Listening to the Untold Stories

Stories via Greenbookblog

As a therapist, I listen to the untold story. I am the midwife to a narrative that needs to be constructed, told or infused with compassion and new meaning. The loss of the ability to make meaning is crippling. Therapy not only touches the lives of our clients but also transforms the experience of the therapist. It is a cliché to say our clients are our teachers, although it is a truth. How a therapist lives life has everything to do with the capacities of a therapist. I have had the opportunity to train and mentor many therapists. I want to say “live life more fully and your work will follow.’ So therapy changes lives and life changes us. My writing is about moments that have changed my life and lives I have had the privilege to touch. It is also about the spaces in-between where meanings emerge.

Image Via KPLU

Traumas are often wordless. I learned that words were a gift. If you were allowed to name it, describe it, teach it, you could master it or at least tame it. When it remains wordless, the horror and shame takes over and limits people lives and potential.

Image Via Woodbridge

The walls of the counseling room are constraining, although filled with people’s truths and confidences. The moments are profound, yet secretive and private. The lessons, I believe, need to be shared integrated back into community. Words give voice. Abuse silences. My willingness to companion my clients as they face the sometimes-unimaginable horrors changed me. So my work is about moving from wordlessness to words and making meaning out of the traumatic and the ordinary.


- Laurie Kahn, MA, MFA, LCPC


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Event: A Guide to the Treatment of Complex Traumatic Stress Disorders

Trauma Informed: A Guide to the Treatment of Complex Traumatic Stress Disorders

Date: Friday, May 23rd, 2014

Time: 9:00am - 4:00pm

Credit: 6 CEUs. Womencare Counseling Center is approved by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation to provide Continuing Education Units to social workers (LSW/ LCSW), professional counselors (LPC, LCPC) and Marriage and Family Therapists (LMFT).

Location: Hilton Garden Inn, 1818 Maple Avenue, Evanston IL

Register: online, by phone at 847-491-0530, or by mail with this form.

About this workshop:

Complex Posttraumatic Stress is often the consequence of prolonged and repeated interpersonal trauma which has occurred during the developmentally vulnerable time of childhood. Most often these events involve abuse and/or neglect by primary caretakers.

We will describe the tri-phasic model of treatment and the special considerations for dissociative disorders, including challenges to sustaining the therapeutic alliance, creating safety, establishing affect regulation, stabilization, and the integration of traumatic experience.

This workshop is designed for mental health professionals who want to learn how to better provide treatment for some of our most injured populations. It is appropriate both for therapists new to the field and those more experienced frontline professionals who want to deepen their work by understanding the impact and treatment of Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorders.


This workshop will address:

• The special challenges for clinicians in sustaining a therapeutic relationship with those who have survived ongoing childhood abuse or neglect.
• The phases of treatment and the corresponding tasks in each phase.
• Both the psycho-physiological impact of abuse and neglect and the relational implications.
• Helping traumatized clients learn to restore feelings as signals that promote effective problem solving.
• Engaging clients in a self-reflective process about ­previously disowned aspects of traumatic experience.
• The function and creation of dissociative defenses.

Ubuntu - The Meaning And Power of Groups

This is a story from Laurie Kahn’s introduction to our conference about the meaning and power of groups. 

In 1998, when I visited trauma clinics in South Africa, I met Craig, a psychologist in South Africa. Craig was assigned to meet with a group of women who had lost their homes.

Many of the women had also lost their sons in the struggle to end apartheid. Craig hoped he could be a vehicle for healing for these women. He hoped he could help them with their grief. 

“How can I help?”  Craig asked.   

“We want tools for a garden,” the women responded. 

“But, I am a psychologist.” 

“That’s nice," the women said, “we need tools for a garden.”

I don't know anything about gardening, Craig thought.  But, Craig found a way to round up some tools for the women of this township to till a garden.

In the heat of the day, the women gathered together to create a garden. With sweat on their brows, they dug in the earth, they told their stories, they cried together, they sang danced and planted food for their families. 

They had no interest in talking to one person; they had no interest in being away from the land or to be inside behind a closed door. What they needed to heal was each other and a shovel in their hands.

The central spiritual belief of South Africans I learned is embodied in the word ‘Ubuntu.’  Ubuntu is the essence of being human. It speaks about interconnectedness. “You can't be human all by yourself,” Bishop TUTU was fond of saying.

-Laurie Kahn, MA, MFA, LCPC

Image Credits: Image One, Image Two