In this 3-volume course featuring clinical sessions with three clients, you’ll learn:

• Shift the therapeutic conversation from symptoms and suffering to one of strengths and resilience
• Craft questions and conversations that privilege the client’s own language and lead to deeper understanding
• Use Narrative techniques to align clients more fully with their core values and preferred identities
• Develop stories that challenge repressive systems and give clients agency in their relationships to those systems
• Create a culturally democratic space that honors heritage and allows clients to speak on behalf of their own healing
• Deconstruct problem-saturated stories, and examine how client’s responses to problems may or may not serve them

In his work with Vinodha, Beverly and Ian — all of whom are experiencing adversity — Heath demonstrates a unique blend of traditional and contemporary Narrative Therapy techniques that prioritize people over problems. You’ll see how he opens his initial sessions using questions that ask them to identify their core values, quickly getting to the heart of who they are and what brings them into the room.

VOLUME 1: Vinodha
Vinodha is a successful single mom of Indian descent whose complicated past has left her feeling unseen and uprooted. Heath demonstrates the power of stories to quickly get at the heart of who your client is and what brings them to the room. You’ll learn how to co-author powerful counter stories that connect clients to more than just their individual selves, and open pathways for new understanding.

In this volume you’ll learn how to…

• Use strengths of moral character inquiries to identify preferred identities and challenges
• Trace the impact of themes such as colonialism and capitalism
• Engage with curiosity and to identify strengths, cultural heritage and other resources
• Cultivate counter stories that move clients closer to who they want to be

VOLUME 2: Beverly
Beverly, whose motto for life is “to thine own self be true,” is a retired African American woman who grew up in New York during the days of racial segregation. By questioning the deeply-woven stories society tells about what it means to be Black, and exploring the narratives Beverly shares, Heath helps Beverly co-author powerful counter stories of courage, resilience and a steadfast belief in who she is at her core.

In this volume, Heath will show you how to:

• Invite clients to challenge dominant stories about themselves and their lives
• Use stories to enrich your understanding of client strengths and challenges
• Rethink what you write in your session notes and how you use them in session
• Bring yourself fully into the therapeutic relationship

VOLUME 3: Ian
Ian is a former rugby player-turned-sports psychologist whose career as a professional athlete was derailed by catastrophic health-related setbacks. Over the course of two sessions, you’ll see how Heath blends contemporary and traditional Narrative Therapy techniques to co-author moving counter stories of strength and resilience. Through an unconventional use of session notes, creative plays on language, and unabashed engagement, Heath demonstrates how therapists can help clients redefine what’s possible by pushing beyond the stories that the world tells about who they are and who they should be.

In this video, you’ll learn to:

• Examine the stories clients tell about themselves and the world tells about them
• Become an active participant in the therapeutic process
• Engage with interest and creativity to identify factors that impact clients’ identity
• Co-author counter stories with clients to move them closer to who they want to be

Travis Heath, PhD, is a licensed psychologist and has been in community practice for nearly two decades. His scholarship has included looking at shifting from a multicultural approach to counseling to one of cultural democracy that invites people to heal in mediums that are culturally near. Other writings have focused on the use of rap music in narrative therapy, working with persons entangled in the criminal injustice system in ways that maintain their dignity, narrative practice stories as pedagogy, and a co-created questioning practice called reunion questions. He is co-author, with David Epston and Tom Carlson, of the first book on Contemporary Narrative Therapy released in June 2022 entitled, “Reimagining Narrative Therapy Through Practice Stories and Autoethnography.” He has presented his work in 10 countries to date.

General Disclosure

This Disclosure Statement has been designed to meet accreditation standards; Psychotherapy.net does its best to mitigate potential conflicts of interest and eliminate bias in all areas of content. Experts are compensated for their contributions to our training videos; while some of them have published works, the purchase of additional materials are not required for any Psychotherapy.net training. Each experts’ specific disclosures can be found in their biography.

Psychotherapy.net offers trainings for cost but has no financial or other relationships to disclose.

Therapist Disclosure

Travis Heath was compensated for his contribution to this course. None of his books or additional offerings are required for this course. Should such materials be referenced, it is only as additional resources.

Psychotherapy.net defines ineligible companies as those whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients. There is no minimum financial threshold; individuals must disclose all financial relationships, regardless of the amount, with ineligible companies. We ask that all contributors disclose any and all financial relationships they have with any ineligible companies whether the individual views them as relevant to the education or not.

Additionally, there is no commercial support for this activity. None of the planners or any employee at Psychotherapy.net who has worked on this educational activity has relevant financial relationship(s) to disclose with ineligible companies.

• Apply a Narrative lens when working with clients from non-dominant backgrounds
• Integrate the use of counter-story development and questioning into your clinical practice
• Design treatment plans uniquely tailored to the needs of minoritized clients focusing on ancestry and racism
• Apply Narrative Therapy principles when working with clients from non-dominant backgrounds
• Integrate Narrative-oriented questions into your clinical work
• Implement counter-story development techniques into your practice
• Explain why traditional multicultural practices can fall short in creating an inclusive space for diverse clients
• Apply culturally democratic methods in clinical settings to allow clients to speak on behalf of their own healing
• Utilize narrative questions that privilege client language and stories
• Use elements of the clients narrative in your clinical work to deconstruct problem-saturated stories
• Identify themes of resilience, hope and other client strengths and craft questions that consolidate these internal resources