StoriesBuildBridges™
Storytelling, Systemic SHIFTS, and
Theories of Change
Integrating Narrative, Solution-Focused, and Structural
Family Systems Approaches for Relational Transformation
UPDATE!! The GAMFT will be hosting their conference on the dates I originally planned to offer the StoriesBuildBridges™ workshop,
so I now am changing the dates to:
Friday, July 31 for IN-PERSON and
Saturday, August 1 for VIRTUAL.
Something real is happening. Daily life feels heavier. Conversations feel riskier.
Trust feels thinner. And many people are quietly asking themselves,
What is happening to all of us?
Increasing polarization is wearing people down.
5 CE Hours with a "Stories You Tell Yourself" Workbook
Sign up for IN-PERSON (7/31) or for VIRTUAL (8/1)
Early Registration - $95 (before 7/4), $115 after 7/5.
75% Refundable up to 7/24.
IN-PERSON Workshop on Friday, July 31, 2026 is limited to 25 participants.
Participants will receive the Printed Version of the Workbook.
Location is:
Colab Community Studio
541 Village Trc, NE, #11
Marietta, GA 30067
VIRTUAL Workshop on Saturday, August 1, 2026 will be through a Zoom Link, distributed after Workshop on Friday. Participants will receive the Digital Version of the Workbook.
Therapists are well trained to hold space for complex, emotionally nuanced human experiences. Yet many clinicians now find themselves working within heightened climates of polarization, chronic anxiety, relational fracture, and fear of social or familial repercussions that can make therapeutic movement more difficult to metabolize, sustain, or safely implement outside the therapy room.
Current realities call for thoughtful, ethically grounded interventions that help clients channel anxiety into reflection, relational awareness, actionable change, and renewed capacities for communication across difference. Storytelling and systemic approaches can reduce escalation by helping people overhear themselves and one another differently, setting aside purely confrontational patterns in favor of curiosity, meaning-making, and collaborative insight.
StoriesBuildBridges™ explores how clinicians can deepen and expand existing therapeutic skillsets while remaining grounded within ethical scope of practice and foundational relational systems frameworks.
Participants will explore:
1) Circular causality and feedback loops as tools for reducing reactivity
2) Differentiation of self within anxious relational systems
3) Multi-generational transmission processes and inherited narratives
4) Boundaries, hierarchies, and subsystem dynamics in polarized environments
5) Narrative interventions that support reflection, re-authoring, and collaborative change
6) Systemic approaches that help channel anxiety toward growth, responsibility, and practical action
For More Resources and Free Downloads...
We are in an historic moment where there is great division, intentionally inflammatory rhetoric and talking points, and the heightened inner disturbances we now feel make us want to stick our heads in the sand!
But, remember when we were kids? The thing we were taught to fear the most was Quick Sand! In a sense, we got prepared for the time we are now in. Why? Because no one survived Quick Sand without friends to pull them out!
My motto has been: WE is Greater than me; therefore, fear NOT!
Click the title here and watch the video that is linked with the words of Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman in a meditation about The Inward Sea.
I have created the StoriesBuildBridges™ platform to bring us together across divisions, cultures, perspectives... so that all of our lives can be more purposeful and productive, in collaboration for change.
I have trained many mental health providers and faith leaders for leading different kinds of storytelling sessions with groups of people. The training I am offering within this workshop has been tested and the workbook helps with creative exercises for reflection, process, and shifting mindsets in positive, growth-oriented ways.
Let's Discover Your "Fluid Area of Consent" which is Your Link to the Eternal... (Howard Thurman)
Melissa D. Sexton, PhD, MDiv, LMFT
© 2026, Melissa D. Sexton, StoriesBuildBridges.™ All Rights Reserved.