About Your Speaker

Dr. Ian Percy MSW PhD is a therapist, supervisor, consultant, trainer and published author in narrative and mindfulness approaches.
He is an Accredited Mental Health Social Worker, a Clinical Member of the Australian Association of Family Therapy and an Accredited Psychotherapy Supervisor with The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. Ian teaches professional development courses in counselling and psychotherapy for social service agencies, universities and private organisations. He has specialised in training colleagues in Narrative Therapy since 1997. Ian has taught internationally and given workshops and papers at state, national and global conferences. He was an invited Plenary Speaker on spiritualities at the 8th Social Work in Health and Mental Health Conference in Singapore. He has received two university awards for academic excellence. As well, Ian has studies and practiced various forms of meditation, including mindfulness approaches, for 40 years. His PhD thesis researched the similarities and differences between therapeutic mindfulness in Australia and Bhutan.

Course Brief

The stories people tell themselves and others about traumatic events do affect how they live their present and future lives. While the actual events and their effects can be helpfully explored, a narrative approach also seeks to bring forth and richly describe people’s responses to traumas. Often these responses have been, and still may be, of value to the person. Typically, these response stories are undeveloped or completely invisible.

In bringing together therapeutic skills that focus on story, body, affect and power, this workshop will give participants many practical methods and conversational approaches to assist people in moving beyond trauma. Keeping this in mind, we will consider four therapeutic dimensions:

Storied:
• Identify and name resistance to trauma events: thoughts, feelings or actions taken that reduced the negative effects at the time and/or later
• Assist people in telling unsaid stories: noticing details, asking helpful questions, and bringing forth a valued sense of self in spite of the effects of trauma

Embodied:
• Befriending bodied distress and becoming familiar with beneficial bodied sensations

Affect:
• Using mindfulness for strong adverse emotions and attending to and increasing desirable emotions

Power:
• Identifying and unpacking the social contexts and relations of power in traumatic incidents

We will also think about how we might bring these constructive responses to trauma, the actual incident/s, and the effects of trauma, into a fuller storied life. This practical and interactive workshop will explore the importance of asking different kinds of questions while creating a felt-sense of compassion. Participants will be introduced to a variety of ways of working with people including some mindfulness and somatic awareness skills as complementary to narrative question-asking. Brief and extended examples from participant’s clinical work will also help illustrate narrative approaches.

Your Speaker

Ms. Navroop is a trauma informed person- centric psychotherapist in private practice. She is a trained EMDR therapist, Certified Brainspotter, TRE (Trauma Release Exercise) provider and SE (Somatic Experiencing) in training practitioner. She states it as a fact that everyone can heal and therefore she helps people get in touch with their own instinctual healing. Be it depression, anxiety, low self esteem, anger outbursts, addictions or relationship issues - she believes symptoms are not just mental illnesses but trauma responses, coping mechanisms and subconscious programming. To have sustained healing, the way forward is trauma informed healing along with purpose driven coaching. Her approach to healing is holistic, with a combination of talk therapy and brain body modalities. Her clientele ranges from teenagers to adults. She is the founder and CEO of “Heal with Nav”. A passionate mental health advocate, she hosts a series of webinars normalizing mental health struggles and destigmatizing need for therapy. She is part of many ongoing mental wellness initiatives in large organizations and NGO’s in Singapore, Australia and India.

Course Brief

Working with trauma can be incredibly tough and often we witness breakdowns before seeing breakthroughs in the recovery. Even more, trauma work facilitate healing without traumatizing clinician or client. With disparate emotional undercurrents, helping someone out of the trauma response may be confusing at times. With this, it is extremely important therapists know and apply the essential sequence of healing from trauma. Come join us as we have a practical, experiential deep dive in trauma-informed care. Not just theory dispensed but practical hands on guidance, step-by-step through the process.
This 2-day new workshop will focus on trauma-informed care, both integrating talk therapy with somatic responses including experiential work so participants also get to experience first-hand what they want their clients to feel and take in.

