Narrative Therapy II
Date: Nov 7, 2025
Time: 9:00am-12:00pm and 1:00pm-4:00pm (PST)
CEU: 6 hours
Location: Virtual – Zoom session
Cost: $180
Audience:
This second-level course is open to social workers, nurses, counsellors, mental health professionals, students and anyone working in the human services field who have a foundational understanding of Narrative Therapy and want to continue developing and deepening their skills. This workshop will build upon foundational knowledge of Narrative Therapy but completion of Narrative Therapy I is not required.
Description:
Building on the foundational principles of narrative practice, this session will focus specifically on deep and therapeutically meaningful reauthoring conversations - a central practice in Narrative Therapy that supports people to renegotiate their relationship to problem identities and to connect with their values, hopes, competencies and abilities. This includes a deepening of the skills of externalizing and deconstruction of oppressive forces acting on the individual.
Participants will have the opportunity to engage in experiential learning focused on the application of clinical skills, with the intention of bringing reauthoring conversations to life.
Learning objectives:
- Develop a deeper understanding of the key theoretical and ethical considerations that inform Narrative Therapy with a focus on the reauthoring process.
- Understand and apply skills in developing alternative storylines through therapeutic conversations using unique outcome, landscape of action and landscape of identity questions.
- Evaluate how to integrate reauthoring conversations into the learner’s own practice, with attention to both personal and systemic narratives.
Conflict Management Skills
Date: Oct 24, 2025
Time: 9:00am-12:00pm and 1:00pm-4:00pm (PST)
CEU: 6 hours
Location: Virtual – Zoom session
Cost: $180
Audience:
This course is ideal for therapists, social workers, and mental health practitioners in various fields of practice seeking to develop complex conflict management skills to apply to their practice.
Description:
This experiential course moves beyond basic de-escalation and into the deeper work of navigating conflict rooted in values, identity, and ethical complexity. The course offers applied, anti-oppressive tools for managing challenging conversations across systems, settings, and relationships. Participants will engage in interactive skill-building activities to apply frameworks and techniques that support grounded, relational responses to tension. Whether working in clinical, community, or private practice settings, this course helps practitioners build the confidence and competence to remain in dialogue when stakes are high and emotions run deep.
Learning Objectives:
By the end of this course, participants will be able to:
- Apply anti-oppressive and trauma-informed frameworks to ethically complex interpersonal conflicts in a variety of professional contexts.
- Demonstrate de-escalation strategies that maintain connection across difference and reduce defensiveness.
- Assess their internal responses during conflict and implement regulation techniques to stay grounded.
- Demonstrate relational accountability by thoughtfully responding to feedback.
- Facilitate conversations that acknowledge harm and open opportunities to reconcile.
- Integrate co-regulation, bystander intervention, and restorative tools into professional settings.
Neurodiversity-Affirming Care
Date: Sep 26, 2025
Time: 10:00am-1:00pm and 2:00pm-5:00pm (PST)
CEU: 6 hours
Location: Virtual – Zoom session
Cost: $180
Audience:
This course is ideal for social workers and other professionals in healthcare and human services.
Description:
Neurodiversity-affirming care is not only about individual interactions; it is also a form of cultural competence embedded within professional practice. To be neurodiversity- and neurodivergent-affirming is to acknowledge that all brain types, including those that are different to what society considers the norm, are equal in value and valid in their right to exist without conforming. This means valuing an individual’s strengths, understanding and accommodating their challenges, and accepting differences in social interaction, communication, behaviour, and learning.
This 1-day course is designed to provide a comprehensive introduction to a neuro-affirming practice framework and tools for integrating its principles when working with individuals, families, and groups. The course will balance theoretical learning with interactive discussions, case scenarios, and guided practice.
Participants will learn about neuro-affirming care, including the neurodiversity movement; neurodivergent diversity; neurodivergence and gender; neurodivergence across the lifespan; neuronormativity and systemic ableism; domains of experience; masking/camouflaging; neurodivergence and mental health; and neurodivergent-affirming communication. This learning will then be applied through guided practice activities and debriefing.
This course is the first of a three-part series on neurodiversity-affirming care, and a recommended pre-requisite for the following two courses. In the event that a future certificate program in neurodiversity-affirming care is developed, these courses will count toward the required hours for the completion of that program.
An Indigenous and Virginia Satir Approach
Time: 9:00am-12:00pm and 1:00pm-4:00pm (PST)
CEU: 12 hours
Location: In-person, UBC Point Grey Campus
Cost: $450
NOTE: It is recommended, however not required, that participants attend “An Introduction to Satir’s Systemic, Family-Centered Therapy” on May 9th, 2025.
Audience
Therapists, counsellors, educators, community health workers, social workers, and those who are interested in culturally informed, holistic approaches to healing and personal development. Students in social work and other therapy-oriented programs are also welcome.
Description
This course explores the intersection of Indigenous knowledge systems and the Virginia Satir Model for personal growth and family therapy. Participants will delve into how Indigenous practices—rooted in relationality, balance, and connection to the land—align with and enhance the core principles of the Satir Model.
