Welcome to the Continuing Education for Mental Health Professionals Podcast. Today we are hosting another CEU Provider Spotlight Conversation. This is where we learn more about CEU providers in our community and their journeys. My name is Natasha Moharter, and I'm a licensed counselor and OCD specialist. I run the Facebook group CE for Mental Health Professionals, and if you're a mental health professional, we'd love to have you join us in that space.

I I am so excited to be joined today by our very special guest, Karen Carnabucci. She's a trainer, psychotherapist, author and consultant in private practice in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and the founder of the Lancaster School of Psychodrama and Experiential Psychotherapies. She teaches psychotherapists, coaches, educators, and other helping and healing professionals how to create sessions and presentations that are enlivened with authentic human connection, spontaneity, creativity, and sensitivity. She's the author of Show and Tell Psychodrama Skills for Therapists, Coaches, Teachers and Leaders. And she's a co-author most recently assisting in the writing of Words of the Daughter, a memoir by Regina Moreno, the daughter of JL Moreno, the originator of Psychodrama, and Florence Bridge Moreno. In addition to her trainings for helping and healing professionals, she offers special interest groups on topics like writing for healers and the tarot journey in action, plus clinical supervision and consultation along with selling sand trade miniatures. She has particular interest in expanding creativity and spontaneity, and the use of embodiment as a way of deep learning and understanding and social change.

Karen, thank you so much for being here today. It is such an honor and a privilege to have you here with us.

Thank you. It's a great honor for me to be here.

So can you tell us about your background and what got you interested in becoming a CEU provider and content creator?

Yes. Well, I have been a therapist since 1989. Originally in a drug and alcohol rehab center, and then later in a hospital setting and then in other settings, and eventually went on in private practice. Even when I was working as a therapist, I was asked to join in team trainings and offer training information that I had. That was really important because it allowed me to see that people were really interested in understanding more about experiential therapy and how to do it and how do it safely. As I continued in my own work I gradually started offering more trainings and then eventually became board certified to be able to offer psychodrama training to the public. The public really being helping and healing professionals, educators, and so forth. So I am able to offer psychodrama credits for people who come to my trainings because of my board certification. And I should say there's two levels of certification. One is as a practitioner, where you are able to prove that you understand everything you need to know to practice. And then I have gone to the level of trainer in addition, where I prove that I have all the necessary information and qualities and skills to be able to train others in the method. And then I'm also, through the state of Pennsylvania, able to offer trainings to a number of helping professionals as well.

And for those of us who might not know as much about psychodrama, can you share a little bit more about what psychodrama is?

Yes, thank you. I love talking about it. Psychodrama is an action method developed by Dr. Moreno, a psychiatrist back in the early 20th century. He was interested in improvisational theater. He was also interested in mental illness. He was interested in culture and society, so he blended his interests of this improvisational theater to support people in exploring their lives through theatrical principles. His idea was to use it for anyone who wanted it or needed it. It has mostly landed in the clinical area of the world, psychotherapy, although educators use it, attorneys use it, organizational trainers use it. It's actually incredibly versatile. We could call it the parent of role play, although it's much more complicated and expansive, in theory and in practice, than what we consider role play today.

So it really does have the ability to be applied in several different settings.

Absolutely. There is a new book about psychodrama and education and how educators can use these methods to teach better. In recent years, three attorneys who were also trained in psychodrama, wrote a book about how to use it in the courtroom when telling the stories of their clients to the judge and to the jury.

And you mentioned that it is experiential.

It is highly experiential, yes.

Can you tell us a little bit about why you believe that experiential training is actually more effective than traditional lectures for mental health professionals?

There's a little quote and you might've heard a variation of it, but I think the essence is really good. The quote is, "Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I will learn." So many trainings depend on PowerPoint slides, lectures, maybe a worksheet, those kinds of things. And it's really easy, and I'll put myself in the category, real easy to not pay attention. When you're part of a group being talked to, being shown slides, when it's all words, when the words are going by really quickly, and you're doing your best to grab onto whatever you can grab onto. I have found personally that I have I always learn better when I am involved experientially in one way or another. I think that is true of most people. So a couple of things are really important. One is that the presenter or trainer is coming from an experiential stance and has tools to use. And the tools can be learned and practiced and integrated into the material, whatever the material may be. There is always, and I'm gonna use my finger here for this little visual cue here. In the best experiential learning, whatever the learning is, including psychotherapy, because psychotherapy is learning as well, there is warmup, there is an action piece where there is deep involvement. In the world of psychodrama, it could be a drama. In learning, it can be something else. And then there is what is called the integration, or the cool down, or what have you, where we look at integrating what we have been learning in here, in here, in our whole being, in our whole self. Too many times what we do, and I've done it too in the early days when I didn't know any better. You know, how many times have we been to a presenter or a lecture where the lecture person begins with a joke and that is supposed to be the icebreaker. When I teach, we take away that word icebreaker, and we use the word warmup instead. That we are warming up people to the topic in whatever way that may be. And we design questions or prompts or activities that support the people being drawn in, naturally drawn in with a certain kind of pacing to be ready to learn, to be available to learn.

