We know that many of you are working out the logistics of travel, but once you arrive in New Haven, we want you to have the best possible time at the conference and in the city. Christine Mayor, MA, RDT, our Logistics Chair for the 2012 conference, has put together a fantastic selection of New Haven eateries, activities and sights to enjoy, and offers a sneak peek in advance of your arrival!

Do you salivate over the images of pretzel burger buns, gorgonzola fondue or Lithuanian coffee cake?  Do you wonder about the mysteries of The Skull and Bones and other secret societies?  Do you imagine taking a break from the conference and window shopping downtown, visiting one of the many (and often free) museums and art galleries, taking in the view of the city from the top of East Rock Park, or experiencing the diverse food options within a short walking distance?  If so, this blog is for you.

In addition to this year’s exciting programming options, this conference features the accessibility and diversity of New Haven itself.  New Haven has the amenities of a small city, but the feeling of a New England town. Having moved to New Haven only a short year ago, I was skeptical of the town’s slogan “It all happens here,” until I started to uncover the best spots, delicious treats and strange history of this area. It’s not simply a place to visit, but to really explore.

But since you only have a few days to investigate New Haven, we’ve created a cheat sheet for you. Look in your Hospitality Packets for additional information on places to eat, attractions, and nightlife possibilities.  Below are just a few highlights.

Food

The Cask Republic: With an amazing selection of microbrewery beers, delicious snacks and gorgonzola fondue, this is a great spot for winding down after a full day of conferencing. 179 Crown Street

Kudeta: Delicious Asian-fusion food and cool ambience, this is a spot not to be missed. Also, watch out for an opportunity to win a $60 gift certificate, available for one lucky conference attendee to indulge alone or share with friends. 27 Temple Street

Barcelona: Located right next to the Omni, this Spanish-themed restaurant offers a range of tapas and features ½ priced bottles of wine on Sundays.  155 Temple Street

Claire’s Corner Copia: Kosher restaurant with vegan and gluten-free options available, this chill eatery offers delicious meat-free meals that even the meat-eaters will enjoy. Check out their to-die-for Lithuanian Coffee Cake (also available gluten-free). 1000 Chapel Street

Nightlife

Karaoke Heroes: A superhero themed karaoke bar… need I say more? Sing the night away while in role.  212 Crown Street.

Yale Repertory Theatre: Innovative theatre productions just down the street from the conference, featuring Marie Antoinette October 26-November 17. Tickets can be purchased in person at 1120 Chapel Street or online. 

BAR: In addition to their famous mashed potato pizza, this local eatery and bar hosts live music and deejays in their back room. 254 Crown Street

Crown Street: Chock-a-block full of bars and clubs for every taste, whether you are looking for live music (try Stella Blues), a chill lounge (Firehouse 12 or 116 Crown), a sports bar (Black Bear) or place to dance the night away (Gotham Citi or BAR), Crown Street is a great street to explore.

Daytime

Yale Tours: Hear about Yale’s rich 300-year history, architecture and aspects of student life at several of Yale’s twelve residential colleges. Free on Mon–Fri 10:30am & 2pm; Sat–Sunday 1:30pm. 149 Elm Street

Frisbee on the Green: New Haven is the land of inventions, including the Frisbee! Stop by the NADTA Frisbee station (located near welcome desk) and pick up a disc to toss on the New Haven Green, located just around the corner from the Omni. Temple & Chapel Street

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library: Constructed with more than one hundred panels of translucent marble, the Beinecke is home to one of the world’s preeminent collections of rare materials, including the Gutenberg Bible. 121 Wall Street

East Rock Park: Drive or hike to the top of East Rock Park for a beautiful view of the city. Cold Springs Street & Orange Street (nature center)

For more information:

For weekly updates on the local activities, check out The Daily Nutmeg 

Read your Hospitality Packets cover to cover – we’ve put some great suggestions in there to make your experience of New Haven as memorable as possible.

Your New Haven Guide,

Christine Mayor, MA, RDT

Logistics Chair, NADTA Conference 2012

Sandy is on all our minds.  As a matter of fact, she is hard to escape, even with all the distraction of tying up last minute conference details.  We want to reassure everyone that the Conference Committee is carefully monitoring the storm’s progress.  

Now some may believe we put in a special order with the weather folks for this storm to complement our conference theme in an effort to honor the avoidance component of trauma or, perhaps, to meet trauma head on so that we are off and running when you arrive on Friday. But this is not the case. Or is it?

