{"title":"Dark days and vomit","authors":"Joanne Hipplewith","doi":"10.28963/6.1.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.28963/6.1.12","url":null,"abstract":"Exegesis\u0000The spoken word piece that follows is from a “withness” sense of us all having mental health, not just those we work with. It is raw, disturbing and provocative. A living assemblage of words, rhythms, sounds, beats, feelings and thoughts that stir. A jigsaw of personal and professional contextual living in and habitation of different and similar landscapes, hxstories and environments. This piece resonates with the near and far, steps and breaths, in settings, books, home and abroad. Relational contexts are performed from inside/outside and outside/inside knowledges. The poem was written in one sitting late in 2022. The rawness of the grammar in places and words combine and create this piece in which a rhythm is created on living substances, a heartbeat, a drum, an urge and whispers.","PeriodicalId":422770,"journal":{"name":"Murmurations: Journal of Transformative Systemic Practice","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129443346","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On being a therapist, a tutor, a researcher and just another community member","authors":"G. Simon","doi":"10.28963/6.1.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.28963/6.1.3","url":null,"abstract":"Writings from 2007\u0000In 2007, I had “one of those years”. Many dreadful things happened. I hear myself think, “It could have been worse”. Nevertheless, it was a challenging year for me. And doing work which is all about supporting others with their struggles, their work, their learning was sometimes tough, frequently moving. I was aware of how I was drawing on the experiences of clients and trainees and other people I had met who had faced serious illness or death. Despite my commitment to limit imbalance of power in therapy, the experience of loss and illness created a sense of levelling that I had not anticipated. I chose to “come out” from behind that generic version of me as therapist, trainer, researcher and reveal more to people than I was used to. I’m not entirely sure how much I made a choice to do that but I did try to manage things in a professional manner. Whatever that means.\u0000Four particular conversational clusters stood out for me that took place during that year. I wrote them at the time but I see that I have written them in the past tense. I think I needed to. Put them in the past. I was, in some ways, still in shock so writing in the past tense helped me create a timeline to locate me in another time zone known as The Present. It was a better place to be and one from which I could create another perspective.","PeriodicalId":422770,"journal":{"name":"Murmurations: Journal of Transformative Systemic Practice","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128506776","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Being and becoming","authors":"Smaro Markou","doi":"10.28963/6.1.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.28963/6.1.5","url":null,"abstract":"This paper is a personal testimony, a short account of my experience of suffering from the side effects of covid-19 on underlying heart disease. Writing from within moments of pain and agony, I unfold my inner journey to the void and back. Reflecting on that journey I offer my thoughts, born upon my contact with therapists, doctors, and nurses in the hospitals where I was treated, and my inner dialogue with the voices of many people who have nourished my thinking and practice all these years. Traveling through the unknown conditions of my illness and recovery, who I am and who I am becoming personally and professionally, have been in constant movement and intra-action. From this place I offer some reflections on identity, power and on being a therapist.","PeriodicalId":422770,"journal":{"name":"Murmurations: Journal of Transformative Systemic Practice","volume":"236 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114188737","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Getting On With Pain","authors":"J. McCarthy","doi":"10.28963/6.1.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.28963/6.1.6","url":null,"abstract":"This paper provided the welcome opportunity to write about how I have come to understand and relate to chronic pain. My systemic psychotherapy training and interest in Narrative Practice has strongly influenced my conceptualisation of pain. I have found this useful in my experience of living with chronic pain. I hope the reader is invited to reflect on the many dimensions of pain and illness and the multitude of possibilities for understanding and relating to it. I experience pain as a very significant aspect of my life and my relationships including therapeutic relationships. For this reason, I believe it is important to talk about the therapist’s illness and health conditions in the same way that other aspects of human experiences are talked about.","PeriodicalId":422770,"journal":{"name":"Murmurations: Journal of Transformative Systemic Practice","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114962647","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“If Pain Could Speak, What Would It Say?” Re-lational Inter/Intra-rogation of sickle cell disease: A Poetic (Inquiry) Insight.","authors":"Peace Anumah","doi":"10.28963/6.1.