Hearing Voices Facilitator Training (Florence, MA) - June 2026

The Hearing Voices Network (HVN) includes over 20 nationally-based networks around the world joined by shared goals and values, incorporating a fundamental belief that there are many ways to understand the experience of hearing voices and other unusual or extreme experiences. This international collaboration between professionals, people with lived experience, and their families works to develop an alternative approach to coping with emotional distress that is empowering and useful to people, and does not start from the assumption that they have a chronic illness.

The Hearing Voices approach offers a non-pathologizing, open way of understanding and supporting people through the experiences of hearing voices - as well as seeing visions, holding unusual beliefs, multiplicity, and other sensory experiences. This movement understands that hearing voices can be a normal part of human experience with a variety of meanings for people. This approach can be used in peer support groups or any other support context.

In Hearing Voices support groups, each person has a right to their own reality and to share their experiences in their own words. Facilitators do not use diagnostic language and welcome perspectives beyond bio-chemical frameworks. Participants in this training will learn about facilitating and sustaining Hearing Voices support groups, as well as common myths about voice-hearing, a framework for being in conversation with someone who is sensing things that others do not, the links between trauma (including systemic oppression) and voice-hearing, the importance of power sharing, and more.

This training will be held on:

Tuesday, June 16th

Wednesday, June 17th

Thursday, June 18th

All training days will run from 9am-5pm, in-person in Florence, Massachusetts.

Reading homework may be assigned ahead of time and/or during the class. Attendance at all sessions is required to complete the training. (Note: Participants are able to miss up to two hours of the training not including breaks, and still receive a certificate of completion. Some make-up work may be required.)

TRAINING PREREQUISITES: This training is primarily intended for people who have some basic facilitation skills and/or training, though not absolutely required so long as it is understood that the training is not designed to provide these basic skills. You should have an active interest in starting an Hearing Voices group or supporting an existing one.

OTHER IMPORTANT INFO: It is not required to have lived experience of voices, visions or unusual beliefs to facilitate Hearing Voices groups. However, a co-facilitation model is recommended and involvement of individuals with lived experience is strongly encouraged.

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