What to Expect for this Hands on Practical Experience:

Learning Outcomes
• Building blocks of working with trauma (structural and procedural)
• Essential sequence of working with trauma
• Recognizing the clients needs, readiness for the work
• Working with both dominant and coping emotion
• Basic guidelines for the session

Your Speaker

Mr. Vik is a well sought after local trainer with over 16 years experience in training and teaching Motivational Interviewing for participants from the healthcare, social service, enforcement and the academic fields. He has also been in the counselling field for 19 years, spending 3 years in the social service industry and 16 years in the addictions and healthcare field. He has an academic background in both counselling and psychology, teaching at the Singapore University of Social Sciences for over 12 years. He is an executive committee member with the Association of Professionals Specialising in Addictions Counselling, a board member for the Singapore Anti-Narcotics Association and a council member for the National Council Against Drug Abuse. He is currently doing a workgroup project with the Ministry of Health looking at using Motivational Interviewing to work with individuals who have diabetes or pre-diabetes and teaching healthcare educators to better engage patients within hospitals and polyclinics.

Course Brief

Your training will include a mix of lecture, use of video clips by Irvin Yalom and Corey & Corey showing specific techniques, and workshop participation with experiential groups.

DAY 1
Definition of the types of groups , the group experience, what is group therapy and why we use them
• Roles of members and group the facilitator/s
• Pre-group task and how to start up a group (ground rules, logistics, paperwork, funding, refreshments, selecting members, and group evaluations)
• Being part of an experiential group and video clips by Irvin Yalom and Corey & Corey
• Use of the HERE AND NOW as an existential concept in Group Therapy
• Stages of group development (Yalom and Tuckman): Initial, Transitional, Working and Termination or Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing & Adjourning

DAY 2
• Yalom’s Eleven Therapeutic or Curative Factors
• Working with Difficult Group Members
• Co-Facilitation Model in Group work
• Multicultural Issues in Group Work
• Supervision Matters in Group Work

About Your Speaker

Mohammed Fareez is the Senior Assistant Director of the Ang Mo Kio Family Service Centre and Graduate of the Masters in Narrative Therapy and Community Work in collaboration between Dulwich Centre and The University of Melbourne.

Course Brief

Based on the work of Michael White and David Epston, Narrative Therapy involves ways of understanding the stories of people’s lives and ways of re-authoring their stories collaboratively between therapist and the people whose lives are being discussed. With more in-session guidance and practice, this Level 2 Part 1 course delves more deeply into the concepts originally introduced within the Narrative Therapy Introduction course.

Session Key Concepts

• Externalization of the Problem: Where Person is Not the Problem, the Problem is the Problem
• Re-authoring Identity
• Working with Maps of Narrative Practices: Landscape of Action & Landscape of Identity
• Re-membering: Developing the Idea that Identity is Shaped by Social Connections and the ‘Club of Life’

• Use of Case Studies and Other Practical Examples
• Outsider Witnesses
• Definitional Ceremonies
• Personal Agency
• Gender Issues
• Addressing Trauma with Narrative Therapy
• Absent and Implicit: Enquiring Into Stories of Self Beyond the Problem Saturated Story

About Your Speaker

Chris Dolman is a social worker who has been engaging with narrative ideas and practices for the past 20 years. He lives and works in Adelaide, South Australia, and values and enjoys working with individuals, couples, and families who are responding to a broad range of concerns in their lives and relationships. Chris currently works as a narrative therapist in a government mental health service, and also with the National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health, developing resources to support practitioners’ skill development. He holds a Master of Narrative Therapy and Community Work and since 2009 he has been a member of the Dulwich Centre Teaching Faculty with teaching assignments in Beijing, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Kigali, Singapore, and Australia.

Course Brief

Based on the work of Michael White and David Epston, Narrative Therapy involves ways of understanding the stories of people’s lives and ways of re-authoring their stories collaboratively between therapist and the people whose lives are being discussed. With more in-session guidance and practice, this Level 2 Part 2 course continues with the coursework from the Level 2 Part 1 course guiding participants in refining their skill compentencies as a practicing NT therapist.

• Externalization of the Problem: Where Person is Not the Problem, the Problem is the Problem
• Re-authoring Identity
• Working with Maps of Narrative Practices: Landscape of Action & Landscape of Identity
• Re-membering: Developing the Idea that Identity is Shaped by Social Connections and the ‘Club of Life’

• Use of Case Studies and Other Practical Examples
• Outsider Witnesses
• Definitional Ceremonies
• Personal Agency
• Gender Issues
• Addressing Trauma with Narrative Therapy
• Absent and Implicit: Enquiring Into Stories of Self Beyond the Problem Saturated Story