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.28963/6.1.8","url":null,"abstract":"If pain could speak, what would it say? If it could have a form, what would it look like? \u0000I start with these questions to illustrate the line of inquiry I am reframing as insight. The insights come from a conversation with a therapist warrior battling sickle cell disease (SCD). I use the language of therapist warrior for multiple reasons. To protect the anonymity of my conversational partner; to obscure her name but not her identity or infinite resourcefulness; to work with an archetype in a way that is congruent with the model of engagement I use within our conversations - Internal Family Systems (IFS), (Schwartz, 2013). \u0000I work with this model in my therapy practice. I draw on it in this paper to highlight the transformational power of externalising the pain experienced by the therapist I am conversing with. I will offer an overview of the model and an overview of the new language I am introducing in relation to methodology. \u0000IFS offers a different lens through which to view pain. Pain can be externalised as a “part”, no longer within the individual. This helps to empower the individual and their experience of pain. \u0000In this paper, I seek to highlight the resilience of the therapist I am conversing with and raise awareness of sickle cell disease. The paper actively examines the oppression and racialisation experienced by individuals with SCD from within the health care system. Care is contested. \u0000I use “re-lational inter-rogation/intra-rogation”, a methodology I am developing, to examine this. This way of engaging with conversational material highlights the importance of intentionally exploring relational changes after every re-connection or newfound acceptance between and within a group and connecting those insights with wider political forces. \u0000I use my embodied reflexivity for witnessing the impact, experiences, and happenings that occur during and after our dialogue. I illuminate my conversational partner’s resilience within the wider discourse of racialisation and marginalisation. \u0000Poems are transcribed from the conversation to add to the quality and aesthetics of the paper for the readers, as well as a reflexive process for me during and after my conversation with the therapist warrior. Poetry has a long history as a counter-narrative to the status quo and can be viewed as a decolonial, political act (van Rooyen and d’Abdon, 2020).","PeriodicalId":422770,"journal":{"name":"Murmurations: Journal of Transformative Systemic Practice","volume":"71 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132568753","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Failing health. Exploring tensions.","authors":"L. Salter","doi":"10.28963/6.1.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.28963/6.1.4","url":null,"abstract":"Recently I was invited to write a short paper for Context magazine, a magazine for Family Therapy and Systemic Practice in the UK. It is a themed edition, due to be published in the summer of 2023, edited by Joanne Hipplewith who generated the theme of “Failing, to do better” (Context, 187). For me the title speaks to the idea that there is a tension to explore within failure; the tension of present pain and future opportunity that the inclusion of the comma brings into view.\u0000I wrote about experiencing the theme as a writing prompt and used the opportunity to reflect on times I have experienced failure in academic contexts and to reflect on the process of writing for publication. For many this can invite anxiety around failure and provoke fear of “getting it wrong”. I explored also the tension between the pain of failure and the hope of learning something useful from the experience (Salter, 2023).\u0000A sub-theme emerged in my writing linked to current health status and the recent loss of my father who died from cancer in September 2022. I suppose I was reminded of the invitation to see ill health and end of life as a failure of some kind, that I had been failing in terms of my own health and that my father ultimately had failed to survive cancer. But there were opportunities, even here. My father and I found a way to live with (and for me, live through and beyond) the health challenges we faced and we were able to create space in our relationship to honour each other’s challenges. This was new territory. A new tension.","PeriodicalId":422770,"journal":{"name":"Murmurations: Journal of Transformative Systemic Practice","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121937426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Inching forward, lunging back. A duoethnographic poetic inquiry into practitioner experiences of health and ill health","authors":"Julia Evans, L. Salter","doi":"10.28963/6.1.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.28963/6.1.9","url":null,"abstract":"This contribution is, in essence, a collection of poems that the two authors wrote over a period of four weeks. The temporal element is interesting. It speaks to a commitment to “go on” (Wittgenstein, 1953) at a time of illness and recovery.\u0000Duoethnography, as collaborative activity, invites new meaning by layering what could be seen as separate narratives and creating a dialogue between the evolving stories. This enables new meaning to evolve and intertwine. Undertaking an inquiry through poetry was an important decision. The intention being to provoke and promote creativity, to generate feelings of wellbeing at a time of depleted energy. Writing to and with each other was both an act of generosity and an act of self-preservation. Mutual support, maybe one way to frame it, but it was also outward looking, connecting with how we practice as therapists, how we are in the world, the causes we care about, all part of the awkward dance of living with health challenges.