It looks today as though the center of the storm will pass over southern New Jersey on Monday and Tuesday, but because of the storm’s potential range, Southern New England may be impacted as well.  Our Conference Weather Chair will be glued to Sandy’s every move and keep you posted through email and social media as it evolves or dissolves.  

The Omni has assured us that if there are power outages they will not be affected due to the hotel’s generator grid.  The largest impact for those attending is likely to be disruptions in travel.  We advise that you monitor your airline’s website for the storm’s impact on New York and Connecticut airports and sign up for flight notifications so you can stay informed as announcements are made.  Please check driving conditions as well. 
 
The conference will continue as planned.  We are gearing up for an enlivening, educational and community-building experience.  We hope to see you in just a week’s time!
 

Click Here For Conference Registration, Schedule and Hotel Information.

All the best,
  Mary Lou Lauricella, Conference Co-Chair
  Jason Frydman, Conference Co-Chair
  Anonymous, Conference Weather Chair

We will continue to update on hurricane effects on the conference and travel throughout the week. Check back here, or on the conference sites and the NADTA News Site!

Andrew M. Gaines, LCAT, RDT-BCT, is the new Director of FACES, an educational theatre program for teens at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, following 7 years at Interfaith Medical Center on both inpatient and outpatient units. He has served as President of NADTA’s Tri-State Chapter, and is now a PhD candidate in Educational Theatre at NYU, where he is also a regular Guest Lecturer in Drama Therapy, Applied Psychology, and Performance Studies. 

Lucy McLellan, RDT-BCT, LCAT, serves as Training Director at Creative Alternatives of New York and is also a faculty member of the both the Drama Therapy Program at NYU and the International Trauma Studies Program at Columbia University. She serves on the NADTA Ethics and Education Committees and is a founding member of the NYS NADTA Licensure Taskforce. Here, they discuss their upcoming conference workshop, “But I Came to Heal: When Institutions Wound Therapists.”

Upon our reflection of the NADTA’s conference theme earlier this year, we began to critically analyze first word of the phrase, ‘Witnesses to the Dark.’ As Drama Therapists, we have indeed been called to witness and heal the traumas of our clients, yet we have also both been directly traumatized by events within and surrounding the job itself.  And we know that we are not alone.
 
Too many of us have been—and will be— thrust into the role of the Victim, in every type of setting, sometimes by the very clients we aim to help, or even by the treatment team and culture that surrounds us. We are hit, assaulted, mugged, robbed, berated, humiliated, and slandered. We are silenced. We are triggered. Our race or gender or sexual identity or religion has been turned against us and violated. And more often than not, Drama Therapists find themselves overworked, underpaid, and at the bottom of the professional food chain, embroiled in the pathology of their agencies—a recipe for chronic stress, an institutionally-induced trauma, ultimately resulting in the compromised care of their clients.
 
Shall we choose to simply shrug off this sad state of affairs as an occupational hazard worth enduring in exchange for our clients’ healing? Drawing on our expertise in Trauma Studies, supervision, and experience working within inner city hospitals, we felt compelled to offer an alternative safe forum in which Drama Therapists could explore, express and work through traumatic experiences that have occurred in and around the workplace, based on principles of clinical group supervision rooted in trauma theory.
 
We invite you to join us, and take advantage of an atmosphere in which our professional struggles and losses are not only acceptable, but can be witnessed, held, and possibly even transformed by the group. Experiential activities will be facilitated alongside discussion and psychoeducation aimed to move us all forward in our practice, from surviving to thriving. Suitable for seasoned professionals and incoming students alike, we will work together to identify and utilize tools for self-care, understanding that self is the primary tool through which we serve our clients.
 
We extend our deepest gratitude to all of the conference organizers, and we can’t wait to see you all in New Haven.
 
Andrew Gaines, RDT-BCT, LCAT
Lucy McLellan, RDT-BCT, LCAT
 
Andrew and Lucy’s workshop, “But I Came to Heal: When Institutions Wound Therapists,” will be held on Sunday, November 4th at 3:15pm. There are only 9 days left til the conference! Don’t forget to register now.

Adam Reynolds, MFA, RDT, LMSW, CASAC, is the Program Chair for the 2012 NADTA Conference. Adam generously took some time to answer a few questions about the role of the Program Chair, the new conference format, and his own perspectives on trauma and performance. 

