Supervision, Consultation & Mentoring

I became a licensed Marriage Family Therapist in 2005 at the age of 39, pursuing a nearly two-decade aspiration of becoming a psychotherapist, a dream inspired by an immensely fruitful and supportive encounter with the process of therapy following an experience of significant loss when I was 20. In my practice, I see individuals, couples, and families, as well as offer mentoring, supervision and consultation. Relational, intuitive, genuine, compassionate, humanistic, and experiential, I practice primarily within an eclectic client-centered framework, with strong influences from psychodynamic, psychoanalytic, as well as somatic approaches to the therapeutic process. Most recently, I began to incorporate Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy as one of my offerings.

My graduate studies at the CIIS’s Integral Counseling Program were the perfect springboard for my aspirations as a therapist, aligning with my values and interests in integrating Eastern and Western as well as transpersonal aspects of healing into my practice.

The curriculum and community at CIIS opened many doors for me and has been a deeply generative influence in my life, leading me to the exploration of non-ordinary states and metaphysical and energetic forms of healing, as well as the use of psychedelic medicines for therapeutic and spiritual exploration, a journey that has involved ongoing participation in ceremonial circles with both western and indigenous practitioners.

In addition to my practice as a psychotherapist, supervisor, and consultant, I had the honor to serve as the Executive Director and Director of Clinical Services and Programs at Grateful Heart Holistic Therapy Center for nine years, a role I assumed after completing The Psychotherapy Center’s two-year intensive program in the study of supervision. Psychodynamic and relational, this program further consolidated my understanding of the supervision process. While at Grateful Heart, I supervised more than 100 associates individually and in 5 - 7 weekly groups.

In addition to my education at CIIS and its support for my psychological and spiritual development, I have always been deeply attuned to subtle, liminal, energetic, emotional, and psychic realms of experience.

Living in a home often beset with the undercurrents of unacknowledged, and at times chaotic, feeling sharpened my awareness of and capacity to sense and respond to the inner states of others. This sensitivity, combined with a deep desire to understand human nature, has been an invaluable asset in my therapeutic, supervisory and consulting work with others.

My personal experience of psychoanalysis, with its exploration of the unconscious, has reinforced my understanding of symbolic communication and the vastly creative and resilient nature of the psyche. My prior experience of nearly three decades of depth-oriented therapy also informs my understanding of the unconscious, intrapsychic and relational dimensions of the therapeutic process, as well as transference and counter-transference dynamics. Nearly 20 years of psychoanalytically oriented consultation has reinorced all I gleaned from my personal experience.

These immersions have been augmented by both a rigorous ongoing commitment to learning and consultation in other modalities and theories of mind.

Over the course of the past decade, I have participated in numeous trainings to ensure I am abreast of the latest developments in therapeutic thought, studying a variety of approaches to work with couples (Emotion-Focuses Therapy, the Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy, the Bader/Pearson Developmental Model, and the Gottman Method, as well as Rob Fisher's Experiential Approach to Couple's Therapy) and modalities such as Internal Family Systems, EMDR and Family Constellations, among others.

I bring the totality of these experiences to my work as a supervisor and consultant, maintaining a commitment to support whomever I work with develop thier own perspectives, philosophy and approach.

MOST IMPORTANT PROFESSIONAL INFLUENCES

  • Active engagement in my own personal growth for more than thirty-five years.
  • My employment experience at McAuley Neuropsychiatric Institute, the Department of Community Mental Health and in social services agencies throughout the Bay Area, including at the TALKLine Family Support Center, where I was hired as a Clinical Supervisor and The Arc, where I worked for 13 years.
  • Participation in the Integral Counseling Program at CIIS and its experientially-based program of learning.
  • Participation in a year-long practicum drawing on self-psychology as a theoretical foundation at the Pierce Street Counseling Center.
  • Participation in a two year-long Intensive Study Groups offered by the Northern California Society of Psychoanalytic Psychology, one focusing broadly on trauma and the other on the unconscious.
  • Participation in a year-long consultation group facilitated by faculty of the Women’s Therapy Center.
  • Significant clinical experience with individuals, couples and families with histories of abuse and persons experiencing poverty, divorce and separation, infertility, chronic or severe
    illness, disability, difficulties related to education, employment, care-giving and aging, and questions and conflicts regarding identity.
  • Weekly relationally-oriented group consultation with analyst, Cindy Sachs, for seven years followed by weekly consultation beginning in early 2025
  • Bi-weekly participation in a psychoanalytically-oriented consultation group facilitated by Dr. Robert Carrere, a training analyst at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, drawing from the principles and theories of Modern Psychoanalysis, fro 13 years
  • Participation as a member of the therapist cohort with The Coming Home Project.
  • Experience as a Military Family Life Consultant in military settings throughout Europe.
  • Completion of a two-year Supervisor Study Program at The Psychotherapy Institute.
  • Oversight of the clinical training and internship program at Grateful Heart Holistic Therapy Center.
  • Supervision of more than 100 associates
  • Consultation with licensed clinicians

