Danilopoulos, D. (2020) Trust overrides fear: Equine-assisted narrative practice Metalogos, Systemic Therapy Journal, issue 36.
This article describes the personal path that led the author to include
ideas from narrative therapy, interpersonal neurobiology, and therapeutic riding in his current voluntary work with equine-assisted narrative practice. Concepts and practices are presented by linking theoretical perspectives with people’s personal reflections and observed changes in behaviour and relationships with horses. Descriptions are provided for both conversations and non-verbal interactions that aim at promoting connections with security and trust as well as emotionally and positive and empowering experiences for the people and horses involved. Through moments of unique outcomes, invisible, untold stories are revealed and documented (in verbal and non-verbal ways) to facilitate preferred changes.
Danilopoulos, D. (2016) The Shame and the kikipos. Metalogos, Systemic Therapy Journal, issue 30.
This article is about the therapeutic collaboration with a child who due to Shame was prevented from talking while at school and to strangers. By adopting a decentred, though influential and “not knowing” expert position, the therapist tried to facilitate the re-authoring of the child’s and her family’s life and relationships. Through the narrative practices of the externalization of the Shame and the deconstruction of the factors that underpin the problem and its influences, the alternative story emerges out of the problem’s known, visible and “dominant story” (White & Epston, 1990, p. 40; Morgan, 2000, p. 7). This story is alternative because until the beginning of the partnership it had been fragmentary and invisible (in comparison to the dominant story) while in the course of therapy became coherent, rich and the preferable one. This story talks about resistance to Shame and about offering help to other children through games and tales. The therapeutic collaboration was informed and adapted accordingly to the mother’s and child’s feedback as far as the process and outcome is concerned.
Danilopoulos, D. (2011) Rooftop dreams: Steps during a rite of passage from a life dominated by the effects of drugs and abuse to a ‘safe and full of care’ life.The International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work, (2), 40-50
Told through the perspectives of his private practice work, and as a student in a graduate narrative therapy course, this article traces the author’s incorporation of narrative ideas and practice in working with issues of drugs and abuse with a young man in Greece.
By drawing on the narrative ideas of the migration of identity, and the absent but implicit, and employing the practices of outsider-witness conversations and therapeutic documents, the author assisted the young man to renegotiate his relationship not only with drugs and abuse, but also with his grandmother, and create a space for new directions in life.
