Anya CharnaudThis is a short introduction to a psychological therapy tool called the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life has psychotherapeutic qualities and can be used in various settings. It can be a good tool for working with trauma survivors, particularly when persons are displaced and unable to have significant psychological support or access to trauma-focused therapy. The Tree of Life can resource people and help connect people without focusing on the traumatic events themselves. This means those who are not stable or unable to access trauma-focused work can at least gain help and support from this intervention.
The concept of a ‘Tree of Life’ has many connotations and has been used in biology, philosophy, mythology and religion, hence the ‘tree of life’ is found to be a widespread metaphor. The ‘Tree of Life group’ is a collective narrative therapy developed by Ncazelo Ncube (Ncube-Millo & Denborough, 2007) that uses the metaphor of a tree. It includes methods such as recognising that the individual is an expert in their own life and recognising personal resources and strengths by their own narrative (De Shazer, Dolan & Korman, 2007). Supporting people to find inner strength and resilience is the main principle in solution-focused approaches.
Each element of the tree holds meaning to the individual, the roots being someone’s roots to their life, the ground being the present and what is in life now, the trunk your skills and abilities, branches your hopes and goals, leaves are important people in your life and fallen leaves those we have lost, the fruit is gifts we have received, finally the storms are what we have overcome and how. This creates a narrative for the individual.
There is also the element of the collective narrative within the group, which is how the forest is grown. The group individually create their trees with their own narrative and experiences but the forest at the end is born out of the collective narrative and the group process. When the forest comes together the group makes positive statements on each other’s trees. This allows the individual to feel the group’s support and can take the statements away.
The Tree of Life group offers the participants a psychotherapeutic experience that empowers them to assess and reflect on what they had in the past, have now, want in the future and how to obtain that. It helps them understand what resources they have and how to develop future ones and recognise progress. Such as with plant growth, the whole tree isn’t visible or there all the time. It also provides a group therapy space as their own tree becomes part of a forest, as they become part of the group itself. Presentations of the trees and what each element means are presented to one another. This also invites the concept of community to the participants. As the group can take their own trees home they have this as an anchor to their pathway moving forward.
NHS mental health services have been using the Tree of life group with service users. The tree of life group recently received funding from the Maudsley Charity and was run across inpatient services in South London and the Maudsley (sLam) adult and psychiatric intensive care wards. 100% of the self-reporting measures for group attendees are positively rated achieving 89% of the maximum score possible. The facilitators also completed self-reporting measures and demonstrated positive improvements in their relationship with the service users. ‘The Tree of Life: A review of the collective narrative approach’ reviews the use of this practice as a psychosocial support tool (Lock 2016).
This way of working has facilitated those who are unable to undertake regular psychotherapy due to being displaced or regularly moving to have a way of developing internal resources. The VITA Network is keen to develop a tool to offer the tree of life to those displaced in Ukraine and other places of war. We want to be able to support persons unable to access or undertake trauma-focused therapy and offer them this intervention where possible.