Your Role: Systemic Psychotherapist and trainer

Your connection to the course: Former course tutor

Hafan ddiogel – ‘safe haven’ in Welsh.

As I reflect on the Derby Systemic courses my overwhelming  sense is that they have offered a  “safe haven” for learning and development for us all, whether we have come to the course as  student or trainer. It is often the case that in our more  mature years we approach learning with trepidation or as described by our much missed colleague Barry Mason “unsafe uncertainty” (1993)  with all the associated feelings of the need to be defended and “unsafe certainty”.

Our earlier experiences of teaching and learning were mostly shaped by more traditional individualistic, didactic,  ways of approaching knowledge, disconnected from our lived experiences and relationships.

The courses have provided a place to re-examine our prejudices and assumptions about learning and life, enabling us to take the risk to shed the restricting skins of our “safe certain” ideas in order to move to a place of creativity and “safe uncertainty”.

Learning is something that takes place by interacting with other people and the world around us.

The courses have encouraged us to teach and learn in ways that are relational, creative and connected to our own contexts and lived realities and to the lives of those with whom we work.

The courses have been especially rich in the theory and practice opportunities delivered to explore self and relational reflexivity.

Benjamin Franklin once said:

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”

This rigorous emphasis on skills, practice and on making theory-practice links has been an invaluable strength of the courses; creating and ever moving, shifting, dancing back and forth between the two.

One of the most important aspects of this learning space has been its use of humour. I thank Gary Robinson for his use of “serious play”  to create space in which we could make mistakes and to learn without feeling condemned.

“He who laughs most learns best.”

–  John Cleese.

So here’s a toast to these fantastic courses; and the trainers and students who made them so very rich.

Julie