Adam, please tell us a little about yourself.

I’m an alternate-route RDT with my MFA in theatre from Columbia and my MSW from Hunter College in NYC; I did my initial drama therapy studies at Kansas State and then here in NYC at the Institute for Developmental Transformations.  My clinical work has primarily been with patients in acute hospital settings, and I currently supervise the team of 13 creative arts therapists who are responsible for all the group therapy and activities on our five inpatient psych units at Mt. Sinai Hospital.  I’m also currently the Associate Training Director at the Institute for Developmental Transformations in New York where I co-lead the post-graduate training program in DvT with Navah Steiner.

Personally I’m kind of a homebody and spend a lot of time happily at home in Jackson Heights, Queens, with my partner, Adam, and our cat, Radish.

What is the role of the Program Chair at the NADTA Conference?

As the Program Chair I worked closely with [Conference Co-Chairs] Mary Lou [Lauricella] and Jason [Frydman] to develop the theme of this year’s conference and craft the Call for Papers.  I assembled a fabulous Program Committee who, along with Jason, Mary Lou and I, scored all the submissions and establish an initial ranking.  Then Mary Lou and Jason and I sat down and went through each proposal and tried to select the overall programming that we felt best served the theme, reflected the diversity and quality of the drama therapy community, and would make for the best overall experience.  After that it’s mostly a lot of detail work: making sure everything goes in the right spot, helping coordinate what presenters need, stuff like that.

Was it difficult selecting amongst the many submissions for presentations at the conference?

It was challenging work: we had a record number of submissions and everybody took the scoring process very seriously – you need to give each submission sufficient time and every proposal is scored on a multi-factor scale.  In many cases reviewers also gave qualitative comments which we went back to in order to decide close calls or determine just how we felt a workshop or presentation would fit with the overall theme or contribute something special.

It was hard work, but also energizing because of how many great ideas and perspectives were represented.  And I had a lot of help!

Did you find that, in reviewing submissions, your definition of trauma was shifted in any way? If so, how?

I wouldn’t say my definition of trauma was shifted, but I did have some suspicions confirmed.  In acute psych I hear regularly when I bring up the issue of a person’s trauma history, “Oh, we can’t address that here, we don’t have enough time.”  And I think this idea that somehow we can believe our work could be ‘separate’ from the traumas our clients have experienced is a powerful source of denial.

We received proposals relating to trauma work in almost every conceivable setting: hospitals, schools, prisons, clinics, community centers, supervision, professional associations, societal groups, performance venues, professional education, political activism, research.  So my understanding of how trauma affects people continued to grow and broaden, and, optimistically, my sense of where trauma could be addressed and treated grew as well.

As we’ve heard from Jason & Mary Lou, there are a number of changes in the conference structure this year. What are some of the new components that you are particularly excited about, and why?

Well, I’m a big fan of the new Body of Knowledge format.  It’s a kind of power fantasy to say: “oh, let’s put Person X and Person Y together and point them in a direction and see where it goes.”  For me so much of the good work of the conference happens in the conversations around and after presentations: I think this format creates a public venue for these conversations to exist and for us to meet as a community around a particular issue.  From a DvT perspective they also reflect the idea that value is created in the encounter between people – not by the script you bring to the event. 

I also like how Monday is devoted to developing our community – with Nisha and Nadya’s  [Drama Therapy: Beginnings] workshop helping to open up the discipline to new beginners, and our four pioneer leaders devoting their time to the [New Frontiers: Advanced Practices] workshops aimed at showing how our core theories have evolved.  I’m really glad that the response to that day has been extraordinary.

You are also performing at the conference on Friday night with Elisabeth Davis, Cat Davis, and Liz Rubino. What can you tell us about “Love Songs for My Perpetrator: A Trauma Story with Music”? Why did you choose the medium of song? 

Hmmm, what to share without giving things away?  I guess I can say that as I developed as a clinician and in my own personal drama therapy, I began to look at my performance work – which involved a lot of opera and musical theater – in a new way.  I wanted to share some of those ideas but not in a way that could be easily pigeonholed as ‘only’ performance or professional presentation.  I courted a set of collaborators who had a lot of great experience in that realm: as producers, directors, composers, and performers.  I wanted to ask: what was different about the art if all the artists were also drama therapists?

