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Letter from the President, AnnMarie Stankovich, MA, LMHC, NCC
Creating a Web Presence
Having a presence on the web is an excellent way to build relationships with future clients, gain trust, and ultimately generate referrals. Your website is an extension of your business, and it can be one of the most important networking and marketing tools available to you. Furthermore, your site allows future clients to experience the process of working with you before they even pick up the phone to schedule their first appointment. Since your time is valuable, allow your website to answer their initial questions and introduce the many benefits of your services.
These days, many people will base your credibility on whether or not you have a website. Instead of turning to friends, doctors, or even their insurance company, more than ever, clients are turning to the internet to search for counseling services. If you do not already have a website, you can either find a low cost professional or build one yourself. If you choose to build one yourself, in a few easy steps, you can set up your URL/domain name and hosting, as well as choose a professional template that expresses your vision, personality, and style.
Before you begin, it's important to create your vision, design an outline, organize your thoughts, have a digital photo of yourself, and write your content. Writing the content can be the most time-consuming part of this project. At the very least, you will want to have content for your home page, services page, about us page, and contact page. Write about things you know well. The secret to a successful website lies within the words. The power of words is amazing. It can make a person laugh, cry, feel understood and validated, and ultimately connect with you. Be sure to use a spell-checker or an editor, or have friends and family check your text for correct grammar. Most people are really turned off by those kinds of errors.
Your website must be attractive, hold the visitor's attention, be easy to access and navigate, and have clear expectations. It's also important to define the ideal client and always mention the benefits of your services, as opposed to just listing your services. Speak to the visitor as if they are in your office. It's also important to avoid "I, we, and us" when writing your content-instead, use "you" or "your." The language on your site should be about the client and how they will benefit from working with you.
Additionally, I recommend showing your contact information on each page (address, email, phone number), having a photo of yourself, and including testimonials. Also, allow your site to make your business run more efficiently by having your client forms available on your site as well as directions to your office and online payment, such as PayPal.
Millions of web pages are competing for our attention. Now that you have your own site, it's important to make it stand out among your competition. You've put the time and energy into creating this wonderful site that reflects your personality and counseling style, but just having a site isn't going to generate referrals. How are potential clients going to find you? Here are some simple ways to promote your site:
- Add your information to online counseling directories.
- Consider Pay Per Click and advertising programs such as Google AdWords and Google AdSense.
- Offer advice, provide answers, and share resources in special-interest groups. Remember to always include your URL (groups.google.com).
- Exchange reciprocal links with complimentary businesses, especially those that receive a large volume of traffic, as this type of advertising will lead to more traffic to your site.
- Ask other health care providers or professional organizations to list you on their referral page.
- Write an article about topics related to your services and offer to let other sites use it as content in exchange for a link back to your site.
- End your email message with a "signature," which should include your name, contact information, and website address.
I hope these tips bring you more clients and much success!
AnnMarie Stankovich www.amsbusinesscoaching.com
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March Presentation
March 20, 2009
The Matrix of the Mind & the Seven Matrices, Neuro-Semantics and the Construction of Meaning
Based on L. Michael Hall's Meaning Making Matrix, we will look at how we make meanings as human beings. We often hear that Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is about "running your own brain" and the representations that we make from everyday experiences. Neuro refers to our nervous system/mind and how it processes information. We have an experience in the world and our senses code this information as memory inside our bodies/neurology. The experience is inputted, processed and ordered by our neurological processes. Linguistic is the process of how we communicate through language. How we "language" ourselves maps out our reality of the world. Programming refers to our ability to organize the representations (sights, sounds, sensations, smells, tastes and symbols or words) within the body-mind.
Neuro-Semantics is a mind-body model that allows us to understand how we make meanings of those representations. As we send signals to our nervous system from our experiences in the world we begin to construct our Meaning Matrix. This Matrix is composed of frames of belief, frames of value and frames of understanding, all gathered and coded from the time we take our first breath as babies. Neuro-Semantics is about Frames. We use frames to create meaning. This gives us a reference so that we may evaluate and classify experiences, ideas and events that happen in our lives.
