Playing with Workplace Trauma through Role
Sun, October 28, 11-12:30p
NADTA Conference 2018 – Kansas City, Missouri
This workshop will explore the complex internal and external performances we engage in as clinicians in our workplace systems. Using Landy’s Role Theory and Wegscheider-Cruse’s Family Roles, participants will create therapeutic theatre to explore how vicarious trauma and parallel process found at the systems level perform in our bodies. (1.5 CE hours – RDT, NBCC, LCAT)
Session Description:
Professionals working in mental health care and addiction treatment systems may unknowingly perform (ie. adopt, reflect and mimic) the symptoms of their clients. This parallel process, combined with the vicarious trauma encountered within the system, can lead to staff compassion fatigue, burnout and unethical practices, all contributing to a breakdown in client care.
Part discussion-based and part experiential, this workshop aims to explore the complex internal and external performances we engage in as clinicians in our workplace systems. Using the lens of Landy’s Role Theory, along with addiction theorist Wegscheider-Cruse’s Family Roles, participants will create short pieces of therapeutic theatre as a way to explore how vicarious trauma and parallel process found at the systems level perform in our own bodies.
This workshop will provide an opportunity for participants to look at their own patterns and positions of power in their current or past work environment in an effort to better understand the implicit and disembodied roles we often play. By performing their individual needs, wants and contributions in relationship to the system in which they work, participants can engage in a conversation about vicarious trauma in the workplace from a more intuitive, creative, and collaborative place. We will explore the power dynamics at play in the therapist/client role, as well as the shifting positions of power and privilege that drama therapists occupy in traumatized systems.