Working in song I think allows me to best recreate some of the experiences I have felt in surviving and working with trauma: experiencing multiple strong emotions at one time, struggling to make something beautiful out of something awful, and tolerating and embracing the limits of the body, heart, and mind.

What do you hope people gain from attending this conference?

Mostly I hope that we have created something that is substantial and fluid enough so that everybody can leave with what they were looking for: professional development, re-kindled enthusiasm for their work, a chance to connect with old friends or far-off colleagues, a re-engagement with community.

Thematically I hope that people can reflect on their relationship with trauma and realize that as drama therapists we are uniquely positioned to resist trauma’s insidious way of forcing us into rigid roles: victim, perpetrator, witness.  We are all touched by trauma and we all can make a difference in healing its effects.

What is your favorite thing about New Haven?

Well, I can’t pretend that I’m an expert in New Haven – but I like that it has a lot going on culturally, academically, socially, but on a scale that makes it easier to sample.  There are also a lot of people I care about there, so that’s always a good reason to visit.  I think it’s going to be a very nice home for us at this year’s conference.

You can see Adam and his colleagues perform on Friday, Nov. 2, at 9:30 PM, and see the many other presentations selected by Adam and the Program Committee throughout the conference. Have you registered yet? It’s not too late! We’ll see you in two weeks!

With the title of this year’s conference as “Witnesses to the Dark: The absence, emergence and performance of trauma”, the rescuer in me cannot help but feel the need to rebel against the role of witness and begin yet another campaign to stop trauma once and for all. To parade on the streets, to yell into my megaphone, to be active. If I could only stop it all. If only it were that easy to end this vicious cycle of harm that is filling our world with such pain.

            So I became a drama therapist. Yes, to save the world—just like the rest of you. Well, to at least try to alleviate some of the pain. That might be a more realistic goal. I had my initial drama therapy training at Concordia University, then traveled south to the intensive trauma and drama therapy training at the Post Traumatic Stress Center (PTSC) in New Haven, CT. Now, I may not have become the most realistic person in my short career so far (hey, I am in the playspace all day, you can’t blame me!) but I have learned that when it comes to trauma, I have already failed to do any saving. I am too late for the rescuing—the trauma already happened. At the PTSC, we call this the “failed rescuer”, and when we aren’t actively playing the perpetrator or victim roles in the playspace, we are often feeling the trials and tribulations of being the one who didn’t, rather, who couldn’t have rescued. The actual perpetrators were too strong…too powerful.

            Well, what can we do? Fortunately, drama is a medium rich with possibility. In drama, we represent things. Whether it’s through a scripted play, a sculpt, or an embodied encounter in the playspace, we are playing at reality. Trying to represent and work through, or at, or merely just learn from those things we have experienced in life. When trauma penetrates those experiences – the representation becomes much more difficult and at times, impossible. How can one represent the dark? The absence? The horror that lurks around the corner? I imagine the conversations that will soon fill the conference workshops will be focused on just these questions. How can drama therapy help to represent something that is often so far from representation?

             Exposure therapy is currently the primary treatment for those with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It can consist of different versions: in vivo, in which the client is presented with the actual stimuli that caused harm originally (e.g., for a rape victim: a date with someone new), in vitro, in which a simulated situation is presented to the client (e.g., the client can role-play what happened in their traumatic event), or it can be imaginal, in which the client is asked to bring up the memory in their mind. Developmental Transformations (DvT) and drama therapy overall, are a combination of in vitro and imaginal exposure. The ultimate goal is to expose the client to their fear of their trauma and lower it.

            In a desensitization process informed by DvT, the client is engaged in physical play which is progressively shaped to resemble elements of their traumatic experience as a means of providing gradual exposure. This is the focus of the work at the PTSC and has cumulated in the recent article: Trauma-Centered Drama Therapy as Exposure Treatment for Young Children” by Renée Pitre, Nisha Sajnani & David Read Johnson (In press). The article outlines the gradual exposure process with case examples. It also includes several other critical therapeutic elements to desensitization such as role reversal, mutual play, and embodiment which allow for the client to not feel alone in the telling of their story (mutuality) and also activate kinesthetic and sensory stimuli that make the client’s remembering more vivid (embodiment). The gradual exposure process, however, is key in the movement from the rigid stance of a traumatic experience into something that has much more playability.

