Dharma Bum

The Narrative Project Update

 Hello everybody. I wanted to give you all a quick update on happenings at the Narrative Project of Orange County. This last week was an exciting week for Anne and myself.

First off, It's official! The Project will be undergoing the process of becoming a nonprofit 501(c)(3) in California. As soon as all the legal stuff is completed (3-6 months+) the Project will become a full fledged community practice providing low cost counseling services to those in need. Under the direction of Anne Arnold, the Project will also become a training/practicum site for local licensed mental health professionals, post-graduate interns, and graduate students interested in learning narrative practice and working with the community. In a time when need for services are growing rapidly, and access to services are diminishing, the Projects community counseling practice will have a large impact. It is also the goal of the Project to become the premier training site for those interested in learning narrative practice and community work in the local area.

The second piece of good news was that we presented a writing proposal which combines family therapy principles and narrative practice to David Denborough at Dulwich Communications who publishes the International Journal of Narrative Therapy & Community Work and we were given the green light to get started. Anne and myself will begin co-researching with a family and writing next week. We hope to have a draft to present to them within a couple of months.

Lastly, I have been asked recently when the next Postmodern Conversations will be happening. We have John Winslade scheduled for September 25th so mark your calendars. We also are planning a BBQ/Pool party for the end of August. We hope to bring everybody together to talk work and the coming new series of conversations. If you would like to be included please email me at narrativechris (at) gmail.com.

We are very excitied about the recent developments and I plan to continue to update you as things progress. Cheers.

bell hooks Interviews Pema Chodron

When I first read her, the writing irked me. I was disturbed by what I began to call its "strategic open-endedness." I wanted to be offered solutions, ways out. Instead, she kept extending an invitation to me and everyone to move into that enchanted space beyond right or wrong—to journey to the heart of compassion. And when you have stepped out on faith, straight into the heart of the matter, loving kindness appears less like a utopian dream. It becomes concrete—a place to practice wherever you are...Read More Here

Song of Myself..

I tell several stories about myself.

One story looks like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another Story looks like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And somehow another story looks like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And there are several other stories, but right now? The dominant story pretty much looks like this:

 

The Future of Narrative Practice or What's Our Antenarrative?

This weekend I read a timely review of the Venice Biennale by New York magazine's Jerry Saltz. Earlier that day I had put down a book on narrative practice saying to myself, "there's nothing new here." In Saltz's review of this years Biennale, he called most of the work stuck in a cul-de-sac of regress, where everyone is deconstructing the same elements. He went on to warn about the conformity, calling it a super-attenuated gene pool of ideas which could lead to nothing more than coded language, and a safe rehashing of received ideas about received ideas leading to a new orthodoxy.

Yes it was an art review, but it caught my attention because of some questions I had been chewing on myself. Could narrative practice be accused of the same rehashing of received ideas? Are we headed to a closed coded language, a fixed orthodoxy?

There have been a couple of solid books released this year by Stephen Madigan, and Jim Duvall & Laura Beres that have either solidified narrative foundations or attempted to introduce new practices to narrative work. In my area, I know that John Winslade is attempting to generate new ideas via his experimental e-journal, or with his own writing that introduced the work of Gilles Deleuze. But I'm still left very curious what ideas, or writers, other narrative practitioners may be paying attention to? Are there people currently living that can add much to the practice? Are we looking? Would we welcome a little chaos to narrative practice?

In my own work I have recently begun to experiment, so far successfully, with the idea of sideshadowing written about by Gary Saul Morson. I've also become interested in the ideas of David Boje and his work around Antenarrative. Borje's has written about narrative therapy in storytelling organizational work and is familiar with our foundations. But his ideas around Antenarrative and its possibilities in helping people we work with develop a "pre-narrative," and then "bet" (ante) that you can co-create an antenarrative that will become a living story, holds interesting promise. I will attempt to write more about Boje's work here in the future.

I still look to the arts for much of my inspiration. I have been a fan of Jerry Saltz's writing for some time, and this most recent piece has again caused me to pause and reflect. I would be very interested to hear from others, who they might be reading, or who might be influencing their work. And I would also enjoy the collaboration of looking forward, as we wager that a proper narrative future can be constituted.

Rock Bottom..

In honor of the fact that I'm about to go to a 9am showing of the new Harry Potter movie...

Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy to finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one area where I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter, and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

JK Rowling

Yep.

Liberation

Whom do you call bad? Those who always want to put to shame. What do you consider most humane? To spare someone shame. What is the seal of liberation? No longer being ashamed in front of oneself. - Friedrich Nietzsche (via Stephen Madigan)

The Postmodern Executive - The Hidden Power of Story

I have a new post up over at OC Metro magazine. Please take a look if you have a moment.

