A TSM International Symposium: A Gathering for Restoration, Spontaneity, and Creativity
Presenter Biographies
Celebrating Post-traumatic Growth with TSM Psychodrama:
Dr Kate and Dr. Steven (photo and bio further down) will use the TSM Safety Structures to bring the community together in spontaneity and creativity using sociometric structures. A group protagonist will be chosen on the theme of celebrating personal or professional growth during their journey with TSM Psychodrama. People will all take roles and act as their own simultaneous protagonists so the group mind can guide the action. Sharing ends the session.
Workshop Objectives – Participants will be able to:
- facilitate the use of the TSM Safety Structures in their own work;
- teach the rudimental elements of the Trauma Survivor’s Internal Role Atom; and
- describe their experience of increased spontaneity, creativity, and connections to others.
Kate Hudgins, PH.D., TEP, is the co-founder of Therapeutic Spiral Model and she has been an experiential psychotherapist and trainer for more than 40 years.
Cultivating Gratitude with the Compassionate Witness:
The Observing Ego role notices and reflects without shame, blame, or judgment. The Compassionate Witness adds to that the ability to accept one’s place in their personal and professional journey with love and appreciation. Using evocative images, we will concretize, and role reverse with our Compassionate Witness to observe and reflect on the here-and-now reality that brought us to this moment of international connection. As we embrace, with gratitude, the opportunities available to us during this symposium, we will set our intentions for our time together and label the doodahs that might try to trip us up as we co-create the experience of TSI’s first International Symposium.
Mario will be joined for a portion of this workshop, via ZOOM, by Linda Ciotola, TEP. Linda is a TSM Trainer responsible for the name: Compassionate Witness.
Workshop Objectives – Participants will be able to:
- define the role of the Compassionate Witness and describe a process for role reversing with this inner role of non-judging observation;
- list at least 3 benefits of developing a practice of gratitude; and
- set clear intentions for the ways in which they wish to maximize the learning and personal growth opportunities of this international symposium.
Mario Cossa, TEP, TSI Certified Trainer, is a Psychodramatist and Theatre Educator who specializes in work with trauma survivors and adolescents. He has an international reputation as a trainer having worked live in the USA, Canada, UK, Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, China, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand. Via ZOOM his country tally also includes Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, and India.
Mario resides primarily in Antiga Kelod, a village on the East coast of Bali, Indonesia. Each Fall (in the USA) he travels to California where he offers TSM and other psychodrama workshops. He is also a Senior Trainer for the Safe School Ambassadors (SSA) Program of Community Matters (Santa Rosa, CA.) SSA is an evidence-based training for students at all grade levels that supports youth empowerment as agents of change for creating more positive and caring school climates.
He has also been a tap dancer since age 4 ½.
Bringing TSM to the World: Working within the Multi-cultural Universe –
This experiential workshop utilizes Sociometry to help illuminate cultural nuances to create safety and understanding in multi-cultural groups. The workshop will engage the participants at the first TSM international conference in adapting TSM safety structures in order to create united diversity. Worldwide participants will engage in exploring, recalling, and creating structures that will help the conference group to find inter-cultural safety and power in our diversity. The work that will be done during the workshop will be applicable to helping reduce and engage projections onto others so that each participant can be seen as the person they are within a wider cultural universe.
Objectives: Participants will be able to:
- identify their own diverse cultural identities;
- modify TSM safety structures to increase multicultural understanding and safety in groups; and
- facilitate two (2) sociometric structures that help explore and expand cultural sensitivity.
Karen Drucker, PsyD, TEP is a Licensed Psychologist in Boulder, Colorado; where she utilizes psychodrama in her private practice and teaches at Naropa University in the Mindfulness and Transpersonal Graduate Counseling Program. Karen was part of the original Therapeutic Spiral Training Group in the 1990s. As a Licensed Psychologist and Board-Certified Trainer and Practitioner of Psychodrama, Sociometry, and Group Psychotherapy, she runs monthly psychodrama training groups for therapists drawing on her vast experience with TSM teams both nationally and internationally, including co-training with Steven Durost in India 2019-2020. She also was a trainer for TSM teams in Brisbane, Australia; Nottingham and Sheffield, U.K., Baltimore, MD, and Ottawa, Canada.
Karen is a warm and engaging teacher and loves designing trainings that are clear, powerful, and integrative for learning and experiencing. Her doctoral dissertation centered on the Containing Double, a TSM intervention designed to prevent dissociation.
Karen has a deep respect for the healing power of psychodrama and considers it part of her mission and purpose to teach students and therapists about the power and healing of psychodrama. She is a graduate of the St. Elizabeth’s Psychodrama Training program and American School for Professional Psychology/Virginia.