In this model, there are also seven essential matrices of frame that we "never leave home without." These are Meaning, Self, Power, Time, Other, World, and Intentionality. While working with someone, we recognize and identify the frames someone is using to express an experience, feeling, or emotion. The person is never the problem, it is the frame that they have set, that disempowers and causes issues. We see no one as being broken. Everyone has all of the resources they need already to make the changes they want. As the Matrix is self-created over a lifetime of experience, it also must be self-re-created to have meaningful change. Neuro-Semantics is a way to facilitate change through an exploration of how a person makes meanings and sets the frame.
The Matrix Model is a wonderful diagnostic tool and a template for very high quality information gathering in the intake process of a clinic or as a tool for change in a therapy setting. Meta-Model questions have the effect of engaging a person's own self-reflexivity... allowing them to unlock the door of understanding themselves.
I employ NLP, Neuro-Semantics, Hypnosis and Acupuncture as tools to facilitate change in clients who come to my clinic. My intention in this work is for people to develop what Maslow called "An Unconditional Positive Regard for the Self."
Randy Clere, Lic Ac, CH. MNLP is a licensed acupuncturist and hypnotherapist in private practice in Seattle, Washington. He has 29 years of clinical practice in the arts of acupuncture, Oriental Medicine and hypnotherapy, specializing in Japanese-style acupuncture and Zen Shiatsu. He also utilizes Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), Neuro-Semantics, Ericksonian Hypnotherapy and Self Relations therapy when working with his clients. Randy has been involved with hospice in-patient home care since 1983 and has practiced martial arts and meditation for decades. Randy specializes in giving his patients personal care, empowering them to heal and introducing them to that tender place within themselves of unconditional positive regard.
Randy is also a semi-professional musician playing electric bass and Chapman Stick. He has played with Taj Mahal, Sam Weis, Scott Cossu and many others. He's an amateur chef who loves all things curry. |
April Presentation: April 17, 2009
Focusing and Community Wellness: Tales from Afghanistan
Maybe you have wondered about the state of mental health in war torn countries like Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan. How can people even manage daily life, let alone recover from war traumas sustained over many years? And how might what helps them, also help us?
This presentation will give you a glimpse inside Afghanistan, into a growing effort to support psychosocial wellness there. Nina and her work partner, Dr. Patricia Omidian, have collaborated with Afghan people to develop community wellness tools that spread out into villages and families. Focusing is one of these. It helps builds resiliency in the face trauma, assists people with finding an inner-directed way forward through any difficulties that come in their lives, and is taught in a culturally appropriate way.
You will hear real stories of people experiencing this psychosocial wellness work and also you will be invited to try a beginning Focusing skill which can be useful to you and your clients. Focusing can help us all to be resilient with trauma that we ourselves face, either vicariously, or first hand. Focusing can also be used along with any kind of therapy to serve our clients, and it can be a mainstay of a community wellness approach, that supports what is healthy, and working well.
After experiencing the power of a bit of focusing, you may find you are leaving the session refreshed, more open, with new possibilities.
Nina Joy Lawrence, BA. Ed., M.S. Counseling, Certifying Coordinator for The Focusing Institute, has been teaching Focusing since 2001, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and USA. She retired from 3 careers: school teacher, potter, and sex abuse treatment therapist, in order to teach Focusing skills in Corvallis, Oregon and around the Northwest, as well as internationally. She is available for leading workshops in workplaces, community groups, schools, and religious gatherings. She can be reached by e-mail, [email protected]. |
Classes and Workshops
Ecodance Seattle 2009 Ecodance uses a distinct blend of free-form movement and group process to help participants deepen their connections to self and nature. The experience feels playful, challenging, safe and full of depth. Come as you are with your unique body of life experience. Great as a resource for clients or for your own self nourishment. Leif is a licensed counselor and registered dance/movement therapist. For more information please see http://www.stillnessandmovement.com/ecodance.html or contact Leif at [email protected] or 206-898-7018
