, session transcripts, and her original 'diagrams' that clearly demonstrate a) the complexities and creativity involved in working with people in relationship with this life threatening problem and, b) solutions to help the many reasons why therapists turn away from this difficult area of practice.
MORNING TRAINING
WORKSHOP D
10:00 AM - 12 PM
LIVE Demonstration:
Narrative Therapy Informed Supervision
Stephen Madigan (Canada)
David Rock Nylund (USA)
The workshop is all about the purpose, direction, politic, intention, context, history, and relational meaning of narrative therapy questions. Presenters engage in Live counter-story interviews where each question asked is typed up on the big screen for everyone to view. The questions are then explained and interrogated in terms of the Ecology of the Receiving Context the ‘client' story was received into. Questions are then analyzed further by the group – then participants are paired up to create the next possible set of therapeutic questions for the interview.
AFTERNOON TRAINING
WORKSHOP C
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Death, Grief and Loss: Narrative Therapy with Couples and Children
Helené Grau Kristensen (Denmark)
Helené guides participants through her narrative informed relational practice by situating the person who is no longer breathing as a primary guide in navigating the complexities of grief. Through a remembering practice of retelling stories about the deceased the relationship with the dead person is rendered visible to what they give value to, and how these values guide those left behind. The workshop demonstrates these narrative informed relational practices through a series of case transcripts and stories of organizing communities of concern among parents and their families.
AFTERNOON TRAINING
WORKSHOP D
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Alternative paths to hidden narratives of identity: A LEGO 'Assessment' approach with live demonstration
Geoff Wren (USA)
Pushing for ways to access marginalized stories of experience and identity, Geoff’s workshop demonstrates how he utilizes LEGO mini-figures and four simple questions as a means to access those stories through his - tongue in cheek - LEGO ‘Assessment.’ The workshop includes a brief presentation of the narrative therapy informed underpinnings of this ‘assessment’ and a Live demonstration interview so workshop participants can witness first-hand how the process can be utilized in practice.
MORNING TRAINING
WORKSHOP C
10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
ROUND TABLE: Innovative Narrative Approaches in Family Therapy
David Marsten (USA), Shannon McIntosh & Tamara Wilson (Canada)
David, Tamara and Shannon offer participants an inside look at their work with families using narrative approaches. Through their sharing of powerful case stories and inventive interventions, the panel highlights how they draw on family strengths, values, and collaborative meaning-making to foster transformative change. Facilitated by a host, the dynamic session offers participants a rare, behind-the-scenes look at how each practitioner creatively applies narrative practices in their work with families.
MORNING TRAINING
WORKSHOP D
10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Re-authoring Power: A Narrative Therapy Exercise in Epistolary Dialogue and Outsider Witnessing + Live Demonstration
Rachel Feldman (USA)
This workshop engages participants in a Live narrative therapy demonstration where the presenter/therapist writes and reads a letter to Michel Foucault as a theoretical interlocutor, while the client listens in the position of an outsider witness. The exercise aims to challenge dominant identity narratives and problem-saturated descriptions by situating both therapist and client in a shared examination of the discursive and political forces that shape personal struggles.
AFTERNOON TRAINING
WORKSHOP C
3:00 PM - 5 PM
Continuing, Community, Connection: Collaborative Invitations to stay close to narrative practices, community, and each other as narrative therapists
Abby Walker (USA)
Abby presents ways to form and create community with fellow narrative therapists. Participants engage the difficult questions the community of narrative therapists often struggle with, including, 1) Continuing - How does one stay close to the spirit of narrative practice and offer reflective questions by working in small groups together, 2) Community - How to stay close to community wisdom in the therapy room to crack open the individualizing space that is traditional therapy and, 3) Connection - How can we stay close to each other as narrative therapists and build community?
AFTERNOON TRAINING
WORKSHOP D
3:00 PM - 5 PM
Grassroots Organizing for Therapists:
Nitty Gritty Basics
Todd May (USA)
They say all politics is local. If so, then grassroots organizing is the fundamental political activity. Todd's workshop guides therapists through his personal stories and covers the basics of grassroots organizing, from structure to strategy. He'll then put those basics into action through a fascinating sample organizing exercise, focusing on an institution about which we all have feelings.
Day One
AFTERNOON PLENARY
Reclaiming our Grief, Reclaiming our Loved Ones
Helené Grau Kristensen (Denmark)
Day Two
MORNING KEYNOTE
Culture, Politics, Spirituality and Practice:
Resistance and critical theory for disturbing times
Makungu M. Akinyela (USA)
Day Two
AFTERNOON PLENARY
Who Are We Now? The Post-Neoliberal Individual
Todd May (USA)
Day Three
MORNING KEYNOTE
Conversations about Trauma and Violence: Re-establishing Relationships
with the Body through Re-writing Agreements and Historical Survival Strategies
Rosa Arteaga (Mexico/Canada)
Day Three
AFTERNOON PLENARY
The History and Mission of the Gender Health Center:
Narrative Therapy in Action
David Rock Nylund interviews the Directors of the GHC –
Malakai Coté, Charlie Hutchinson, Ari Lozano