We're here to go on a journey.

Yes, very nicely said. We are going on a journey together, so we're just not a bunch of people sitting in a room, but we come together. And that is the other very important piece is connection. That a connected group feels like a safe group. Where then I'll be able to ask questions. I'll be able to be involved. I'll be able to be present. I know that it's safe. I won't need to be looking around wondering who's who and what's what. We have particular ways of connecting group members in the world of psychodrama, which is a sibling method known as Sociometry. It's the parent of social networking. How do we get connected to each other? Something very simple that a presenter can do is, even in an auditorium style setting. Could you turn to your right and introduce yourself to the person to your right. Could you turn to the left? And there are other ways of creating activities, sometimes very simple activities to support people in getting connected, feeling safe, feeling comfortable.

You speak to the safety, that is required and that vulnerability that can be there, when we're learning or when we're opening ourselves up to learning something new. And so I could see where that connection and that warmup is really important to set the stage for what is happening.

Yes, and if I'm teaching about trauma, I'm going to be doing some different prompts than if I were teaching about play, or if I'm teaching about integrating sound, or the body, or somatic activities, I may ask some different prompts to allow the people to be there. Oh, and I forgot something else really important. I, as the presenter have to be warmed up to.

Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

I'll tell you the story that I often actually tell in group when I'm teaching. So in the olden days if I was heading for a training and I was stopped in traffic. I'd be looking at the clock on my dashboard. I'd be going, oh no, I'm late. Oh no, there's a red light. Oh no, there's a traffic jam. Oh no. I was being warmed up to worry. I was warming myself up to anxiety. That's not what I wanna warm myself up to as a teacher, as a presenter. So once I realized that I could start thinking, whether I was in a traffic jam or not, who's in my group? Who do I know that's coming back? And who might be new that I don't know yet? Or let's remind myself what I'm going to be teaching about today. Oh, I'm gonna be teaching about, sandtray. What is one of my very favorite stories I can tell about sandtray, or let me remind myself of the warmup that I'm gonna use to get people involved. So I am getting my mind, body, spirit ready to walk in that door and be present. So I can move right into the reason I'm there.

I could imagine that you approach the training very differently in those two different mindsets.

Yes, absolutely. Because in the second one, I'm ready to go and I'm excited about being there. In the first one, I'm totally focused on something that has nothing to do with the training actually at all. And in fact, if I keep focusing on it. I will bring my anxiety to the training.

I think it's so important to think about how we show up as the trainers as well. Are there other things that you have to do or that you find are really important when you engage in those experiential trainings for yourself?

Well, continuing the idea of the warmup, I make sure that I'm prepared. Some of that is just nuts and bolts kinds of things. Like, what am I bringing? Because I am experientially working. I may bring props, like scarves or mats or pillows or cards or something else. So I'm making sure that early on I am collecting all my things to be ready on a physical level. And then I'm also making sure that I am planning ahead. I guess I'll call it an outline, but I am planning what I am going to be teaching and how I'm going to be teaching it. So I also ask myself the question, what am I teaching today? What's the key element that I wanna impart today? And then what is the root or roots that I use to get there? So what am I teaching becomes really important. I warm myself up and then I find out how to warm other people up too.

I think that's so incredible too because as an experiential trainer, my guess is that so much actually develops out of the group connection, out of the conversations, out of the activity that is taking place. But you have to do work to set the stage.

Yes, it's, it's interactive. I absolutely have points that I want to teach and theory, information, et cetera, that I want to impart, but at the same time, I wanna meet the group's needs. As they are, as they arrive, as they let me know who they are and what they need. And sometimes people want personal growth in addition to the teaching of the clinical information, right? So yes, I'm looking to integrate on a lot of different levels. And the very best trainings, when they go really well, and integrating many levels.

If professionals wanted to engage in experiential trainings, what would you say that they could do to move away from slide based lectures, to incorporate more interactive learning?

Well, here's where their own training comes in. So the professional who is perhaps wanting to train about early motherhood issues or trauma or, ADD, whatever their specialty is, whatever they're really good at, that they've been trained in. They may have years of experience in, I would say getting training in interactive work like psychodrama. Which talks about the warmup action sharing, which we call the Hollander Curve in the field, and other sociometric exercises like the spectrogram, the logogram, various kinds of role play, to get actual psychodrama training, which they can find both online and in person in their area. People don't have to get certified, but some good solid training will give them lots of ideas on how to convert what they know from a head place to bring it into action and experience.

So along those same lines, how do you adapt experiential learning for an online format while keeping it interactive and engaging?

