SCA’s October meeting featured Danielle DeBray, a counselor for individuals and couples for over 20 years who also has vast experience in the financial world. Danielle helped attendees understand the importance of discussing financial matters with our clients and explored the role money plays in our client’s lives. We discussed how our client’s unhealed issues are manifested in their financial lives and learned how to create financial health from a psychological perspective.

Thank you Danielle!

Please join us November 18th for our November presentation about working with chemical dependency (CD) in private practice. Our presenters, Jeni West and Mark Anderson, have a wealth of experience working with client addiction. Jeni will help us understand issues related to medical detox and stabilization (when your clients need outpatient versus being medically managed) and Mark will discuss ways to confront you client’s denial and peel back layers to uncover and address core issue leading to CD. Attendees will learn how to work with CD issues in clients who refuse 12-step programs and are instead seeking private psychotherapy as CD treatment.

We look forward to seeing you on November 18h!

SCA kicked off it’s 2011-2012 season on September 16th with Lena Karunamaya’s presentation “Vision and Purpose – Strategic Planning for the Innovative Entrepreneur.”  With experience presenting lectures at international, national and regional conferences, Lena gave information and led exercises that helped SCA members to create, or just fine-tune, their action plan for achievement. Attendees learned effective approaches to strategic planning, achieving goals, and holding one’s self accountable in ways that promote business expansion.

Feedback from members was overwhelmingly positive, with reports of feeling motivated and inspired while having gained specific tools they can use immediately to begin reinventing their businesses and themselves as practitioners.

Thank you, Lena, for a great start to the 2011-2012 SCA season!

Please join us on Friday, September 16th, for “Vision and Purpose – Strategic Planning for the Innovative Entrepreneur.”  Lena Karunamaya will be our presenter.  For more information on this presentation and to register please visit the article about this presentation on our Meetings and Presentations Page.

Thanks and hope to see you on the 16th!

We were delighted to have Dr. Bill O’Connell, Ed.D., LMHC, NCC, join us for our annual June Ethics Program.  Bill’s presentation focused on a range of topics including confidentiality, privilege and privacy, social media, boundary violations, and a range of other topics.

Thanks Bill for a wonderful presentation!

Many thanks to SCA Member John Skandalis for his great presentation on Psychodrama at SCA’s May 20th, 2011 Meeting.  John gave us a wonderful introduction to Psychodrama complete with a demonstration and some interactive exercises.

For more information on John and his practice please visit his website:  http://www.johnskandalis.com/

Thanks John!

Our April presentation was on Motivational Interviewing (MI), a client-centered and directive style of counseling that helps people prepare for change by exploring and resolving their ambivalence about change. The speaker this month was Dr. Christopher Dunn, Ph.D, an Associate Professor and counseling psychologist on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Dr. Dunn specializes in training medical practitioners to use a brief version of Motivational Interviewing to help their patients make healthy lifestyle behavior changes.

Through his presentation, Dr. Dunn not only gave background information on MI, describing the method and demonstrating key features, he also helped SCA members understand how MI can be used to address, among other issues, smoking, drinking, medication adherence, exercise, and diet. Feedback from attendees included appreciation for Dr. Dunn’s ability to provide practitioners with practical skills they can begin immediately incorporating into their own therapeutic approaches.

So thank you, Dr. Dunn!

March’s SCA presentation came from Judy Burr-Chelin, director of Parent/Child Services at Wellspring Family Services. With over 28 years working in the mental health field, Judy used her specialized training in analytic psychotherapy to explain how aspects of attachment manifest in client issues and within the therapist/client relationship. Her presentation included an overview of the basic concept of Attachment Theory and how this theory can come into play when working with adult clients. Judy also described characteristics of attachment styles, how they come to be developed, and how they manifest throughout the lifespan. Members gained insight into some of the relationship difficulties their clients experience and how to utilize knowledge of a client’s attachment style in treatment.

Thank you for this informative presentation, Judy!

Dr. Jane Tornatore, an expert in the field of Alzheimer’s Dementia and healthy aging, delivered SCA’s February presentation on brain health last week, providing simple tools that therapists and their clients can use in daily life to help maintain a healthy brain. Well versed in the latest research methods, Dr. Tornatore illustrated how brain function changes as a result of aging, why exercise is the most important thing you can do for your brain health (and why stress is so bad!), the best foods to eat for brain health, and tools for stress reduction.

Attendees left the meeting with information and hand-outs they can pass on to their clients to help keep their brains as healthy as possible. Member feedback at this month’s meeting was overwhelmingly positive, with most participants feeling they learned a great deal about practical, proven ways to maintain lifelong brain health both for themselves and for the people they serve.

So thank you, Dr. Tornatore!