top of page
Workshops 2025
Below are the workshops in chronological order for NETAC 2025. Once you have booked you ticket for the event you will be asked to pick one from the morning and one form the afternoon to attend here. There are a mixture of indoor and outdoor workshops to enjoy!
Morning Workshops
The Wood Between the Worlds - Tools for exploring the space between loss and discovery
Barbara Clarkson (she/her), (CTA-P, TSTA-P).
About this workshop: In this workshop I will present some stories that invite each of us to explore the idea of the threshold, the
space between what has been and what may come. We will discover symbolic ideas that help us understand the challenges of being “between worlds” in the liminal space, to find compassion for the parts of us that want to get out of the lostness and uncertainty, and to create resources to enable ourselves and our clients to sit with the uncertainty of not knowing what to do next. We will explore through myths and fairytales how to validate and value the experience of being in the lostness of these transitions that are central to our life story.
Grief, Restoration and the Rhythms of Nature - An Ecological Approach
Andy Williams (he/him), (TSTA-P, CTA-P, CTAT-P)
About this workshop: In this experiential workshop, we will explore grief and restoration through the lens of nature's cycles of loss and renewal. Using the Dual Process Model alongside other frameworks of mourning, we will invite reflection on how we — and our clients — navigate between sorrow and re-engagement with life.
Participants will be offered opportunities to connect with the natural environment, engage creatively with loss and discovery, and consider how ecological metaphors can enrich clinical practice. This workshop includes both theoretical input and embodied, reflective activities and can be adapted for indoor or outdoor participation.
When our body remembers what we learnt to forget - How being in nature can help us discover our own way of thinking.
Helen Blackburn (she/her), (PSTA-P)
About this workshop: How do we think? What do we feel about thinking? How do thoughts arrive, and how much permission do we give ourselves to take time for reflection? We each of us have our own unique ways of thinking, reflecting, and understanding, of making 'sense' of the world. How does being outside, actively engaged with nature help us ‘unstick’ our thinking, and find a way of thinking that feels natural to us. We will work experientially, both individually in nature and with human partners, to explore memories from childhood of playing and learning outdoors, what happened when we moved into an indoor school environment, and what we can rediscover when we meet outdoors again.
Grieving the Family We Never Had: A Neurodivergent Perspective - A therapeutic exploration of grief, identity, and family disconnection in neurodivergent clients
Nea Clark (she/her), (PTSTA, MSc)
About this workshop: This experiential workshop will explore the complex and often painful relationship dynamics faced by neurodivergent individuals within their families of origin. Many neurodivergent adults come from environments where emotional disconnection, chaos, or trauma were part of daily life. For some, neurodiversity in the family has gone unacknowledged or misunderstood for generations, contributing to fractured connections and unresolved grief.
Participants may recognise themselves or their clients in narratives of feeling out of place in their own families—where the longing for closeness, understanding, or emotional safety often goes unmet. Others may be navigating the difficult decision to limit or cut contact with family members for their own wellbeing, resulting in feelings of isolation and rootlessness.
Coming Undone, Coming Close, Coming Alive - Emigration, Immigration as a way to lose and discover oneself
Giovanni Felice Pace (he/him), (CTA, PTSTA, HCPC registered, CPsychol, AFBPsS, EUROPSY, UKCP)
About this workshop: “You never really leave the place you come from. It travels with you. It lives in your language, your gestures, your silences.” — Edwidge Danticat
This workshop explores the profound experience of leaving one’s homeland, only to discover that it lives on within. Drawing on both personal and clinical perspectives, we’ll delve into the complex journey of relocating to a new country—not just as a physical move, but as a psychological process of shedding familiar cultural frameworks and reencountering the self through them. This emotional journey often requires one’s identity to break down, reshape, and reassemble time and again.
At the Core: Life After 'Death' - A Life That Began with Loss, A Self That Seeks to Emerge.
Katie Sands (she\her)
About this workshop: This workshop explores the experience of adoptees who feel a deep sense of loss at their core, yet still exist, function, and search for who they are. It looks at the mystery of grieving something that still lives within and how therapy can help make sense of this. Through discussion, experiential exercises and personal reflection, participants will explore how early, unspoken loss and hidden memories shape an adoptee’s sense of identity and self in therapy whilst exploring their own core self.
Afternoon Workshops
Discovering what has been 'lost' - A relational group supervision
Helen Rowland (CTA-P TSTA-P), Bev Gibbons (CTA-P TSTA-P), Ronen Stilman (CTA-P TSTA-P).