Yes. Well, I learned how to do this in March 2020.

Oh, so real.

And I actually became fairly good at it. So a key piece of online training is that we, again, want to interact with our group or our audience, and we of course have to look how to do that from You're over there and I'm over here, and how do I become more than just a talking head or here's my screen. How do I interact with you? And the people you're with. So there's lots of ways of doing it. Some of them, by the way, are really simple. Perhaps you are here with me with a group. Maybe it's a group of 10 or so. And, one of the things I do is I toss something your way. Here's a magic ball. Would you catch it?

I've caught it.

Yes. And could you just play with it for a minute?

Yes.

And be with it and tell me what it might be, what it might turn into for you.

It kind of almost feels almost like a balloon in some ways.

So we're being a little playful. You're introducing yourself. Yeah. And you might even say your name and then I might ask you to throw the magic ball to someone else in the group.

Oh, how interesting. Yes. Okay.

Right. And then you pick someone and you toss it their way, or maybe you just toss it generally and see who catches it and they, because it's magic, they find out what it is too.

Yes.

So now people are more involved than just sitting, staring at the screen where I, Karen, the instructor has got to produce. Right?

Yes.

But everybody is now involved, connected, and of course, maybe you now have a special relationship with that person that you wanted to hear from, you know? Right. Or maybe I could just say, and Natasha, who would you like to hear from next?

Absolutely.

Right. And then you develop a connection with that person. Or maybe I wanted to say, Natasha, I am looking at your screen. And I am really interested in that globe that you have there at the top of your shelf. It kind of looks like an old fashioned globe, and maybe it is and maybe it isn't. But you could tell me about your relationship to that globe. Right.

I love that it really is kind of getting into the space with each other, not just having to be on the screen, but it's really involving the environment. That's what I'm feeling. Even when you toss me the ball when I'm like, oh yeah, that globe my mom had in her office and now it's in my office.

Yeah! So then we start learning a little bit about you, right?

Yes.

And you start being involved and then other people start and it doesn't have to be a long involved thing. We have teaching to do, but it just allows us to know a little bit about you, call you in, let you speak about something you know a lot about. Right. Maybe take a little risk. Oh, this seems like a balloon, right? In a larger group, I might say something like, pick an object on your desk or in your immediate surroundings that's meaningful to you. And if it's a large group and if we went around, it would take way too much time. I might put you in a breakout room with, you know, two other people or one other person. So you get acquainted. Or it could be also why you're here. 'Cause remember, I'm warming you up to the subject I'm about to teach, right? So maybe I'm teaching a course on tarot cards, right? So maybe I might have you pick a tarot card and share it in your small group about here's the image, here's what it means to me. Or maybe, I ask you to pick an object from your desk and how it might relate to the goal that you have today in coming to learn at the seminar. Well, here's my object. You know, I like to store things. I'm just kind of making that up in the moment, right? Um, which even more specifically warms us up to why am I here today? What do I wanna learn? But also gets people acquainted at the same time.

I think it's so neat because it really brings in a personal aspect to it. We allow it to unfold in the ways that are most meaningful to the people that are present. That can be intimidating as a trainer at times to kind of see like, okay, what unexpected things might be brought into the training today. I wonder sometimes if we're just kind of used to the slide presentations as a way of sharing, but psychodrama and this experiential aspect is really about, bringing you as a trainer into this, your background, your interests, as well as your training and expertise, and creating that safe space where people can really come together and learn it and implement it and take something away from it, whatever that is.

Yes. And I would say bringing me and my creativity because it's a chance for me to be creative and there are still structures and standards and theories to use. I get to be creative and I think that supports other people in being creative as well, because you know when we're working with our client people, everyone is different. We have to be creative, we have to exercise that muscle to be creative because every client, I call them client people because I don't like the word client very much, is different. And so we have to really be flexible. Right?

Absolutely. What are some challenges that professionals face when adopting the experiential methods and how would they be able to overcome those?

I'll tell you one of the ones that I encountered as an early, early, younger experiential therapist. I would watch these elders, and keep in mind, at the time I was not an elder, I was just a bright-eyed, younger, enthusiastic person, and I would see how good they were. And I remember asking my trainer, Zerka Moreno, she was the wife of Dr. Moreno, so I loved being able to study directly with her. I remember the first time that I saw her work in a training, my mouth was hanging open. She was just so wonderful. And I remember asking her first time I met her, how did you get so good? And she said, well. If you had been doing this for 50 years, you too would be seamless.

Absolutely.

Now that I am older and do have a number of years of experience, I ask younger, trainers, younger therapists don't try to do everything all at once. Simplicity can be really key, I don't have to come up with this amazing thing, sometimes it's the very simple question or the very simple role play, or a really simple prompt that opens up so much. So I would say to newer people in the experiential world, learn and start practicing by keeping it simple.