Exposure occurs in increments from indirect to direct references to traumatic events. The therapist first engages the client in an open-ended improvisational play involving characters and actions of the client’s choice. Within these scenes, the therapist then selects his/her own roles and actions that gradually become more similar to those in the client’s traumatic experience.  The therapist carefully monitors the client’s reaction to these references, providing an optimal measure of exposure to activate the client’s fear response but not enough to overwhelm the client.  Eventually, the play directly re-enacts aspects of the traumatic events and variations on them.

            Although briefly highlighted here, DvT’s focus on the infusion of the traumatic material into the play session has shown to be beneficial for those having experienced trauma. The dramatic medium and imaginal realm is an excellent choice for a desensitization process especially considering the gradual exposure process titrated by a therapist. Again, I can’t undo the trauma, no matter how badly I wish I could – but – if I could help in reducing a client’s fear and potentially ‘free’ them up in future interactions, then you bet, sign me up!                   

Excerpts from“Trauma-Centered Drama Therapy as Exposure Treatment for Young Children” by Renée Pitre, Nisha Sajnani & David Read Johnson (In press).

_____________________________________________

Renée Pitre, MA, RDT is the Director of the Drama Therapy program at the Post Traumatic Stress Center in New Haven, CT. She will be presenting in a number of workshops in the conference on trauma treatment with the use of DvT. The staff at the PTSC will also present evidence and variations on this topic throughout the conference weekend (including a look into their ALIVE school program, a discussion on DvT art therapy, and an exploration of physical practices in drama therapy). They look forward to conversing with you all about how drama therapy’s unique angle on treatment may be beneficial for those who have been impacted by trauma. See you at the conference! 

We recently had the privilege to interview Maria Hodermarska, MA, RDT, LCAT, CASAC, ICADAC, on her work as Ethics Chair of the NADTA at this year’s annual conference, as well as some of her personal views on trauma and the ethical issues faced by drama therapists who work with trauma.

Would you please share with the readers what brought you to taking the position of Ethics Chair of the NADTA?

I believe in service and I believe in community. We can’t experience community from the outside. We experience community by performing a role in it.  We learn about ourselves and about that community by serving it. 

This year’s second Body of Knowledge is hosted by you and titled “How Does Trauma Perform?” This will be a panel discussion on the aesthetics of trauma, and take the Weaver’s “Long Table” forum performance structure. Would you please describe the “Long Table” for those of us who are unfamiliar with it?

I am co-hosting this panel with NADTA President Nisha Sajnani. Weaver’s “Long Table” format was Nisha’s suggestion after she saw it in action at a symposium about the work of a downtown theater company in New York. 

You can think of the panel format as an imaginary dinner party. You can also think of the panel as a performance.  Panelists sit at the table and offer their insights on the topic “How does trauma perform?”  But the format permits the audience to be an active part of the performance/conversation and as panelists speak and leave the table, an audience member with something to contribute can sit down or can write a thought or a question on the table itself.

How you feel this format will best highlight and engage the themes and purpose of the event?

We are hoping that the format permits a dynamic flow of ideas and perspectives as we begin as a community to draw the connections between trauma treatment and aesthetics, which goes to the very core of our clinical work and being.

You are also hosting an “Ethic of Advocacy” workshop. What do you believe the biggest ethical faux pas new drama therapists unwittingly commit when trying to advocate for themselves as new members of the community?

I prefer not to talk in terms of mistakes but in terms of questions. Our clinical work requires us to be in a constant assessment process even as new therapists seeking work.  New drama therapists who are making their way in a field that is small are required to provide education to potential employers about the field.   

I think that the questions that we always need to be asking ourselves deal with the breadth and the limits of our training and scope of practice. We never want to say that we know or can do more than our training permits. We also want to communicate the possibilities of the work. I think that it’s a challenge to strike the right balance especially as new clinician seeking to establish work for herself in the field.

What is an ethical challenge drama therapists face when working with patients who have experienced trauma, and what do you feel would be the most ethical way to then address that challenge?

There are many challenges. One challenge relates to your previous question. We have to know our limits and we have to be clear on the function of our job. 

