SYSTEMS and STORIES

A Narrative Therapy Approach to Meaning Making and Change

This two-day workshop will provide participants with key skills in Narrative Practice including practical clinical skills that can be used immediately with individuals and families (children, adolescents, adults and older persons).  Participants will consider the relevance of Narrative Practice in their work setting, and applications relating to the context of trauma, relationships, and grief and loss.  Participants will gain an understanding of the role of neuroscience in enhancing narrative practice and consider how to “tread lightly” but effectively with Narrative Practice.

Course Outline

In this course participants will develop an understanding of:

• What Narrative Therapy is
• The Systemic Family Therapy context of Narrative Therapy
• Assumptions and systemic concepts underpinning Narrative Practice
• The importance of stories in our own lives and the lives of those we work with
• Therapist positioning in Narrative Therapy
• How applications of neuroscience can boost narrative practices and thicken preferred identities

Participants will develop skills in:

• Deconstruction
• Externalising Conversations
• Reauthoring conversations, including
  • Absent but Implicit Conversations
  • Unique Outcomes Conversations
• Thickening alternative storylines to amplify change, including
  • Remembering conversations
  • Outsider witnessing
  • Therapeutic documents
• Working with the Landscape of Action and Landscape of Identity.

Presented by: Dr Leonie White is a Psychologist and Clinical Family Therapist with over 20 years experience working with children, adults, families, foster families, residential care providers, teachers and other therapists, in Health, Education, and Child Protection Services as well as in the Non-Government sector and Private Practice. Currently Leonie provides psychotherapy and counselling with a special interest in Mental Health, supporting young people and their families/carers with emotional, behavioural, social and family difficulties. Leonie also provides psychotherapy and counselling services for adults, couples and families. Leonie specialises in providing Clinical Supervision to other helping professionals. Leonie is the Co-Director of the Queensland Institute of Family Therapy, works in Private Practice (Supervision, Group Supervision, Training) and a member of Staff at the Queensland University of Technology. She is the author of the best selling Helping Families Thrive card set.

Audience: for mental health and educational professionals at all levels & any professional that applies attachment theory and behavioural/developmental/neuro-science to their practice.

Mental Health Professionals: All mental health professionals including, but not limited to Clinical Counsellors, Psychologists, Psychotherapists, Psychiatrists, Social Workers, Nurses, Occupational Therapists, Hospice and Palliative Care Workers, Youth Workers, Mental Health Workers, Addiction Specialists, Marital & Family Therapists, Child Protection and Disability Workers, Guidance Officers, Speech and Language Therapists, Residential Care Workers and Foster Support Workers, Vocational Rehabilitation Consultants, General Practitioners, and all other mental health professionals looking to enhance their therapeutic skills.  

Education Professionals: Professionals who work with children or youth including, but not limited to K–12 School Counsellors, School Paraprofessionals and all other professionals who support behavioural challenges and complex learning needs.

Credit for Recognised Prior Learning: Interested in working towards becoming a family therapist? Systems and Stories is a credited workshop of Recognised Prior Learning with the Family Systems Institute as part of its training programs in family therapy. For more information go to www.thefsi.com.au