Steven Durost, PhD, LCMHC, REAT is the Executive Director & Owner of C.R.E.A.T.E! Center for Expressive Arts, Therapy and Education in Manchester, N.H., U.S.A, which employs 25+ counselors and arts-based therapists. C.R.E.A.T.E! is the recipient of the 2010 New Hampshire National Alliance for Mental Illness Award for Systems Change. Steven has been awarded the Heroes of Justice Award by the YWCA Crisis Services for his work with the Male Sexual Abuse Survivor’s Group and for being a first responder for human trafficking. Steven is one of the first dozen people in the world to earn a Doctorate in Expressive Art Therapy through Lesley University in Cambridge, MA., and is also adjunct faculty at Lesley University. In learning about trauma work, Steven conducted research, taught courses, and created groups in South Africa, Israel, New Zealand, and Australia. Steven is a Registered Art Therapist with the International Expressive Art Therapy Association and he is the recipient of the 2014 ASGPP’s Zerka T. Moreno Award for outstanding achievement in psychodrama. Steven has co-presented and presented TSM Psychodrama workshops around the world in China, Singapore, Sweden, Denmark, Greece, Croatia, India, and the United States
Steven is also an international show kite flyer and a professional Master’s bodybuilder in the 50+ category.
TSM and The Game Plan Coaching: A Gathering in the Restoration Garden
The Game Plan for Better Living is a trauma-informed coaching model that uses the language and metaphor of sports to help participants identify where there’s a loss of power, freedom, or full self-expression – loss of spontaneity – that adversely impacts their creativity to win at life’s games. This strengths-based model will use its ALL-IN (Assess, Leverage, Locate, Integrate & New) process modeled after the Trauma Survivor’s Internal Role Atom (TSIRA), TSM’s clinical map, to help navigate winning their game. Participants bolster their strengths and inner resources to encounter their identified game opponents. The goal is to address their performance gaps with a variable amount of novel and adequate responses to old and new situations, respectively, to get to a new level of performance. The final scene will take place in the Restoration Garden.
Objectives: participants will be able to:
- describe three categories of strengths and create a field of strengths;
- explore various internal roles (parts of self) to gain different perspectives on how they are playing their “games”; and
- identify and label their performance gaps that lead to ineffective results in life’s games.
Joshua S. Lee, MSW, CP is a certified psychodramatist (CP/PAT) and a certified Systemic Team Coach, working in the areas of team building, communication, and restorative practices, using action-learning tools to enhance the learning experience. He is an innovator and author. One of his creations is an experiential coaching model called The Game Plan for Better Living where he coaches people to embody their strengths and resources to overcome life’s opponents. His newly published book, The Game Plan for Better Living Performance Coaching, outlines how his coaching model went from paper-and-pencil to a full-blown interactive model using action methods. He has presented nationally and internationally in the areas of psychodrama and sociodrama.
He currently trains and coaches, educators, and community-based leaders, such as community empowerment, and racial/social justice practitioners, through a trauma-responsive lens, by way of the Therapeutic Spiral Model’s international experiential trauma certification.
On a personal note, he is the father of 5 lovely adult daughters – all their names begin with a ‘J’ and all of them are blazing pathways in their own rights. Even the next generation of children – the grands – all have ‘J’ names. Yep, he really has started something special.
And finally, he is clear that he’s walking in his God-given purpose to HELP HUMANITY WIN!
Projective Identification: a Tool for Group Healing
In TSM we use projective identification as it is defined by Ogden (1979, p357-373): as a pathway for psychological change, projective identification is a process by which feelings like those that one is struggling with, are psychologically processed by another person and made available for re-internalization in an altered form.
In TSM the whole group cooperates in carrying the projective identification, processing the material and giving it back to the protagonist.
We will study the projections of the protagonist and the (conscious or unconscious) acceptance of the projections by group members (identification).
In addition, the process of processing and returning the projections using the TSM method is the object of study.
We will use reflective exercises to build awareness and to increase the learning about projective identification In action.
Ogden, T. H. (1979). On projective identification. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 60(3), 357–373.
Objectives: Participants will be able to:
- describe the process of Projective Identification (PI) in groups through action exploration;
- relate the experience of working in a group to make PI’s more visible;
- list their relationship to the elements of the TSIRA map; and
- describe how they plan to use the TSIRA and PI’s for personal and client healing work.
TSIRA = Trauma Survivor Internal Role Atom.
Ina Hogenboom, Certified Trainer Therapeutic Spiral Model, TEP, Registered Psychologist lives in the Netherlands, where she works as a registered psychologist, counselor, and specialist advisor in Critical incident debriefing. She provides training and education in Psychodrama and the Therapeutic Spiral Model.