A therapist is not an advocate. These are separate roles with very different functions. And, yet, so often in doing clinical work with trauma, we are asked by the legal system or by the health care system to function as advocates. We are asked to formulate an opinion about our clients’ ability to parent, to be parented by their abusive parent, to function outside some type of institutionalized setting, etc.  These opinions can take us psychically out of the treatment room and potentially complicates our clinical relationships.  Prognostication invests us in a client’s recovery process in way that can interfere with treatment.  A client’s improvement (or lack thereof) potentially becomes personal for us and poses a challenge regarding our roles and boundaries that we must attend to. 
 
As trauma produces serious role confusion for the traumatized individual, we see a parallel process in the role confusion that often is a part of our own clinical experience working with people who have experienced trauma. This issue around advocacy is just one aspect of that.

What is the one ethical principle that you find to be the most important regarding the treatment of patients with trauma and why?

All of our ethical principles are important.  One concept in our principles is that of dignity.  I find it an invaluable concept. For Immanuel Kant, dignity means to “act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.” Trauma is the result of the most undignified behavior by one person towards another—the abnegation of humanity and the creation of terror. For me, play (drama and paradox) is the opposite of this. Our drama therapeutic play is the way (both the means and the end) to the affirmation of the dignity of each person.

Don’t forget to register now to join Maria at the NADTA Conference: “The Ethics of Advocacy” meeting is at 4 PM on Saturday, Nov. 3, and “Body of Knowledge: How Does Trauma Perform?” will take place as a panel discussion at 5:30 PM on Saturday, Nov. 3.

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, today we will introduce you to Diversity Committee Co-Chair Amber Smith, M. Ed. Here, Amber answers questions about the Diversity Forum, her focus on culturally embedded collective trauma, and diversity issues in the field of drama therapy.

Please tell us a little bit about yourself, your work, and what brought you to becoming a co-chair of the Diversity Committee of the NADTA. 

I am a recent graduate of the New York University Drama Therapy Program.  I completed a thesis that answered the question, “How a Drama Therapeutic Rites of Passage Program can heal the emotional wounds of Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome in African-American Adolescent Girls.”  My goal was to look at collective cultural trauma and utilize Drama Therapy to begin to heal not only the individuals, but to begin to work to heal a community.  As I am very passionate about healing communities who have suffered great trauma, my thesis was a very clear next step.  I plan to continue to work in the area of collective healing and am looking to work in school districts or with adolescents in my home state of Colorado who are suffering from mental illness, being ostracized and/or collective trauma.

My current tenure as Co-Chair of the Diversity Committee seemed like a great fit.  At the time I began my Co-Chair responsibilities, it was an appointed position, and a great honor for me to be appointed. Diversity is something about which I have always been passionate.  I believe that everyone deserves to embrace who they are culturally, and be accepted.  My goal during my time as Co-Chair of the Diversity Committee is to begin to broaden the Drama Therapy community’s understanding of culture, personally and communally.  I also aim to work on greater understanding, and acceptance as well as the embracing of the varied cultural elements of others not only in the Drama Therapy Community, but communities globally.

This year’s diversity forum is entitled Healing Trauma within the NADTA. How did you two choose such a compelling topic to address?  Do you feel is has the potential to ignite controversy within the community?

Throughout my time in this community I have seen some wonderful moments and I have also witnessed and been a part of moments where it was very clear people experienced trauma due to something done or said by a colleague, usually unintentionally, that caused trauma.  It has been clear that these traumas experienced are affecting our community, and we believe it is time that we not only call this into the room, but address it ethically and openly.

As the goal is to create a space for open healing, I do hope that this sparks conversation, healing and awareness in the Drama Therapy community.  The point of this forum is not to sit in controversy, but to move toward healing and awareness. We must all become aware of how we present ourselves and are received in the community and how that can be an impetus for healing and change.  We all have our own stories and come from varied places of privilege and it is ethical and important that we begin to look at those moments/dynamics as opportunities for connection. 

Our goal with this forum is to move the conversations forward and begin to create connections within the community, and really begin to define who we are as a community, through an understanding of the individuals that make up the community, as well as create a space for healing and understanding through connection.

The conference this year has scheduled a number of presentations and events that have a strong focus on cultural competency, cultural identity, and social factors as they relate to trauma. Which presentation/event are you most looking forward to?