SUPERVISION EXPERIENCE

I have been supervising trainees and associates and consulting with licensed clinicians as a Licensed Marriage Family Therapist for more than twenty year, including through the auspices of Blue Oak Therapy Center, the Women’s Recovery Center, East Bay Agency for Children/Circle of Care, New Leaf Counseling Center, the TalkLine Family Support Center, Marina Counseling Center and Grateful Heart Holistic Therapy Center, where I was retained as Clinical Director for nine years.

I thoroughly enjoy both participating in and offering supervision and consultation. In addition to a more than decade long twice-monthly consultation group, drawing on the methods of the Tavistock Institute, I have taken numerous seminars focusing on the supervisory process, exploring the differences between didactic and process-oriented supervision and the sometimes divergent biases of these two approaches. During these workshops, I also explored and discussed the intersubjective and interpersonal dimensions of supervision, parallel processes, enactments, the therapist’s and supervisee’s use of self, the use of transference and countertransference dilemmas and impasses, and the mutuality inherent in the supervisory relationship. Prior to these trainings, I also underwent the CAMFT Supervision Training Course, which discussed different approaches to the supervision process, including the developmental approach which I incorporate as a supervisor. As noted earlier, I completed a two-year Supervision Study Program at The Psychotherapy Institute that has further developed and solidified my skills as a supervisor. In addition to these trainings, I have been influenced by my supervision and consultation with Cindy Sachs, Dr. Bob Carerre, Nancy Ulmer, and other clinicians I respect.

As an experiential and visual learner, I find I draw from, incorporate and integrate new approaches to my work as I become familiar with them experientially. With the exception of my tenure at the TALKLine, where I learned a more systems-oriented approach to therapy, my experience as a client and a supervisee has been consistently grounded in psychodynamic ways of working.

APPROACH

As a supervisor, I find I engage the process with my supervisees both as a mentor, teacher and facilitator, fluctuating between a stance as a teacher and mentor and process-oriented facilitator and guide. In these roles, I typically:

  • Create a setting and a tone for the safe exploration of the therapist’s responses to the process of therapy and supervision, including whatever they may be experiencing personally, professionally and clinically in the form of counter-transference, resonance, somatic experience, etc.
  • Explore the supervisee’s optimal style of learning and his or her associations to and anticipated responses to the supervisory process.
  • Help support the therapist to understand and manage his or her anxieties, and the other vulnerabilities that can be experienced throughout the early developmental trajectories (and challenges) of becoming a therapist.
  • Help explore how the therapist’s history, psychological predispositions, biases, cultural orientations and vulnerabilities influence his or her perspective regarding his or her clients and the clinical and supervisory process.
  • Help support increased appreciation for the experience of uncertainty.
  • Help the supervisee explore, understand and distinguish between his or her subjective and objective counter-transference experiences.
  • Help support the therapist’s developing use of self as a psychotherapist.
  • Function and interact as a model, both to provide developmental support and in the exploration of parallel process.
  • Regard and explore the supervisory relationship and all that emerges as a potential manifestation or response to a supervisee’s work with their clients.
  • Help supervisee conceptualize his or her work.
  • Help supervisee understand and work with impasses and enactments, as well as to attune to the underlying unconscious communications of their clients.
  • Create an open space for the exploration of individuals and shared reverie that may be evoked in the therapeutic field.

As a therapist, I work fairly intuitively, drawing from what I have culled from my substantial experience as a client, supervisee, psychotherapist, supervisor adn consultant. For the past several years, I have been pursuing additional training to further articulate my understanding of the process of psychotherapy and the psychological and emotional reparation we facilitate as clinicians.

 

 

Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn. ― Benjamin Franklin

To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness. ― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness