Workshop Description

3-hour, LIVE Workshop

Self-harming can occur in all age groups and across cultures and class, poor and affluent.  It is most commonly observed in teenagers and young adults.  Great distress is felt both from the self-harmer as well as the people close to them – everyone feels so helpless and often carry a burden of guilt that in some way they are responsible.

In this workshop we shall examine a series of creative techniques that can be helpful for teachers and therapists as well as parents and carers.  Attention is paid to body-based interventions as a means of reversing the harming actions.  The person who self-harms does not feel safe in their bodies and seeks ways to release the tension or toxicity that has built up to bursting point.

These techniques enable transformation in order for young people to have a different perception of themselves and the world around them and move on through creativity from the destruction.

Above all we shall develop an invitational approach that does not impose ideas or strategies but are freely negotiated.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course, you will have an opportunity to:

1. Understand the basis of self-harming behaviours
2. Learn new techniques and skills to apply
3. Integrate latest research and practice
4. Practice the journey from self-harm to creation
5. Remove the guilt from our attitude

Dates and Times

Live online workshop will be run live on:

Wednesday 9th April 2025, 5pm - 8pm AEST 

or

Wednesday 20th August 2025, 5pm - 8pm AEST

Attending from interstate or internationally?

You can use this time converter to check the exact day and time of this training for your location.

Presenter - Professor Sue Jennings
		Professor Sue Jennings PhD is an anthropologist, therapist, performer, and author. She is Senior Research Fellow, The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham Distinguished Scholar, University of the Witwatersrand, Honorary Fellow of the University of Roehampton, and Professor of Play - awarded by the European Federation of Dramatherapy. She has been a pioneer of Dramatherapy and Play Therapy in the UK and overseas. Professor Jennings' paradigm ‘embodiment-projection-role’ is integrated into education and therapy world-wide. Having worked as a clinician in psychiatry, forensic settings and special education, she has focussed her recent practice and research on early years development and developed ‘Neuro-Dramatic-Play’ as a basis for attachment and empathy. She emphasises the importance of ‘play from conception’ for healthy emotional and social growth. Her doctoral fieldwork was with a tribal community in the Malaysian rain forest, which she believes underpins all her childhood theory and therapy. Sue is a prolific author with over fifty publications on theory and application to her name. She believes passionately in ‘playing for peace’ with a rule of ‘no guns in the playroom’.

Cost

$200

Participant Preparation

Please have with you paper, coloured pens or crayons, Plastericine or equivalent, long piece of soft fabric, light weight scarf, paper platers or piece of card (e.g., cereal packets), scissors, stapler, wool or string, scraps of fabric.