As always the conference is full of amazing presentations, and I truly wish I could attend them all.  I again am struggling in my attempts to narrow down which presentations I want to attend. I am looking forward to the Diversity Forum for sure as I know Daniela and I have worked very hard to create a space of healing and change.  I am also looking forward to performing and getting feedback on “From the Playground to the Battlefield: Race as Performance,” as my colleagues and myself have been working together for over a year on this labor of love.  Two others about which I am extremely excited are the discussion involving the video “Three Approaches to Drama Therapy,” as this has been an impetus for a lot of conversation and controversy in our community at large, it will be great to hear from people who really have an understanding of the film and work that was accomplished. Finally I have been long awaiting this for the past two conferences, the Master class. I am so excited to learn from the masters of this work and understand the history, evolution and intent behind the amazing techniques that we all use to help our clients find healing.  This is so unprecedented and amazing, as it is rare when a community has the ability to learn directly from its founding members. 

 I am so in awe of what the community holds and accomplishes and cannot wait to connect and re-connect at this year’s conference.

What do you feel is the most salient cultural competency issue that clinicians whom work with clients whom have been impacted by trauma face today?

The most salient cultural competency issue that clinicians seem to face is understanding the dynamics of privilege and how that plays out in therapy, and how it can be used to begin to heal trauma. I believe that through the use of containment and working in transferential and counter-transferential moments, clinicians can ethically work towards healing.  It becomes difficult to work towards healing when we a clinicians do not see or want to see how our privilege is playing out in the playspace and thus, we begin to have a break in the client/clinician relationship. Though this is a very uncomfortable and at times scary space for the clinician, it really is a time where healing can come through openness and honesty.

Through my own experiences on the proverbial “other side of the couch,” I found that when a clinician ethically called the dynamics into the room I felt much more comfortable.  I was then able to continue the work and was able to use the dynamics to work though those things with which I struggled.  I take this approach when working with clients and have found that they appreciate when the dynamics are called into the room and are playable. 

You can contribute to this year’s Diversity Forum as well! Attend and participate in the forum at the NADTA Conference on Friday, Nov. 2 at 6:00 PM, and send in your stories of diversity and discrimination for use in the event!

We’d like to take this opportunity to introduce you to Daniela Bustamante, MA, Co-Chair of the NADTA’s Diversity Committee. Please read Daniela’s insightful thoughts on this year’s Diversity Forum and the thoughts she has for the future of how issues of diversity and culture are addressed within the NADTA and beyond. And stay tuned for more on the Diversity Forum from Daniela’s Co-Chair, Amber Smith, M. Ed., later this week!

Please tell us a little bit about yourself, your work, and what brought you to becoming a co-chair of the Diversity Committee of the NADTA. 

My name is Daniela Bustamante. I’m a recent graduate of NYU’s drama therapy program, where I wrote my thesis on the need to explicitly engage issues relating to race and ethnicity in drama therapy practice. When I first came into this community I noticed what I considered to be an absence of cultural engagement in our literature and practice, and a tendency to shy away from discussions of difference, power, and privilege. I really want to infuse “diversity” topics into all of our conversations as therapists, rather than limiting it to something that is just addressed in contained, designated spaces, like this forum. I am very grateful for the opportunity to co-chair this committee with Amber Smith, and to hopefully help the entire NADTA become more active and comfortable engaging diversity, rather than shying away from it. 

This topic emanated from observing interactions among NADTA members at previous conferences, both in the diversity forums and in other presentations. I’ve seen multiple instances of people unintentionally offending or hurting their colleagues, and interactions that had tones of racism, heteronormativity, sexism, and other social prejudices. This needs to be addressed if we want to grow closer as a community and continue to thrive as an organization of professionals. We focus all the time on the traumatic experiences of our clients, and the ways social encounters can be harmful, damaging, or restrictive to their health and growth— the same is true for the NADTA. If we want to grow and flourish as a field and as individuals, we have to address the traumas that are happening amongst our members.

I can’t say I’m looking forward to any one presentation or event in particular, but I am really proud of the increased attention being paid to cultural competency, identity, and “diversity” in general by our community, and specifically at this conference. I think that social factors and cultural identity markers are a huge part of individual experience, and really need to be taken into consideration by all therapists. Whether an occurring trauma is directly related to someone’s identity (such as a hate crime), or not (such as witnessing violence in the home), the trauma is still experienced in the context of that person’s existing culture and social setting. Without attending to those aspects of human experience, we do our clients a huge disservice by ignoring facets of their identity. 

What do you feel is the most salient cultural competency issue that clinicians, whom work with clients whom have been impacted by trauma, face today?

