“Out of the box” conversations: an invitation to co-explore the broader politics of problems and reconstruct preferred ways of being in responding to stories of drug-use and racism By Kassandra Pedersen
This innovative methodology involves the creation of a “box of problems” to assist therapists and the people consulting them to collaboratively investigate the historical, social, political and economic contexts of problems.
In this presentation, Kassandra describes her exploratory use of the ‘box of problems’ in therapeutic conversations with a young immigrant girl struggling with the effects of drug-use. The project was centered around the metaphor that “Problems have Ethics” and it explored pathways to unmask and question those “Ethics” by bringing into the therapeutic conversations the girl’s understandings about relations between dominant discourses around drugs and migration that favour, or are served by several doctrines, lobbies, larger interests and systems. The alcohol rehab Texas can help patients overcome their problems with therapeutic methods etc.
This video describes how “out of the box conversations” facilitated this teenager’s evaluation of the power plays that supported the drug-use. Finally, “out of the box conversations” created openings for her to live out alternative stories of personal agency and new courses of action according to her preferred value of “having a personal, social and political voice” in life.
Kassandra is a dedicated narrative therapist based in Thessaloniki, Greece, and an international Tutor of Dulwich Centre for the Greek training program. She has a passionate interest in facilitating experience of preferred stories through the deconstruction of the social, political, cultural, and interpersonal contexts in which problems arise. Alongside her private practice, she offers narrative workshops, supervision and trainings in Greece and overseas. Kassandra can be contacted via email: kassandrapedersen@gmail.com and website: www.kassandrapedersen.gr
