Live Training

Earn Credit for 1 Technique Module toward

Certification in Grief Therapy as Meaning Reconstruction or

 Certification in Art-Assisted Grief Therapy

Offered by the Portland Institute.

Presented by

Nancy Gershman, LMSW

Psychotherapist and Memory Artist

BHAVA Therapy Group

Dreamscaping is a novel, process-directive and photo-based therapy.  Moving from process through product, the therapy is punctuated by novelty-finding and the elicitation of purpose and joy.  The practitioner works with a client’s memory to locate the fleeting, joyful bits so often overshadowed by loss that no new insights can emerge.  It is intended for clients who may be haunted by distressing images, questions, gaps in memory, dark thoughts, elephants in the room, problems with self-esteem, which have put life, dreams and connections on hold.  Its playful approach begins with excavating a client’s most precious felt-sense memories, then joining the client there to figure out ways to enhance or build a new (prescriptive) memory from lived experience, so that it becomes the place where healing can happen as clients move from isolation to reintegration in the world. 

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Through clinical vignettes and subtitled audio clips from live modeling, dreamscape templates and neuroscience schemas, learners will discover exactly how prescriptive memories are compounded in a client’s imagination.  They will learn specifically how in the first hour of Dreamscaping, the process of prescriptive memory-making jumpstarts adaptive coping with the loss event; how the dyad “brainstorms” a liminal space where affection and moments of connection can exist in another time and place just in the imagining of it; and lastly, how the product crafted in the second hour of Dreamscaping (the tangible rendition of the prescriptive memory) can positively influence one’s life in the here and now.

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Upcoming... 

Dreamscaping: Practicum Studio

A  “hands on” experience of prescriptive memory-making, where learners engage in 

two rounds of dyadic creativity as Therapist and Client, processing highlights privately and as a group.

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• List three identifiers for suitability in short term stand-alone therapy and ongoing grief therapy, and contraindications for Dreamscaping;

• Understand the Dreamscaping process (prescriptive memory-making) and product (the tangible object, or “dreamscape”) through an Identity Reformation focus;

• Describe three ways in which Dreamscaping’s brain-based approach “violates the expected,” launching memory reconsolidation and the updating of a distressing long-term memory; and

• Describe three scenarios where sharing the dreamscape’s mythic narrative with a formerly alienated support network—is akin to Rynearson’s Restorative Retelling work.

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COURSE PACK PROVIDES

• Classic Dreamscape Template;

• Case Anatomies featuring a branching tree of questions posed by the therapist during the imaginal interviewing and brainstorming phases of Dreamscaping; and

• Rubrics for brief reflective writing that, upon completion, confers credit of 1 Technique Module leading to Certification in Grief Therapy as Meaning Reconstruction or Certification in Art-Assisted Grief Therapy (3 hours total activity, including 2-hour webinar and approximately 1-hour reflection).

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WEBINAR TIMING

• 9-11am, PDT: Portland, OR, which corresponds to 12-2pm in New York, 5-7pm in London, and 6-8pm in Amsterdam.

• 9-11am, SGT: Singapore, which corresponds to 10am-12pm in Tokyo, and 12-2pm in Sydney and Melbourne.

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The Zoom meeting link and the module materials will be emailed to all registrants in due course.

For other enquiries, simply email Carolyn.