Dr Kate is now on Instagram.   
Follow her and share connections at: 
 

# drkatehudgins.com

or
#therapeuticspiralmodel  
 

Dear friends,
I am enjoying the visual aspect of sharing TSM and look forward to seeing many of you there on Instagram.   Look, too, for our new, updated website in the next two months--I will be starting a blog and the site will be easier to navigate and to interact with others in our like-minded community.  

I am very excited to be co-leading the workshop, Inheriting Zerka's Wisdom, with Dr NienHwa Lai, Ph.D. from Taiwan, to celebrate Zerka's 100th birthday in Xiamen, China on June 16-18.  A special thanks to Professors Zhao Bingjie and Sang for helping host the workshop through Hua Qiao University and the Chinese Psychodrama Association.   See our calendar for details in English and Chinese! 

We invite you to join our East Coast group in May, July and August in Media, PA where we continue to build Action Healing Teams with Scott Giacomucci, Lori Budman, Steven Durost, and others!  Steven and Scott have now received their TSI TAE certifications.  Congrats also to Linda Ciotola, M.Ed., TEP for doing such a great job for the group in March on the Brain and Body Double. Thanks to Francesca for presenting the TSIRA at the Philadelphia Collective and for teaching the Four Roles of the Director next week in Media.  This is an alive and thriving TSI group with visiting trainers and great teams growing!  

On the West Coast, watch for a date from Sylvia Israel, LMFT, BCT, TEP who will be leading a TSI personal growth workshop in San Rafael this fall.  Join Vlada Zaposotsky, MA, PAT as she continue to develop her TSM inspired workshop Finding Your Way Home.  Good luck to Gregory Burns, LMFT, TAE out there in the Bay Area as he too starts his own workshop on The False Gods of Shame.  

Happy spring and hope to see you at the ASGPP conference in Clearwater, Florida.

Love to all,
Kate



     Remembering Zerka

When Zerka moved from her cottage in Charlottesville to the nursing home in Maryland, it cut the mileage between us in half, making it possible for me to make monthly visits.  Although I had been to her C'ville workshops on several occasions, her transition to the nursing home allowed our role relationship to shift from teacher-student into a growing friendship.  This occurred even though we are a generation apart--she called me her "psychodrama baby," even as my birthdays marched toward 70.

Ever the interested being, Zerka inquired about the details of my psychodramatic work -- training groups, workshops, conference presentations, articles, and especially a new project ACTS, which is an online "Orientation to Psychodrama" in collaboration with psychotherapist and author, Nancy Alexander.  Zerka asked about the specific details of online teaching and proudly pointed out that J.L., as a sociometrist, created the launch pad for social media.

Nancy had accompanied me on a visit to Zerka's in C'Ville a few years earlier with the specific goal of meeting Zerka in person.  At that visit, we described  our partnership in working with Nancy's psychotherapy patients who had been diagnosed with severe, complex PTSD, and often with DID. As a TSI Team Leader at that time, I had introduced the possibility of adapting the TSM model to private dramas for Nancy's individual clients.  Zerka was interested in details of this process and pointed out that it exemplified The Canon of Creativity, just as TSM had been created from the foundations of psychodrama.  Keenly interested in case studies and in the progress of the protagonists and team, Zerka was delighted to hear of the protagonists' healing and that I earned my TSI trainer cert and that Nancy, Lisa and Connie earned their TSI TAE certs. 

Our visits, as friends, continued and Zerka was ever the enthusiast, proceeding to elaborate on the accomplishments of her grandchildren and beaming with pride.   She was pleased to learn that with my own younger grandchildren, I had adapted "the fairy grandmother" role - complete with costume, wings, and wand, as seen in the TSI newsletter interview from last year.  We shared many stories as grandmothers and she wondered aloud if she were lingering into her late 90's in order to witness the maturation of her grandchildren.

With subsequent visits, the conversation turned to more existential issues.  Zerka discussed the practical, emotional, and spiritual role transitions she was experiencing and even the psychodramatic one of moving from director to being her own double.  She became increasingly reflective about the meaning of life, alluding to many scenes from her memoirs, To Dream Again, while expressing her conviction that the work must continue to spread "like the seeds of Johnny Appleseed."  I listened deeply as Zerka shared her musings on life, death , and beyond.  I recall telling her that in my view, and in the view of many others, she was leaving "a legacy of love."

With each visit, I saw evidence from cards and books she had received, in many languages, and, from Zerka's own reports, that she continued to touch lives across the globe from the confines of one small room at the nursing home.  I shared with Zerka my own interest in developing the "wise elder" role and looked to her as the ideal role model.  "I want more young people to be exposed to the power of psychodrama and learn how to use it.  Thanks to Nancy and the ACTS team, I hope that a wider audience will be exposed via the internet and warm up to locating and participating in an on-going training group," I told her.  She nodded, smiled, and I can only hope she was pleased--and satisfied that her dream continues.