That can take a lot of pressure off, right? I think that sometimes when we think about, like you said, we look at people doing presentations and trainings, and we're like, wow, I want to be there. How do they do that? And simplicity can be a challenge at times. It can take some work and some creativity to keep it simple. In my own experience in trainings when I was very new, I put so much information in and I got good feedback, but the feedback also said, this was so great, but I needed more time. And I felt like it was drinking from a fire hose.

I think we wanna naturally give our people their money's worth. I have been there too, and I understand completely, and I don't wanna just fill someone's head with facts, even if they just learn one important thing that they're carrying out into their world that they really feel they're capable of doing. That's good enough.

Even in our conversation today, I am already thinking about some things. I'm excited to learn more.

Good.

I wanna ask a little bit more about where professionals can learn to conduct experiential trainings on their own, and can you share a little bit about what you offer. If somebody wanted to get trained from you, how would they go about doing that?

Yes, well, I'm in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which is on the east side of the state of Pennsylvania. And I do have a school where I offer monthly trainings to anyone who wants to come. Typically, these are helping and healing professionals. And I do offer CE credits. I'm a little bit eclectic. I offer everything from basic psychodrama 1 0 1 classes. The very basic principles, very basic techniques. I have found out through the years that a lot of people do role play that have never been trained in it, and as a result, it typically falls flat, so people say, I will never do this again. But in reality, there's actual training on how to do a role play, what not to do in certain cases, what to do in certain cases. So I do some very basic psychodrama experiential topics. Next Friday I'm going to be doing how to integrate experiential methods into talk therapy for a small group, in a group practice. And then on Saturday I'll be teaching the body double and other very simple ways to support therapists in working with the body as they work with talk. And then I have trainings coming up on all kinds of topics. So this month I am going to do a two day seminar on the tarot because lots of therapists are getting interested in how they can use picture cards and archetypes in the therapy setting. Some are doing readings, but I do it differently. I really use it much more in a process oriented way, and also integrate psychodrama, family constellations and other methods, which I have found to be super helpful. I'll be working on psychodrama and sand tray where people working with adults were integrating those. I also train in family constellations, which is a newer healing method coming out of Germany in the last 30 years where we work with ancestral trauma and how to address it and heal it and move past it. A lot of different choices depending on what people are interested in.

I had shared with you before that I subscribed to your email list and that's how I started learning a little bit more about you. I think about this kind of from the marketing perspective. That consistency and staying connected with people that you're training and people that could be interested, even outside of the trainings is really important.

Oh, well thank you. I do my best to make it interesting and full of resources. So whether or not people come to my trainings right now they're at least getting a taste of what's available. They're finding out what's going on. I always try to have some free resources available of some kind, whether it's a link or a video to watch or an article to read or something I've done that people might be able to borrow. So thank you for that.

I wanna come back to the trainings that you do in person at the Lancaster School of Psychodrama and Psychotherapies. You also do mini retreats as well as online classes. What do you find that people usually take away from them?

The other thing that I'm really interested in is building community. Because the truth is that most of us practice alone. We're typically in a room with one or two other people at the most, maybe three or four maybe we're running a group, but we typically practice in a somewhat of an isolated way. I'm really interested in how to bring helping and healing professionals together to feel connected and supported. And revitalized. My training settings are always a place that is beautiful, comfortable, pillows, nature, those kinds of things. So I really want to create an environment that feels supportive to them when they are out of the professional setting and in with their peers and to support them in connecting. And then they're not just learning information, but they are connecting as a group of people that have a lot in common.

Absolutely.

And that typically feels really good.

So Karen, if people want to reach you where can they find you?

I have a website and the website is called Real true karen.com. R-E-A-L-T-R-U-E karen.com. I also am on most social media, including Instagram and Facebook and then I just started actually a regular account on Substack writing articles about creativity and healing and so forth. I usually suggest people go to psychodrama certification.org. They can come to me as well and I'm happy to do training. If you don't live in Lancaster, you can find out who might be teaching in your area. There's also online classes that are available by many trainers, including myself, and also online classes from the American Society of Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama, which has online classes all year, as well as an annual conference which is a wonderful way to get a taste of a lot of different styles, see a lot of different ways that psychodrama is being employed. Otherwise, I personally love hearing from people. I love hearing what people want to be trained in. What their topics of interests are, what people need because I'm really about supporting, helping and healing professionals. I teach because I want to support the healing that is going on, and especially right now with so much of our country and the world and chaos, we need group skills and we need ways of supporting people to get connected to each other in good ways, in positive ways. That's really my mission and to pass on what I've learned over many years, because of course I am getting older.

Is there any other wisdom, any other advice that you would like to share with our audience before we wrap up?

I would say be creative. Exercise that creative muscle. It gets better and better. Keep being interested in learning. It's a big world out there.