Therapeutic Conversations Conference 23
October 9th- 11th, 2025
Sacramento, California
Connection. Appreciation. Celebration.
~ A World Class Narrative Therapy Live Demonstration Affair ~
October 9th - 11th, 2025
8:30 AM - 5 PM
* Please note: There are no one-day registrations at TC23*
Approved CE's: LCSW's, LMFT's & LPCC's California Board of Behavioural Sciences (BBS)
+ American Psychological Association (APA) Approved CE's
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
WELCOME TO SACRAMENTO
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
The Girl Who Bakes: Re-authoring Past Experiences of Gender Based-Violence through Remembering Stories of Strength and Creativity
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.”
AFTERNOON TRAINING
WORKSHOP A
3:00 PM - 5 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.
AFTERNOON TRAINING
WORKSHOP B
3:00 PM - 5 PM
Disordered Eating: Narrative therapy informed Anti-anorexia/bulimia practice
+ Live transcript demonstration
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 A
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'.
MORNING TRAINING
WORKSHOP B
10:00 AM - 12 PM
LIVE Supervision 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 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 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?
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 + Live transcript demonstration
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 - 5:00 PM
Ghazal of Life: Narrative Belonging for LGBTQIA Muslims
Tamer Said Mostafa (USA)
LGBTQIA Muslims intersection in America is one that continues to be stigmatized and erased by both hegemonic Muslim communities, as well as Western LGBTQUIA spaces. This systematic erasure trickles down into mental health treatment and therapy, where LGBTQIA Muslims are not being met with culturally responsive care. Tamer demonstrates his Ghazal of Life Project that interweaves narrative therapy practices with poetry and storytelling to explore identity with Muslim American LGBTQIA communities.
AFTERNOON TRAINING
WORKSHOP B
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.
MORNING TRAINING
WORKSHOP C
10:00 AM - 12 PM
The Dramatization of Life: Narrative Family Therapy with Children + Live Demonstration
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 C
3:00 PM - 5 PM
Understanding Family Stories through the Lens of the ‘IPscope’:
Shannon McIntosh (Canada)
Tamara Wilson (Canada)
The workshop demonstrates our systemic and narrative therapy informed work with families through the lens of the ‘IPscope’ framework practice (IP signifying Interpersonal Patterns). Shannon and Tamara reveal how they de-centre the problem from the person from an interpersonal lens and move their practice process towards deliberately looking and listening for the ways in which larger socio-cultural influences are showing up in our therapeutic work with families.
MORNING TRAINING
WORKSHOP C
10:00 AM - 12 PM
Death, Grief and Loss: Narrative Therapy with Couples and Children
Live transcript demonstration
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 C
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 C
10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Exhausted Love: Narrative Informed Relational Interviewing (NIRI) with Highly Conflicted Couple Relationships
Stephen Madigan (Canada)
Stephen teaches through his session videos demonstrating couple relationships exhausted by conflict engaging with five NIRI practice principles including: 1) Critical re-engagements with relational values, 2) Creating tension and difference through double description,
3) Expressions of conflict viewed as relational protest, 4) Situating intimate relationships within normalizing judgements, social expectations, governing norms, and responsibility to familial & cultural obligations and, 5) Letter writing from the relationships perspective.
AFTERNOON TRAINING
WORKSHOP C
3:00 PM - 5 PM
ROUND TABLE:
Michael White Up Close
Helené Grau Kristensen (Denmark),
Lorraine Hedtke (USA),
Stephen Madigan (Canada)
David Marsten (USA)
Four veteran narrative therapists share their experience of Michael White ideas and practice. Teaching through a breathtaking range of his interviews, workshop teaching, and session videos, they share personal stories of Michael and the influence he's had on their practice, values, and every day lives. Participants are encouraged to jump in, reflect, make meaning, marvel, and enjoy his narrative practice together.
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