In her work with clients and groups, she combines positive psychology and new findings from neuroscience with psychodrama.
She likes to work with a focus on spontaneity, mental strength, and resilience so that people can use their creativity to make their lives more meaningful (and fun).
Harmony in Duality: A Diamond of Opposites Exploration
In this workshop, we will explore the dynamic interplay between the strengths that define us and the shadows that shape us. We will use TSM structures to create safety within the group and utilize guided meditation and interactive exercises to unravel the stories and lessons hidden within our strengths and shadows.
The Diamond of Opposites will be a guide to navigate the polarities between our identified strengths and our chosen shadows to move us toward a dance of integration.
Through psychodramatic action, reflection, and journaling we will move toward self-awareness, greater harmony, and balance as we increase our personal and professional role repertoires.
Objectives: Participants will be able to:
- describe the process and the outcomes of their exploration of the interplay between their strengths and shadows;
- describe the use of the Diamond of Opposites to explore and integrate the polarities of their identified strengths and shadows; and
- list at least 3 personal and/or professional goals to which they will commit as follow-up to the workshop experience.
Mala Bali, Master’s in Psychology, Delhi University, CP – Vedadrama, India – is a seasoned Coach, Facilitator, and Certified Psychodramatist, who hails from India. Following her post-graduation in Psychology, she pursued a master’s degree in human resources from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. As a Co-Director at Vedadrama India and proprietor of an independent consulting practice, Mala works in diverse organizational cultural landscapes. Through her training and practice in psychodrama and TSM, she has been working on elevating empathetic communication, fostering team cohesion, and establishing psychological safety. With a culturally attuned approach and psychodrama-based methods, Mala is dedicated to enhancing interpersonal dynamics and fostering collaboration in professional settings. Her focus on resilience empowers individuals to make their lives more meaningful and enjoyable.
TSM visits the Agora: Swirling around Oneiroi Spaces
In this workshop, we will share and work on a dream theme arising from the collective (i.e. participants or dream spaces within the symposium) using a TSM approach and principles. To close the workshop, we will then collectively develop a ritual to ground the work into the here and now.
Dreamwork is not a new invention. Humankind has paid attention to dreams (Gk. Oneiroi) as long as we have inhabited the earth. Long before Freud stepped onto the stage of dreams, in Greece, Artemidorus (2nd Century AD) already went into interpretation of dreams; Shamanic cultures have used dreams to make sense of reality and also interpret the future. Psychodrama and Moreno’s insights help us to approach dreams with different lenses using our body and movement as instruments of inquiry since dreams tell us stories about ourselves, individually and collectively, and present mirror images for us to work with. Dreams offer a variety of spontaneity exercises – from nightmares to challenging dreams to exciting ones. All of them tell stories, visit our strengths and vulnerabilities, and provide windows to aspects that are not in our everyday awareness. TSM Spiral provides a space in which these dreams can be revisited and worked with, in groups, organizations, and other collectives.
Objectives: Participants will be able to:
- identify a dream that needs attention;
- describe a guided process that can be used in everyday life; and
- facilitate change by learning to observe and act and develop observations into sacred spaces.
Sari Mattila, Ph.D., MSSc., CP & Level 2 TSM practitioner, Philosophical Practitioner is a cosmic being and a psychodrama and philosophical practitioner who blends in her experiences with groups to TSM learning and psychodrama. She works with groups, organizations, and leaders using her insights from TSM to bring about change. She is an active member of International Society for Psychoanalytic Study of Organisations (ISPSO) and the Society for Philosophical Practice (FIVE) in Finland.
When Playback Theatre meets TSM
In this workshop participants will delve into their spontaneous creative selves using Playback Theatre short-form and long-form- structures through the lens of TSM’s Trauma Survivors Internal Role Atom (TSIRA). Using the TSIRA map, we will discover how the group can mirror and lead to the safety of any individual’s story. In addition, we will deepen our understanding in moving from the mirror position to the full participation of a protagonist’s story. The focus of the stories and feelings shared will relate to our experiences at this international, multi-cultural conference.
Objectives: Participants will be able to:
- describe 3 Playback Theatre structures for embodying the Observing Ego; Personal, Interpersonal, and Transpersonal Strengths; and Body double;
- facilitate a Psychodramatic vignette emerging from a Playback Theatre platform; and
- explain ways to increase the spontaneity of role creation and role development with any role on the TSIRA map.
