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How do our histories shape the ways we understand, protect, care for, and respond to others? We are often trained to ask what happened. How do we also become curious about what has been carried forward from relationships, families, communities, and culture — both what constrains and what protects?
This 3-hour cultural training explores the intersection of Motivational Interviewing, culture, attachment, and intergenerational healing through the enduring psychodynamic concepts of Ghosts in the Nursery and Angels in the Nursery. Fraiberg and colleagues described the ways unresolved experiences from the past can reappear in present relationships, while Lieberman and colleagues expanded this framework to include memories of having felt especially loved, understood, protected, and safe—experiences that can also be carried forward across generations.
Using the MI Spirit of partnership, acceptance, compassion, and empowerment as a guiding stance, participants will consider how culture, family history, relationships, migration, loss, tradition, language, and lived experience shape the meanings people make of themselves and one another - and how the past often gets repeated in the present. The emphasis will be on approaching intergenerational stories with curiosity and cultural humility rather than without imposing our own meanings onto another person’s story.
Throughout the training, an ofrenda will serve as a recurring metaphor for what remains present across generations. Participants will consider what might be placed on the “ofrenda” of a family or helping system: stories, values, wounds, traditions, absences, protective relationships, sensory memories, expectations, and sources of belonging.
The training will also use popular characters from literature and cinema as accessible vignettes for exploring intergenerational patterns, protective adaptations, family roles, perfectionism, silence, burden, belonging, and change. Rather than asking, “What is wrong with this person or family?” participants will practice an MI-consistent strength-based approach.
The training then turns toward the helper’s own internal world. Participants will reflect on the “ghosts” and “angels” they may carry into professional relationships and consider how their own histories influence what they notice, fear, value, rescue, avoid, or feel compelled to change.
Ultimately, this training asks participants to consider:
What do we inherit? What do we carry? What do we choose to pass forward? And how can the MI Spirit help us become curious about the ghosts that shape the present while illuminating the angels—past and present—that continue to protect, sustain, and guide us?
How do our histories shape the ways we understand, protect, care for, and respond to others? We are often trained to ask what happened. How do we also become curious about what has been carried forward from relationships, families, communities, and culture — both what constrains and what protects?
This 3-hour cultural training explores the intersection of Motivational Interviewing, culture, attachment, and intergenerational healing through the enduring psychodynamic concepts of Ghosts in the Nursery and Angels in the Nursery. Fraiberg and colleagues described the ways unresolved experiences from the past can reappear in present relationships, while Lieberman and colleagues expanded this framework to include memories of having felt especially loved, understood, protected, and safe—experiences that can also be carried forward across generations.
Using the MI Spirit of partnership, acceptance, compassion, and empowerment as a guiding stance, participants will consider how culture, family history, relationships, migration, loss, tradition, language, and lived experience shape the meanings people make of themselves and one another - and how the past often gets repeated in the present. The emphasis will be on approaching intergenerational stories with curiosity and cultural humility rather than without imposing our own meanings onto another person’s story.
Throughout the training, an ofrenda will serve as a recurring metaphor for what remains present across generations. Participants will consider what might be placed on the “ofrenda” of a family or helping system: stories, values, wounds, traditions, absences, protective relationships, sensory memories, expectations, and sources of belonging.
The training will also use popular characters from literature and cinema as accessible vignettes for exploring intergenerational patterns, protective adaptations, family roles, perfectionism, silence, burden, belonging, and change. Rather than asking, “What is wrong with this person or family?” participants will practice an MI-consistent strength-based approach.
The training then turns toward the helper’s own internal world. Participants will reflect on the “ghosts” and “angels” they may carry into professional relationships and consider how their own histories influence what they notice, fear, value, rescue, avoid, or feel compelled to change.
Ultimately, this training asks participants to consider:
What do we inherit? What do we carry? What do we choose to pass forward? And how can the MI Spirit help us become curious about the ghosts that shape the present while illuminating the angels—past and present—that continue to protect, sustain, and guide us?