Three experienced clinician educators will share diverse methods of how they use the Satir model in their clinical counselling practice, their work with Indigenous peoples and agencies, and in their personal lives. The course emphasizes experiential learning, highlighting tools like storytelling, ceremony, and intergenerational wisdom as complements to Satir’s concepts of congruence, self-esteem, and transformational change.
Through case studies, hands-on exercises, and dialogue, participants will gain a deeper understanding of how to respectfully integrate these approaches to foster healing, harmony, and resilience in Indigenous individuals, families, and communities.
Virginia Satir’s Legacy and Model
Virginia Satir’s approach is focused on the whole person, affirming that there is no separation of body, mind and spirit or life energy, as they work in unity, it has no color realm, and it cuts across all cultural norms. The Satir model focuses on internal and external aspects of the self and teaching coping styles from a body-oriented and family-centered perspective. Her quote “Peace within, Peace between, Peace among”, can be found within each of the processes she used to demonstrate how we as human beings learn to be human, living with self, other and context. Her work is presented to us today as a model that encompass the journey that an individual can embark on finding their own inner core, with an in-depth understanding of the need to be in collaboration with all of Humankind, all of Nature and the Universe.
Learning Objectives:
- Describe the foundational principles of Indigenous ways of knowing and their compatibility with the Satir Model.
- Apply skills for incorporating Indigenous practices, such as storytelling and ceremony, into Satir-based therapeutic processes.
- Develop cultural humility and ethical awareness when working with Indigenous communities.
- Foster relational healing, which is listening from the heart, discovering what caused hurt, being vulnerable and rebuilding trust.
Learning Activities:
- Explore Indigenous paradigms and the parallels within the Satir Model
- Walk through the Virginia Satir Change Process
- Experientially learn the survival coping skills as a way of deep connection
- Explore Satir’s “use of self” with an Indigenous lens
Satir Therapy: An Introduction to Virginia Satir’s Systemic, Family-Centered Therapy
Date: May 9, 2025
Time: 9:00am-12:00pm and 1:00pm-4:00pm (PST)
CEU: 6 hours
Location: Virtual – Zoom session
Cost: $180
Short Description
Virginia Satir’s approach is focused on the whole person, affirming that there is no separation of body, mind and spirit or life energy, as they work in unity. Her approach is founded on the belief that change is always possible and that people have their own resources to draw upon. It was her life’s work as a therapist to help people get in touch with their resources as a grounded, centered partner in the healing relationship. She believed that as helping professionals connect with their own life energy, clients are more enabled to connect with theirs and can become a more active participant in the change process toward growth and transformation. Satir’s attention and inclusion of the body, energy and spirituality of all persons was very much ahead of her peers, during her lifetime as a trainer and practitioner. This aspect of her approach is in line with current bodymind approaches in therapy.
This program will demonstrate the importance of attending to the body and energy in achieving change and transformation through highlighting attention to being fully present and congruent in words, gestures and interactions within oneself and for others. Tools to focus on the internal and external aspects of the self, and a variety of coping styles, will be highlighted to enhance skills in assessment and intervention with both individuals and families from a body-oriented and family-centered perspective.
These skills will be applicable to practice with a diverse range of client populations and clinical practice settings, as they speak to fundamental, albeit often neglected aspects of the human experience and universally accessible ways of holistic healing.
Learning Objectives:
- To demonstrate foundational skills for working with individuals and families in the application of Satir Therapy in a variety of clinical practice contexts.
- Articulate the necessity of practicing self-care and being fully present in clinical practice.
- Develop skills for attuning to and monitoring experiential aspects of therapy including the client’s and practitioner’s responses (words, actions and energy).
Learning Activities:
- Introducing skills relating to Satir’s systemic approach.
- Demonstrations and processing using dyads and group feedback.
- Exercises to support greater consciousness and incorporation of an energy/body/mind focus.
Narrative Therapy: Foundational Skills for an Anti-Oppressive Approach to Clinical Practice
Date: March 14, 2025
Time: 9:00am-12:00pm and 1:00pm-4:00pm (PST)
CEU: 6 hours
Location: Virtual – Zoom session
Cost: $180
Releasing Trauma: An Integrative Model of Trauma Practice
Date: February 21, 2025
Time: 9:00 am-12:00 pm and 1:00 pm-4:00 pm (PST)
CEU: 6 hours
Location: Virtual – Zoom session
Cost: $180
Single Session Therapy: An Impactful Approach for Short- and Long-Term Family Work
Date: November 6, 2024
Time: 9:00 am to 12:00 pm and 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm
CEU: 6 hours
Location: UBC Robson Square, 800 Robson Street, Vancouver
Registration Fee: $180
Short Description:
The SST model is recognized for its accessibility and affordability, addressing barriers like long wait times, by offering immediate, impactful support to those suffering with behavioural and emotional struggles. Mental health practitioners can integrate SST concepts into their own theoretical frameworks to optimize each session with their clients, making it a versatile tool across different practice settings. When working with families, practitioners sometimes feel challenged in co-creating effective strategies to reduce levels of distress and meet needs promptly. This SST approach equips professionals with the skills to be more effective and responsive, making it ideal for those in community, for-profit, non-profit services, and private practice.