Roni Alperin LMFT, RDT/BCT, Accredited Playback Theater Trainer is a psychotherapist and drama therapist in private practice in the Bay Area, CA. He is an Adjunct Professor at the CIIS Drama Therapy program. He is the founder and director of the San Francisco Playback Theatre Company, and a Certified TSM Team Leader and practitioner. Roni is also an actor and director of both Playback theater companies and of self-revelatory/autobiographical monodramas. Roni focuses on healing relationships with self and others using theater.
MY STORY WITH TSM
I will begin the workshop with a brief sharing of my personal story offered as a mirror for participants to reflect on and see their own stories. There will be time for activities, discussion, and sharing insights in small and the full groups.
Since I’m a certified Lego Serious Play facilitator I will use the Lego bricks as a modality to help participants find their stories.
Also, once I share how I’m planning to use this for the future; would like to open up the discussion trying to draw out different viewpoints from the entire group on how this could be more effective and efficient.
Workshop Objectives- participants will be able to:
• Articulate their own stories, old and new;
• Describe how using Lego Bricks can help discover one’s story; and
• List ways in which they wish to expand their role repertoires.
Jasmine Suri, the Founder of Jasmine’s Playadiem and an ICF Certified Professional Coach from India, has been in the training and coaching space for over 19 years. She works with senior leadership in manufacturing & pharma giants across India and Southeast Asia, helping them in culture change & transformation, giving a special focus on women.
Jasmine creates powerful coaching moments using different modalities such as Lego Serious Play and Humanistic Psychodrama, and helps her clients become more self-aware & overcome their fears, uncertainties, and doubts. She strongly believes in making a difference in the lives of her clients by providing her Playadiem as a powerful transformational ground and holding herself and her journey as a mirror.
THE TSM GAME – A NEW ENTITY AND AN ADDITIONAL SAFETY STRUCTURE
In this workshop, the presenters will enact the TSM Game which is a new entity developed mainly to become a video game. A new safety structure will be presented as well. Come to this workshop prepared to play and engage in the world of video games to come closer to the world of children and adolescents of today.
Workshop Objectives – Participants will be able to:
• describe the main idea of the TSM Game;
• list the elements of the new safety structure through their experience of it in action; and
• relate their experience of playing a video game in person.
Hanan El-Mazahy MD, PhD, ABMPP, Consultant Child and Adolescent Mental Health is triple-board certified in the fields of Psychiatry, Pediatrics, and Mental Health in Egypt in addition to being a fellow of the American Board of Medical Psychotherapists. She is currently head of the Digital Health and Telemedicine department at Sporting Students’ Hospital, Alexandria, and in private practice as a child and adolescent mental health consultant and CEO of Yashfiny which is a telemedicine startup. She is trained in Psychodrama, the Therapeutic Spiral Model (TSM) in addition to DBT and EMDR. She practices play therapy and Arts therapy with children, adults in family and community contexts. Her research interests are in psychodrama, EMDR, telemedicine, and Artificial Intelligence.
GOOD ENOUGH PERSONAL LIFE AS A … THERAPIST
When I die, I want to look back and say “YES! I saw a good enough life!”. There is still a lot until then… there is still a little… I have no way of knowing! I only know that I wish to add more life to the years and moments that I live! A good life is most often associated with abundance, prosperity, balance, success. But, in order to achieve them, it is absolutely necessary for us to have a very good relationship with the LIMITS!
In this workshop we will explore how important it is to understand and apply limits, especially in post-traumatic growth roles. We will stage the significant roles we live and plan and the relationship between life, limits and post-traumatic growth.
The profession of “healer” is a profession that requires a lot of resources and a hygienic lifestyle. For this reason, actions and activities are needed especially for the therapist to be able to support himself and others. The therapist’s relationship with his own limits is essential in creating “a good enough life” and increasing the quality of life.
Workshop Objectives – Participants will be able to:
– describe the role of therapist and its relationship with one’s own person;
– explain how the role of limits increases the quality of personal and professional life; and
– list at least 3 tools to improve one’s personal life, in a planetary context.
Irina Gruia, Psychologist, Psychotherapist, TSM Practitioner, Psychodrama Prainer, ESPERE Method Trainer.
My life has always been a series of challenges and separations, in order to gain independence and autonomy. Currently, I am proud of the fact that I managed to accompany thousands of children and adults in activating their potential. I am a social entrepreneur and I created the first therapeutic Hub in my country, dedicated exclusively to emotionally vulnerable children.
My role as a psychotherapist has been active since 2007 and I managed to bring psychodrama and its techniques to many categories of people, who in reality would not have access to these services.
I am the mother of two girls, and I have a wonderful family with whom I like to discover the world. My passion is new experiences, new people and new places.