I was honored to be a member of the ASGPP "Zerka Legacy Committee," making recommendations of ways to honor and celebrate her life and work. And I decided that, as part of my own personal tribute to Zerka, I would present a workshop at the ASGPP conference in May 21017 on Navigating the Role of the  Wise Elder.  I have no doubt that Zerka's wise and loving presence will be there and I hope you will, too.

My heart is filled with love and gratitude at having known this remarkable woman.
Linda Ciatola

 
   U pdate: East Coast Training Workshop  
      
As the March winds struggled between winter and spring, TSM team Linda Ciotola (TEP),  Scott Giacomucci (AL), and Steven Durost (TAE) came to Media,  PA to facilitate the TSI training workshop, Trauma , The Brain and the Body. 
 
Beginning with classic TSM safety structures, the workshop focused on the neuroscience of what happens in the brain during trauma (compared to times of safety).  There was also practice using the Body Double (BD), one of the TSM containment roles, to help keep the protagonist in "The Window of  Tolerance."
        The weekend workshop also included TSM dramas of strengths (restoration and renewal), trauma repair, and transformation.  The art project used Soul Maps to concretize and express how strengths, trauma roles, and roles of transformation are held in the body, and music and movement.
     The workshop was punctuated with "pop up teaching moments," showing the evolution of TSM from classical psychodrama, the TSIRA's roots in Moreno's role theory and developmental theory, and much more. 
     Following his exquisitely attuned role creating, Steven Durost received his TSI TAE certificate.  It was a special moment for Linda and Steven who met at Zerka's and who are both recipients of the Zerka Moreno award.
                  

The group celebrated the birthday of psychodrama that same weekend! 
 
 
 
TSI Workshops 2017

On May 19th - 21st, Kate brings back a powerful Level 1 Training workshop, Transforming the Trauma Triangle .  TSM's Trauma Triangle represents a closed circuit of energy embedded in the personality structure of persons who have survived cruelty or trauma, repeating itself as life-long  pattern s of abuse and neglect.  Join us for this workshop and you'll gain a deeper
understanding of the personality and neurobiological structure of PTSD and learn to TSM's Prescriptive Roles and Safety Structures into your repertoire.  Scott Giacomucci is TSM Assistant Leader and registrar.
 





Can anyone look at this image and not commiserate with the intense pain
that yields this kind of grief? 

Well, this July 14-16th, Dr Kate will again open her home in Charlottesville to the Women's Salon and the topic is to address the deep grief that follows trauma.  However, it is not to just look at this grief, but to see how it might act as a defense that   is no longer useful.  The goal of this Salon is to access the resiliency that is behind the grief and to move forward.  
Please contact Dr Kate with any questions and to register for this Salon.




Those who have been part of the TSI/TSM family for years will recognize the image to the right.  It is the one we used since the early 90's for our personal growth and healing workshops from the effects of trauma.  Kate brings back a Surviving Spirits workshop, this time with a focus on addictions: Surviving Spirits: Healing Trauma and Addiction , July 28th - 30th, in Media, PA.   This workshop focuses on building the spontaneity and creativity needed to face trauma and daily life without the veil of addictions, including eating disorders.  Scott Giacomucci is TSI Assistant Leader and registrar.

 
    
Yes, we are connected!!!  Monica Forst returns to join Kate in an East Coast Training workshop on August 4th -6th, in Media, PA: Directing Intensive: Attachment & Trauma.  
In this workshop, Kate and Monica bring in the latest research of the neurobiology of trauma and how it relates to that of attachment theory.  Participants learn in action to identify their preferred attachment style and, using the TSM modality, to move toward a more secure self-attachment to feel safer in the world.  Personal work and practice of directing skills and team roles all combine for a powerful weekend training.




In November 2017, TSI is happy to bring to the East Coast a Level I I training workshop:   The Dance of Transference & Countertransference in Trauma Work   .  Participants learn to identify their own countertransference and defenses that get triggered; regain their Appropriate Authority; mirror clients' transferences, and learn the 'asocial response' and other action methods that interrupt and diffuse the negative cycles.  

This is a stand-alone workshop, or part of TSI's certification training, for all psychotherapists who work with trauma.  Scott Giacomucci is TSI Assistant Leader and registrar for the workshop.  

    


We hope to see you soon at one of our workshops.  You may also visit our website calendar for the latest, updated information on these workshops and other happenings at TSI.

For  more information about our Trainers and Team Leaders and on becoming a TSI Trainer and Team member, please visit our  website , where you will find an updated tab for TSI Certification.

Thank you,

Francesca Toscani
for the TSI Family