I think the omnipresence of “culture” is incredibly important to acknowledge when working with traumatized clients. Our culture, individual and social, filters and informs the way we interpret every event that happens to and around us, including trauma. Culture influences how our clients frame potentially traumatic events— whether it’s okay to talk about it, to feel certain feelings about it, whether it’s considered important or not by family and friends. It also influences how we as clinicians, may frame the same events differently. We need to be capable, as clinicians, of noticing those differences in perception, and find a way to meet with our clients in order to most fully aid them in recovering from trauma. Without paying attention to topics of diversity, power, and difference, it will be really difficult to bridge those gaps. 

You can contribute to this year’s Diversity Forum as well! Attend and participate in the forum at the NADTA Conference on Friday, Nov. 2 at 6:00 PM, and send in your stories of diversity and discrimination for use in the event!

Tara Van Ness is a drama therapist who lives and works in New Jersey. She primarily works with children who have experienced domestic violence, as well as family members of the children she sees. Here, Tara shares some reflections on her work with trauma, caring for her clients, and for herself. 

Sometimes on Saturday I like to wake up earlier than usual. I know this is the day I am supposed to sleep late, but Saturdays are special.  They are the day I work harder than any other: I work on my life and on myself. I believe this is an important part of working with patients whom have experienced trauma and I take this part of my job very seriously.  I do my household chores, cleaning, laundry, and run errands. I take a yoga class for self care, I make a list of dinners for the week, I grocery shop, I take the dog for a long walk, I write, I catch up on reading professional journals or try to make headway on my Level One DvT paper. By the time my partner comes home at 8:00, I have dinner ready and it has become one of the business days of the week.  But Saturday is my day. The day of the week that is all about me, where I don’t have to take care of anyone else but myself, and my home (in theory anyway).

I am a drama therapist. I rely on stories to make sense of their everyday experiences. This is my story of Saturdays.

As a drama therapist I spend my days taking care of others, holding their traumas, listening to their hopes and fear, finding ways to take care of my clients in the best way I can.  Sometimes I do better than others and sometimes I carry certain clients with me.  These are the clients that tend to show up on Saturdays.

As I make my early morning cup of coffee, one pops up.  As I take my dog for her first walk of the day, another one takes a moment to remind me that they are still there.  I tried for a while as a new therapist to let them all go at the end of the day, but I have found that for me, that just does not work.  There are many different theories on this experience.  Some say to empty yourself out when you leave work, to leave your clients at work because bringing them home has the potential to cause your own vicarious trauma. Others believe that to keep part of your clients with you is healthy and in fact an ethical practice. That you are holding them in a way that they need to be held, kept in mind, in a way no one else is able to do.  I haven’t figured out where I stand yet, but I know that I respect the countertransferential feeling I have and work on maintaining ethical distance and boundaries in all aspects of my work.  What that actually means for myself I am trying to figure out.

I work with a traumatized population of children who have experienced domestic violence, as well as their non-offending parent. Traumatic events call into question basic human relationships. They breach the attachments of family, friendship, love, and community. The work I do consists of trying to restore the control many individuals lose when they experience violence first hand.

On Saturdays my relationships are called into question; I take them out, I look at them, and mediate on them.  This is how I try and approach my mind when my clients pop up. They pop up, I acknowledge the thought, and then I let the thought move on. 

Pema Chodron asks, “ If someone on the other side of the world is hurting, will it help them if someone cares?”  I tend to think it does. When my clients pop up, it reminds me that I have an important job that I am blessed to do.  I do believe it helps if I care about my clients on Saturdays.

But then there are the Saturdays where I freeze.  Trauma has the tendency to do that; it has a tendency to throw a wrench in everything, and on those Saturdays I end up sitting on the couch the entire day with a book in my hand crossing not one thing off of my list of things to do. I sit with my frozen self and have no thoughts. Trauma can freeze people, it can overwhelm the ordinary system of care that gives people a sense of control, connection, and meaning (Herman, 1992).

But this is the work.  This is trauma.  So I will take these Saturdays for whatever they bring me and be thankful that I get to spend my time with myself, my family, and from time to time, those clients that drop by my mind to say hello and remind me why I do what I do. 

References

Chodron, P. (2010).  The places that scare you. Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc. 

Herman, J.L. (1992). Trauma and Recovery, the aftermath of violence, from domestic abuse to political terror. New York: Basic Books