\u0000The poems provide their own context in a way but we have wrapped prose around the main body of the paper which is written in stanza. We feel the poetry offers a window into individual, seemingly separate experiences of ill health and a developing shared narrative of “going on”. Through the writing process, it has become clear that the poetry benefitted from the scaffolding of prose, to give the reader greater insight into the structure and sense making process.\u0000The language of inquiry speaks to what we learnt/are learning about ourselves through the process, rather than describing a research project with particular anticipated outcomes. The reflections are contained within the poems and expressed through limited words but expansive feeling.\u0000Poetic inquiry aims to humanise research with an emphasis on lived experience and researcher reflexivity. In this case the researchers and their research material could be seen as one and the same thing, an “entanglement of matter and meaning” (Barad, 2007, p. 1). But they might also be seen as separated by time and space. Since writing the pieces, new\u0000space has developed between illness and life unfolding, life that includes our practices as therapists. And new space has developed between the feelings we experienced at the time, the words we chose to convey them and how we feel now, looking back. Time and space may offer differing lenses, but maybe not.\u0000The paper as a whole is an example of writing from within lived experience, written in poetic form. The form supported the authors to write their way through illness and into new territory of living with and beyond life impacting health conditions.","PeriodicalId":422770,"journal":{"name":"Murmurations: Journal of Transformative Systemic Practice","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127825198","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Marilena Karamatsouki, Joanna Michopoulou, L. Salter
{"title":"Editorial: Systemic practitioners living with illness and health conditions","authors":"Marilena Karamatsouki, Joanna Michopoulou, L. Salter","doi":"10.28963/6.1.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.28963/6.1.1","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":422770,"journal":{"name":"Murmurations: Journal of Transformative Systemic Practice","volume":"2022 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121619456","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Burning Bright, Not Out! Therapist Well-Being in the Face of What We Face","authors":"Catherine Richardson/Kinewesquao","doi":"10.28963/6.1.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.28963/6.1.7","url":null,"abstract":"At a recent conference in Lyon, an American researcher declared that we are all traumatised, all of us including counsellors, clients, workers, lawyers, activists. I was taken aback thinking, “wait a moment!” I am not willing to believe that, in the face of struggle and adversity, we are all mentally ill. Counsellors/therapists form part of a community circle responding to violence, harm, betrayal, grief and heartbreak. We are often inspired by our clients, their survivance, their resistance and the ways they signal injustice. The academic presenter was likely influenced by theories of compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma - ideas that accuse our clients of hurting us. I wonder to what extent these theories hurt us or get us thinking in ways that are individualising and unhelpful. ","PeriodicalId":422770,"journal":{"name":"Murmurations: Journal of Transformative Systemic Practice","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131377115","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"Do I look pale?\" A therapist's life-changing journey","authors":"Marilena Karamatsouki","doi":"10.28963/6.1.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.28963/6.1.2","url":null,"abstract":"The subject of therapists facing an illness or living with a health condition that impacts their practice hasn’t been addressed much. In my research I confirmed what I have been noticing in my practice as a systemic therapist: the relational space within myself, my thoughts, emotions, memories and embodied reactions, interconnects with the relational space between client and therapist. My inner voices, what I experience, feel and think (Rober, 2010) affect the way I connect to my clients. This means that when I am fully present with my various selves in the therapy room, more of the client is in there too. Therefore, when I was diagnosed with cancer, I chose to disclose my illness to my clients. In this paper, I discuss my experience with cancer, the way it had an impact on my practice and how I found a way to include the relational space within myself facing an illness in the therapy room. The story that is included in the paper is a story from within practice that appears in my doctoral thesis (Karamatsouki, 2020).","PeriodicalId":422770,"journal":{"name":"Murmurations: Journal of Transformative Systemic Practice","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128050754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}