"For what purpose am I alive?"

For what purpose am I alive?": What are the ideas that informs the therapist faced with people suffering from suicidal thoughts?

Presented by: Erling Fidjestøl, MA

A young man (here named 'Azizi') in his 20s was referred to me by his teacher as Azizi had confided to him that he had made plans to take his own life. The plans were very specific; either to soak himself with gasolin and light up, or to drink a bottle of vodka and slide into the water by the Opera house in the center of Oslo.

In the first conversation with Azizi I learned of his dangerous and dramatic refugee travel route from Afghanistan to Norway. Only at the end of the conversation he brought me up to speed about his present predicaments which had made him draw the conclusion that life did not seem to offer good enough reasons to go on living. The manner in which he posed the question "For what purpose am I alive?" seemed retorically - as if the only reasonable answer could be: None.

In this workshop we will carefully go through the unaltered transcript of the second conversation looking at what ideas that are informing my questions as we go along - and bring these into discussion.

​Workshop Objectives

The session will allow us to go through some key practices in Narrative Therapy such as:

1) Re-Authoring Conversations

2) Re-Membering Conversations

3) De-centered Therapeutic Position

4) Working with trauma

About the Speaker

Erling Fidjestøl (MA) is a narrative therapist stationed in Oslo, Norway, where over the past 20+ years, he has worked at Robust with children, young people and families. He is affiliated with the Family Therapy Studies at VID Specialized University in Oslo as a teacher and superviser.