The Greene Clinic is excited to be hosting Jeannie Bass and Claire Bien for a Hearing Voices Network Facilitator Training. Details are below, including registration information which can be found here.
14 CEs, for 14 hours of training, are available for New York State psychologists, social workers, licensed mental health counselors and psychoanalysts.
Friday, July 12th, 9am – 4pm — Saturday, July 13th, 9am – 4pm.
✦ This event will be in-person and not recorded. Location will be at the Foundation for Community Psychoanalysis at 78 Livingston St. Brooklyn, NY 11201.
Attendance for CE credit will be limited to 10 attendees who register for both July 12th & July 13th, for a total of $250.
Should you be interested in attending but not for CE credit, there will be a very limited number of spots. Please email us at [email protected] and you will be put on a wait list, first come first serve.
Hearing Voices Network Facilitator Training with Jeannie Bass and Claire Bien
This training will provide participants with a solid understanding of the Hearing Voices Movement approach, including the history, basic assumptions, core beliefs, and key values of the Hearing Voices Network (HVN). The HVN embraces voice-hearing and other unique experiences as a valid part of the human experience, countering the often-held clinical view that such experiences are merely symptoms to be eradicated. Participants will explore common frameworks, strategies, and practices for working with voices and creative ways to engage with voice hearers, with specific attention to forming and holding HVN groups in clinical settings. Jeannie and Claire, the trainers, draw from many years of experience facilitating HVN groups in clinical and restricted settings. There will be an emphasis on how clinicians can maintain HVN’s human experience values while operating within clinical environments and supporting the acceptance, exploration and validation of voice-hearing experiences.
Participants will learn that voice hearers can develop mutually beneficial relationships with their voices through practices like voice diplomacy: exploring the nature and origins of voices, speaking with them, understanding their motivations, and negotiating the terms of the relationship. By validating rather than pathologizing the voice-hearing experience, voice hearers can move towards acceptance, shift power dynamics, reduce distress, discover the meaning behind their voices, and find community. Through immersive role-plays, creative exercises, and group discussions, participants will build empathy for the voice-hearing experience while acquiring facilitation skills. The process of creating and sustaining Hearing Voices groups that uphold the ethos of respect, equality and self-determination will also be covered.
Participants will receive certification as a Hearing Voices Network-USA group facilitator upon completion.
Jeannie Bass is a voice hearer & leader in the Hearing Voices Movement. Her passion lies in bringing the transformative Hearing Voices Network approach to clinical and locked settings. Jeannie works as the Director of Peer Support Services at a mixed psychiatric and forensic hospital in Massachusetts, where she has facilitated an HVN-USA support group since 2014. She is a long-time member of the HVN-USA Board of Directors. She co-founded the world’s first online Hearing Voices group in 2017 and has provided training on “psychosis” experiences in places like Guam. Jeannie’s story of embracing her voices and finding freedom through the Hearing Voices Movement was featured on NBC News in 2018.
Guided by the philosophy “And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music” (Friedrich Nietzsche), Jeannie is dedicated to validating the voice-hearing experience, exploring its meanings, and supporting those feeling stuck in a system that doesn’t understand them to learn to thrive while also living with “psychosis” – the core ethos driving her work.
Claire Bien, MEd, is a mental health advocate and educator, research associate at the Yale University Program for Recovery & Community Health, and author of a memoir: Hearing Voices, Living Fully: Living with the Voices in My Head. She is a member of the board of the Hearing Voices Network (HVN)-USA and is the immediate past president of the U.S. chapter of the International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis (ISPS-US). Claire started the HVN support group at Yale-New Haven Psychiatric Hospital in 2014 and has facilitated community-based and online support HVN support groups since 2017. Claire’s goal in doing this work is to help de-pathologize the voice-hearing experience and increase understanding that it is the social conditions of our lives that most profoundly affect people’s ability to live fully and with dignity in the world.