About this workshop: This workshop takes the powerful theme of 'Loss and Discovery' and explores the role that relational group supervision can play in our work with our clients, particularly in the clinical fields. Also known as a 'Balint Group', relational group supervision uses the unconscious associations of the group members to bring to life the unconscious world of the client and the client-therapist relationship. This can become a deeply enriching process of the discovery of what has been lost. Drawing on concepts of intuition, body-mind, and embodied forms of knowing, a relational supervision group can bring new life to areas where you have felt stuck or disconnected. This process of supervision is both structured and facilitated, and in the workshop we will co-facilitate a live demonstration. This will be followed by discussion and exploration of theory and process.
Rituals for Loss and Discovery - Are they meaningless habits, a path to autonomy or essential for sacred transformation?
Mary Dees (she/her), (MSc(Env), CTA-P)
About this workshop: An outdoor experiential, dialectical and discursive workshop exploring, dismantling and rebuilding our ideas and TA theory around rituals for loss and discovery. Asking the question: are rituals for loss and discovery meaningless habits, a path to autonomy or essential for sacred transformation? Exploring delegates' experience and beliefs around rituals, encouraging open conversation and physical exploration(movement and bodywork) that includes ecosystemic, intersectional, cultural and neurodivergent lenses. It will also include the co-creation and implementation of group rituals.
From Loss to Discovery: Using the power of imagination to cultivate hope.
Sarah Devine (she/her), (PTSTA-P)
About this workshop: We are living in a poly crisis, a time of multiple interconnected challenges; war in Europe & Palestine, climate & extinction crisis, the rise of populism & far right politics. How can we navigate these times & move from fear, sadness and/or hopelessness, to something more optimistic?
In this workshop we will use techniques & group exercises from the Transition movement (with some TA theory woven through) to engage our curiosity & imagination. We will play with narrative & story & use our curiosity & collective imaginations to move from what can be a pessimistic view of the world as it currently is, to asking ourselves… “what if?…”
Where the Edges Fray - Holding Space for Grief and Discovery in Sexuality
Lohani Noor (Psychotherapist, Psychosexual Therapist)
About this workshop: Sexuality can be a landscape of both rupture and renewal—where loss (of function, desire, identity, or relationships) can unravel old narratives, and where discovery invites reinvention. This workshop is for therapists who want to explore the tender intersection of grief and erotic reawakening, offering reflective space to navigate these complexities. Through case studies, experiential exercises, and group dialogue, we’ll examine how to:
-Honor sexual grief without pathologizing it, from aging and illness to trauma and identity shifts.
-Facilitate discovery by helping clients reframe "broken" narratives into new erotic possibilities.
-Work with countertransference when our own edges fray in the face of a client’s loss.
Blending theory (attachment, post-traumatic growth) with somatic and narrative techniques, we’ll practice holding space for what’s been lost while cultivating curiosity for what might emerge.
Who am I when the psychosis is gone? - Exploring the loss of identity for the client when change happens.
Ben Groves (he/him), (PTSTA, CTA, CTF, MSW, BA(hons))
About this workshop: This workshop was spurred by some clinical work I was doing with a client who, when they came to me, had schizophrenia- but by the end of our work they had no more symptoms of psychosis. One of the last pieces of work we did was around how to account for the shift in identity when for so long being schizophrenic supported accounting for her needs- and she was unsure of she was without it. This thought linked to lots of other client work then where clients who have medical diagnosis for a long time, or have a strong family script remain trapped by the identity of the 'problem'.
In this workshop we will explore how this can get set up for clients, and what practical techniques we can use with clients to support them through this (should they wish it). It can be something significant the client has to lose should they want to claim the difference they came to therapy for- and most importantly they might not be aware about this.
Who am I meant to be? Reclaiming the true self - Loss and Discovery in the Therapeutic Relationship.
Jane Scott (CTA)
About this workshop: In this workshop we will explore how to work with a traumatised client who wasn't able to integrate trauma. We will also discuss established methods of self-soothing and managing anxiety. We will explore how to reach this part of clients' Child ego state through the medium of Fantasy, Fairy tales, dreams and metaphors.
We will do this through two practical exercises in groups of three. The first exercise 'What is your Fairy tale film today or as a Child?" (How do we hold that story within us) also (How does that relate to your core script beliefs about yourself).
The second exercise is "What particular scene in the Fairy tale/ Film resonates with you and your story and how could this be changed to form a new narrative/ Script".
We will also explore how these techniques could be used in the therapy space through the transference and countertransference attunement with the client and therapist.
Learning Outcomes: I aim to help participants to travel with their clients to discover their identity. Discovering an inner strength plays an important role in healing and finding their true self.
bottom of page