Recently I found myself in an airport bookstore looking for something to read as I was about to board a plane for a five hour trip to the east coast. Typically I avoid the rotating volumes of business advice that are part and parcel of all airport bookstores, but this day my attention was captured by a row of a recently released publication professing the “hidden power of story.”As someone with a counseling and consulting practice centered on narrative and narrative inquiry, I bought the book....Read More Here

Recommended..

This weekend I actually made it to a movie, something I do about twice a year. There was motivation for me on this one because, well, it is set in Paris. Fortunately it turned out be a great film in my not so humble opinion. I loved this film for two reasons;

1. Woody Allen made a cinematic love letter to Paris.

2. The story is a fun meditation on how we are always pining for a time other than our present. It really spoke to me.

Curious?

Identify

"I feel like I'm dying of thirst, lying next to a lake." - Bob B.

Learn To Be Quiet

You need not do anything.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
You need not even listen, just wait.
You need not even wait,
just learn to be quiet, still and solitary.
And the world will freely offer itself to you unmasked.
It has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

— Learn to be quiet by Franz Kafka

I Love DFW..

The next real literary ‘rebels’ in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that’ll be the point. Maybe that’s why they’ll be the next real rebels. Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today’s risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the ‘Oh how banal.’ To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law. Who knows.

— David Foster Wallace

CYS Crew

I ran over to CYS Counseling today between seeing clients at the Project. I officially start at CYS on Monday and I'm excited that I get to work with my friend Steve White and continue to work with the Clinical Director Duane Durst who has been my supervisor for the last month plus over at the Bridge. Everybody at CYS has been really great and extremely welcoming. Good things on the horizon for sure. Here's a few pics I took today of some of the crew..

 

Therapist extraordinaire Steve White

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clinical Dir. Duane & Program Administrator Jeremy Tom

"Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors."

Andrew Boy

Ditch

I just edited the shit out a post I was going to write about my friend that died four years ago. How I would tell a story about that.

How I don't know how to tell that story anymore.

How I weeped yesterday.

But this is what you get cause I don't do that anymore here.

Calling All Foreign Born Therapists!

Hello All. My Friend Karni Kissil, who is a doctoral candidate at Drexel University is looking for foreign born therapists now residing in the US to help her with dissertation. So if you are a foreign born therapist who moved to the US after the age of 18, please take a moment to help a friend out. Details are below. Thanks!

Dear Colleague

I would like to ask for your help with a dissertation study of considerable significance for mental health clinicians. We know very little about the experiences of foreign born therapists like you who are currently practicing in the US because so little research has been done asking about your perspective.  We hope that this study will raise important questions for future research and also help to better prepare foreign born therapists like yourself for clinical practice in the US.

This research is designed to explore the relationship between acculturation, perceived English proficiency, supervision and counseling self-efficacy in a sample of foreign born therapists. I would like to invite you to consider participating in this web-based survey.

You are eligible to participate in the study if you:

1.      Arrived in the US at age 18 or older (your immigration status doesn’t matter)

2.      Have a graduate degree in any of the mental health disciplines (e.g., counseling, social work, psychology, marriage and family therapy)

3.      Currently work as a therapist or therapist-in-training (any discipline: social work, psychology, family therapy, professional counselor etc.)

 

Your participation will require completing a web survey that includes 4 questionnaires, estimated to take approximately 40 minutes. Participation in this research study is completely voluntary. If you wish to stop at any time during this process you may do so without any penalty. This survey is completely anonymous and your name or email address will not be connected to your responses on the survey in anyway.  Upon completion of the survey, you will have the opportunity to participate in a raffle where you can win one of three $100 Visa gift cards.

             If you continue onto this web-link listed below, then you are voluntarily agreeing to participate in this dissertation study.

http://is-nri.com/take?i=168078&h=042vHR4dHKjopAPcQAHwtg

 

Thank you in advance for your consideration to participate. If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me at: kk424@drexel.edu.

Important: If you do not fit the study criteria but know of other therapists who do, please forward this email to them. Thank you for your help and support.

Sincerely,

 

Karni Kissil, M. A., M.Ed

Doctoral Candidate

Couple and Family Therapy Department

Drexel University

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

This week I gave notice at the Pepperdine Community Counseling Center. I thought I would be there until I finished my 3,000 hours toward licensure, but something strange happened. People started wanting to pay me for work. What could I do?

I very grateful for the opportunity that I had at the clinic but it was time to head out into the wider world. I will still be doing work at the OC Rescue Mission through Pepperdine, but now you will be able to find me at the following:

My private practice work with the Narrative Project of Orange County is growing at a rapid clip. Thank you to all those that have referred my way. I appreciate your trust. I especially appreciate Anne Arnold's trust in me and all her guidance and support.

Next week I start with California Youth Services and their CYS Counseling group. I am very excited for this new opportunity to work in the non-profit sector and grow a community counseling practice.

And lastly I have been having a blast doing the family therapy for Bridge Teen Recovery. They've been very welcoming to me, and the way I work.

There's a lot of exciting changes going on, not sure where all this will lead but one thing is for sure, it won't be boring.