Workshop 2
Charting New Paths: Using the journey metaphor to move beyond trauma.
It is well established that Narrative Therapy offers a range of skills to support practitioners when people’s lives have been impacted by trauma. Trauma can have the effect of establishing a sense of worthlessness in people, and a not knowing how to manage daily life. A Narrative approach provides many hopeful possibilities in these circumstances. Trauma can also have people feeling ‘stuck’ in the ongoing effects of it, reliving the experience and feeling as though things will never change. In these situations, a Narrative approach can offer ways of charting movement away from the stuck position and toward what is more life-affirming for the person. The tracking of this movement, and reflection on the skills of navigating difficulties, contributes to a sense of agency and is often shaped as a metaphor of journey.
This workshop will focus on some of the Narrative practices that have been found useful when responding to the trauma of. There will be a focus on developing skills to bring forward stories of how people respond to trauma and that contribute to a preferred sense of identity, belonging and personal agency. There will also be an opportunity to explore the journey metaphor and the role and importance of a sense of movement created by inhabiting preferred stories of self.
We will explore pain and distress as a reflection of what is important in life and consider how these stories of what is given value, assist people to regain purpose and dignity. We will also look at the role of affective experiences that are felt in the body and consider ways in which neuroscience is contributing to new options for work with trauma.
Objectives
In this workshop participants can expect to gain skills in:
Creating safety so as to not retraumatise people.
Developing stories of what people are valuing in life that has been transgressed.
Seeing that people are always responding to difficulties
Seeing these responses as skills of life and developing them further
Highlighting a sense of movement through storying
Using the journey metaphor as a response to the impacts of trauma.
Facilitated by Maggie Carey
Maggie continues her interest in what is happening with Narrative practice in different parts of the world. Her focus in recent years has been on the ways in which the Narrative approach has been taken forward in its application in local contexts, both in India and in Mexico. The dynamic and creative interplay between the narrative metaphor as a framework for responding to people’s concerns, and the not-so-individualised and collective emphasis in the cultures of these countries, provides just one area of fertile ground for inspiration in the work. This dimension is further added to by the keen political lens that informs the work that is coming from the Global South. Maggie is appreciating being influenced in her thinking about narrative practice through the contribution that is being made by practitioners who have clearly taken up Michael Whites’s invitation to make the practice relevant in the context that is local and particular. This follows on from her ongoing interest in the writers and thinkers whose ideas were originally drawn on as conceptual underpinnings to the Narrative approach. Maggie is particularly interested in the schools of thought that have come after the French Post-structuralists and that have taken things in directions that are more in line with broader contemporary concerns of Social Justice and equity across the planet. She believes there is a strong resonance with Feminist Posthumanism and Post-Colonial Theory, that can hold relevance for Narrative practitioners today, as a backdrop to our interest in the everyday practices of storying lives.
