In the words of Maya Angelou, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” This Introduction to Untold Story Work helps you to understand why stories remain untold and how to help your clients to tell them. It also shows you how to listen and connect to client’s creative expressions so that you can facilitate processing – safely!

The training provides you with the skills needed to facilitate exploration of client’s untold stories with creativity and playfulness. We will explore how to use client-generated symbols and metaphors to enable clients to share their distress whilst keeping them at a safe distance from unprocessed and overwhelming emotional pain.

When trauma is beyond words, we need to provide non-verbal and psychologically safe methods of expression and sharing. People of all ages are relieved when offered the opportunity to approach their painful experiences safely and gently with a caring and emotionally available other.

Using the Play Therapy Dimensions Model as a trans-theoretical knowledge base, we will learn to identify where the work is with a client and when and how to move the client closer or further away from their painful stories to maintain psychological safety.

We will learn practical skills and tools drawn from Sand Play, Focusing, Art Therapy, Metaphor Therapy, Play Therapy, Parts Work, and Jungian approaches to support processing ‘in the metaphor’.

This workshop combines both theory and experiential elements including small group and pair work. You will learn tools that can be used with clients both face to face and in online therapy work.

Following the training you will receive a Certificate of Attendance for 6 hours CPD, PDF of training slides, PDF instructions for experiential tasks that can be used with clients, plus access to a private post-training FB group.

Stephanie Jarosova is a child and adolescent therapist, trauma specialist, SEMH consultant, and mental health trainer. She is accredited by the Australian Counselling Association (ACA), Australian Psychologists and Counsellors in Schools (APACS), and the International School Psychology Association (ISPA) as well as being a member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP).

Stephanie has over 17 years of experience supporting children and young people directly in schools across Asia and Europe, and has also trained hundreds of adults in working therapeutically with vulnerable CYP. Now based in London, Stephanie leads Growtherapy World, an independent mental health and wellbeing project.

With a background in education and mental health, Stephanie is interested in the intersections between mental health, school and family systems, and learning difficulties. She specializes in working with complex developmental trauma, and her approach is trauma-informed, eco-systemic, relational, and integrative. She is passionate about the healing power of creative play and expressive arts and works to build capacity for creative therapeutic interventions and interactions in CYP services.