Group Offerings

I offer five every other week consultation groups, one in Alameda and four online. All the groups are integrative in focus, drawing from a wide range of theories and modalities, with a strong emphasis on depth, relational and psychodynamic approaches to psychotherapy. Group times are Mondays, 12:30 - 2:00 PM, Wednesdays, 9:30 to 11:00 Am and Fridays, 8:30 - 10:00 AM.

As a facilitator and consultant, I prioritize creating a group ambiance and culture that welcomes and respects each member's experience, needs and strengths as a clinician. I strive to foster an environment and process that will offer safety for intimate conversations about the realities and vicissitudes of clinical life, and which also offers opportunities for deep collaborative clinical thought.

The first 15 minutes of each of our meetings is reserved for group sharing, dialogue, and camaraderie. It can be used to discuss clinical themes, to engage in short consultations or for personal sharing related to the group’s process, including anything that was evoked in a prior meeting or discussion. It may also be used for a more traditional “check-in."

As part of the group and clinical learning experience, I will encourage you to discuss your experience of the group and as a clinician. I hope these discussions will help encourage a precedent of sharing among us as well as facilitate discussion about the ways we relate to one another and support one another as therapists and co-learners. I also hope it supports reflection and discussion on the countertransference and parallel process dynamics that will inevitably emerge as we meet.

As the group’s facilitator, I will support and guide the group and its process and offer consultation to complement what emerges through the group’s explorations and process. Specific support will be offered for the development of your clinical work, including in the context of private practice.

I have extensive experience supporting early career therapists pursuing private practices as Associate and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists, Clinical Social Workers and Professional Clinical Counselors. I began supervising in 2005 and between 2014 and 2022 facilitated an average of 5 to 7 supervision groups per week in addition to providing individual supervision and consultation in my own practice. I regard the supervisor/consultant role as a mentoring role and invest in each person I work with to help them pursue their aspirations as a clinician/practitioner and entrepreneur.

GROUP STRUCTURE AND FEE

Each group will include up to five clinicians and continue indefinitely. Except for planned group breaks, i.e., during holidays, the fee per month will be $180 for the consultation group (which meets every other week).

Each group meeting will focus on the work of one or more members of the group, depending on need. Topics related to practice development/management or referral outreach and marketing can be integrated into our clinical conversations, if desired. An effort will be made to create a relative balance in sharing session to session.

I will offer office hours once a month via phone or video. and will also offer a 1:1 reflection meeting to each group participant annually. Both will be included in the cost of the group.

Please note: (1) The group fee will be charged monthly regardless of attendance. However, I will consider waiving the fee for members needing a break of more than two weeks’ duration due to illness or special extenuating circumstances and (2) a 30-day written notice of departure from the group is requested.

WHAT TO EXPECT

In addition to group discussions, I will provide articles on assorted topics related to the core clinical themes emerging in the group, with the suggestion of a review of one article per quarter if the group wishes. Discussion about the impact of the consultation process will be a key experiential component of the group.

Throughout the course of the group, you will be offered opportunities to share your work in diverse ways. These can include (but are not limited to):

Presenting a transcript or tape of an actual session
Discussing the details of a particular client or clinical circumstance
Summarizing a case following a presentation outline
Using a creative process to evoke your work with your client/s.
Sharing a dream, drawing or a photo of a sand-tray configuration created by your client.
Enacting or embodying a moment or an exchange between you and your client and/or between clients.
Using an imaginal process to portray a client situation and gather group feedback. When you share, you will be asked what kind of help or support you would like. The group will be invited to offer their reveries, associations, and thoughts about what you have presented. If desired, suggestions will also be offered.

GROUP ASPIRATIONS

The group will strive to support you in a variety of ways, both professionally and clinically. It is designed to help you:

Navigate the process of private practice development.
Facilitate a rich and meaningful clinical experience for your client based on their specific circumstances, needs, goals, or stage of development.
Further develop your identity and skills as a clinician, both professionally and theoretically, including to work with varied client presentations, needs and configurations.
Further define your approach as a therapist, including how you engage and support your clients to engage in the process of psychotherapy and cultivate its capacity for depth.
Gain more nuance and sophistication in the theoretical and practical conceptualization of your work.
Continue to explore the impact of intergenerational, familial, developmental, and cultural influences converging in your client’s experiences of themselves and their lives.
Sense, perceive and respond to both the implicit and explicit communication of emotions.
Work intersubjectively and relationally.
Notice and attend to your client’s somatic and sensory states and expressions, including those influenced by past histories of shock or strain trauma or emerging as signs of expanded awareness and aliveness.
Become more familiar with the influence and expression of the unconscious in psychotherapy, including the expressions of the unconscious in your and your client’s verbal and non-verbal communications, as well as dreams and reveries.
Become increasingly adept at responding to the influences of trauma (such as patterns of dysregulation, threat management and disassociation) in your client.
Understand, identify, and work with transference allusions and communications.
Identify and understand your own patterns of countertransference, and how these responses can be used to help guide or inform your work with your clients.
Become more familiar with the ways your experience of yourself, your life and your inner world intersects with and influences your work as a clinician.
Develop your ability to decipher between your own subjective feelings and those induced by the psychotherapy process.
Become more comfortable or facile at working with the experience of ambivalence, confusion, aggression, fear, anxiety, worry, boredom, fatigue as well as aversion, erotic transferences, impasses, and ruptures.
Develop more comfort and skill in discussing fees, attendance, and cancellations with your clients, as well as the related clinical material and themes that can be linked to or evoked by these discussions.
Continue to develop your acumen in overseeing and managing critical clinical situations, including in assessing a client’s level of risk, and navigating calls to your legal consultants, your liability insurance carrier and other oversight organizations for counsel and guidance.
Continue to develop your skills in responding to requests for support involving the third-party payors, the legal or judicial system, insurance carriers and medical providers and in understanding your legal and ethical obligations in these interactions.
Respond to emerging stressors in our client’s lives, including those induced by environmental and sociopolitical crises.
Learn to think about psychological presentations through different frameworks.
Develop more awareness of clinical resources.
Exchange referrals with your group colleagues. It is my hope that the group will offer a constructive, stimulating, and empowering learning environment for your development, whatever your theoretical orientation or level of experience, and provide a safe, creative setting for clinical collaboration.

ABOUT ME

I am trained primarily in psychodynamic ways of working, however, supervise and consult with clinicians working from a variety of orientations. I am deeply drawn to humanistic, experiential, psychoanalytic and relational ways of working.

TO JOIN THE GROUP

Please contact me at 415-533-9724 or via email at [email protected]. I will ask to meet with you to explore your interest in group participation. Acceptance into a group will be based on availability and your alignment with the group’s aspirations and focus.