Participant Feedback
- Appreciated new meaning about life events
- Gained understanding of what I have available to bring into my next life phase
- Developed curiosity about what was previously seen as dark times
- Gained awareness of growth possibilities moving forward
- Valued unexpectedly deep, rich encounters with previously unexplored life experiences
- Grateful for new skills could use with clients around life narrative questions
Course Overview:
This course for mental health professionals, consists of 2 x 3.5 hour workshops which are interactive and experiential. It brings together the theory, benefits, risks and creative drawing approaches to Life Journey mapping. This journey map will be a place for your clients to locate difficult periods, turning points and moments of joy in their life, and so find each becomes a part of a meaningful whole.
Timeline maps, geography and journey metaphors will be used to help you (and later guide your clients) to safely and creatively, express emotional memories, hardships, challenges and achievements, from the right-brain activities of storytelling, drawing, metaphors and meaning making.
The journey map is a narrative practice externalising tool which can help a person visualize and walk alongside their life. We can invite curiosity to explore the unexpected or unwanted obstacles, as well as the complex choices made along the way.
Kim will guide you to share stories about your life, using narrative therapy skills to balance each ‘problem’ story with ‘alternative’ stories and sparkling moments that may sometimes sit quietly in the margins of your life.
Countertransference origins will emerge and awaken the sleeping dragon within. Kim will teach somatic body-awareness practices to connect compassionately with our early trauma imprints which live in our soul-body, not in our mind-intellect.
This short course will be like a Golden Harvest: a gathering the fruits of a lifetime.
You will have the opportunity to:
- Experience the creative process of drawing a draft timeline map of your life journey, and conclude with a completed art form of your journey;
- Identify pre-birth and post birth stressors which can impact future self-identity narratives and ways of living;
- Get in touch with your own inner child, whose needs were never all met from childhood;
- Take control of troubling periods by using externalised names for each event and period;
- Learn somatic awareness, self-soothing and re-parenting skills;
- Learn how to bring narrative practices to the unpacking of and retelling of life stories;
- Experience the emergence of new meanings and be able to articulate life lessons from hardships;
- Consider afresh the connection of countertransference to your own early experiences.
Who Should Attend?
All those working in a counselling or case work capacity who want to work in more engaging, strength based and creative ways. Psychologists, school counsellors, social workers, counsellors, youth workers, case workers and group facilitators, pastoral workers, other allied health professionals and students of these disciplines will find this course and its techniques valuable. Just 12 places available for this course.
Workshop Facilitator
Presenter - Kim Billington, Narrative Therapist |
 | | Masters in Counselling, Masters in Narrative Therapy and Community Work, Bachelors in Education Kim is a registered counsellor and a clinical supervisor with PACFA and ACA. She is passionate about training and supervision and is the author of two books for practitioners: A Counsellor’s Companion, for those working with children, and Counselling Conversations for those working with adult clients. Committed to passing forward her ever-evolving counselling skills and knowledge, Kim aims to support and inspire counselling practitioners to develop their own unique creative skills and explore new ways to connect with their clients to support healing and identity growth. As a dynamic course facilitator, Kim has been running training programs including, Playful Narrative Therapy since 2013 for Sydney Centre for Creative Change. She has been facilitating groups and workshops for over 25 years. Kim has worked with families for over 30yrs, and in the field of family violence, men’s behaviour change programs, family separation, bereavement and more. She enjoys working dynamically and creatively with families when they stumble in some tricky terrain. Most of her work is now online. Kim uses Narrative Therapy, Compassion Focused Therapy, Emotion Coaching, Somatic Psychotherapy and Gendlin’s Focusing techniques as ways to assist clients and supervisees to get in touch with their own inner child, whose needs were never all met from their own childhood. |
Training Dates and Times
COMMENCING MAY 2025
27th May 2025, 12pm - 3:30pm AEST (Sydney Time)
10th June 2025, 12pm - 3:30pm AEST (Sydney Time)
or
COMMENCING OCTOBER 2025
22nd October 2025, 12pm - 3:30pm AEDT (Sydney Time)
5th November 2025, 12pm - 3:30pm AEDT (Sydney Time)
Please note, this is a LIVE and INTERACTIVE training event. We don't record this.
Attending from interstate or internationally?
You can use this time converter to check the exact day and time of this training for your location.
Training Details
Included in the workshop price:
- Live online training
- 7 online interactive learning hours (Optional CPD points should you wish to complete quizes)
- There will be an optional short quiz to review the learning and discussion at the end of each session if you want a CPD Certificate. You will receive a CPD Certificate for the hours you have attended at the end.
- Link to create Certificate of Attendance
- GST
Training Cost
SPECIAL Price $450
Places are limited to 12 people so book your place now.
Participant Preparation
For this workshop you will need:
- A3 sized paper for drafts;
- A2/ poster /A3 size card or art paper for the finished journey map;
- Coloured pencils, paints, pencil & rubber, as well as metaphor stickers (which will be discussed in Week 3).
Work Paying?
Lucky you!
Send us an email requesting an invoice via the contact page with your name, the dates and name of course/courses you'd like to do and the name of your organisation who you want us to invoice and we will send you an organisational invoice and a registration form.
What people are saying about Kim's courses...
√..Warm engaging and knowledgeable presenter- Wonderful inspiration and resource with endless possibilities for application. Thank you
√..very practical and useful.
√..wonderful. Kim was well organised, articulate and very personable. She was able to create a "safe environment" that encouraged sharing.
√..very enjoyable. Highly recommended.
√..very interactive and fun! Loved it!
√..excellent! Kim was excellent and respectful and experienced and approachable.
√... most useful in being able to interact with others to hear their stories.
√...great - so enthusiastic! Loved it! The whole training was so insightful.
√...really enjoyed the gentle engaging approach. It was respectful and professional.
√...interactive and empowering.