2009 Six-week Series Dates: January 12 - February 16 March 9 - April 13 June 1 - July 6 September 7 - October 12 November 9 - December 14
Single Session Intro Classes: January 5 March 2 May 4, 11, 18 August 31 November 2
Leif Tellmann, MA, ADTR, LMHC, Licensed Counseling, and Body- and Movement-based Psychotherapy. Phone: 206.898.7018 Web: www.StillnessAndMovement.com
Yoga and Art Therapy, 6 CEUs with Rebecca Bloom, LMHC, ATR-BC and Carrie DeMartini, LMHC, ATR-BC Friday, April 3rd Antioch University Seattle, $130 In this experiential workshop, learn how to bring a mindfulness-based practice to sessions with clients. Find out what helps clients find their own sense of personal power in the therapeutic process. Develop confidence in integrating art and yoga with clients by addressing a range of clinical issues. Gain an understanding of the basics of the chakra system for emotional well-being, the essentials of yoga therapy and Jungian art therapy, as well as the use of mandala and color work with clients. www.antiochseattle.edu/ce/courses-psychology.html#yoga
Free 1 hour Job Path Workshop - open to all. Lead by Rebecca Bloom, LMHC, ATR-BC Where do you want to be in five years? Using a simple creative journaling exercise, map out your five year plan. Saturday, May 16th 11am and 2 pm Daniel Smith Store, Seattle www.danielsmith.com/learn/default~art~classes.asp#SEATTLEDEMOS
Listening To The Voice Within A Level One Focusing Workshop Would you like a tool for doing your own inner work, one that allows you to be more present, connected and compassionate with yourself and others? Are you interested in learning a body centered approach to helping clients release stuck patterns, soften critical voices and process tramua safely. Focusing is a mindfulness and body centered self awareness skill for emotional healing and wellness that can be combined with any thereputic approach. This two day workshop will be held in West Seattle April 25th and 26th. Fee: $225. A guided Focusing session (half price to SCA members registered for the workshop) is highly recommended prior to the workshop. Register online at www.morrisontherapy.com or contact Jeffrey Morrison MA, LMHC and Certified Focusing Trainer at 206-935-7850 or [email protected]
Are you a woman over 40 without children? Come join a community of women in a 6 week support group. The purpose of this group is to support women who, whether by choice or by circumstances, are not following the path usually chosen by women in this society. The group is led by Jane B.G. Tornatore, PhD, who is committed to helping people shift old patterns so they can lead a freer life. The six weeks will cover:
- Who am I as a woman without children?
- Lost & found: Dreams, roles, & relationships
- Menopause and body image
- How do I care for myself as an elder?
- Do I need to grieve?
- What will I leave this world when I die?
The group meets at: 1914 North 34th Street, Suite 400 Seattle, WA 98103 (In Fremont, across from Gas Works Park) For more information call: 206-769-8108
INTERPERSONAL PROCESS GROUP With Aylee Welch, LICSW & Shelly Ballmer LICSW Wednesday from 6:30 pm - 8 pm beginning April 15, 2009 Screening Required: 206 910-9766 or 206 321-1299 [email protected] ~FIND YOUR JOY~ April 20, 2009 9am - 6 pm Workshop Opportunity with Aylee Welch, LICSW Aylee will organize a day combining physical exercises and games, Techniques from Body-Psychotherapy, Active Dreaming, Shamanic Journeying, and Psychodrama. Adding to this her compassion, exuberance and joy, Aylee will work with you to open your heart and mind, and to expand your feelings to regain your excitement for life. ~$150.~ [email protected] (206) 910-9766
Living Your Essence with the Will of Your Heart Core Evolution and the Cycle of Life with Siegmar Gerken PhD April 30, Seattle, Washington - Free Lecture/Experience - 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm East West Bookshop, 6500 Roosevelt Way, NE CEU's Available ~ sponsored by Body-Psychotherapy of Seattle Beyond the Trauma - Reaching into Essence 17.5 CEUs The CORE EVOLUTION approach to alleviate stress and heal trauma Seattle, Washington - May 2-3, 2009
The last decade of trauma research and neuroscience brought us a wealth of new insights into trauma and trauma responses. We now use this term widely for a multitude of past and present events in our life. Often however, the suffering person or the practitioner cannot differentiate shock or developmental trauma and their interwoven nature, which form a tapestry of experience. With the sole focus on a traumatic event or experience, we may lose the contact with our original pulsation of being; our dynamic resource that sustains our resilience.
The experiential work of Core Evolution is aimed to access in a safe way the withheld life energy, feelings and balance our affect regulation. From this place a person can reach again into Essence and strengthen the individual potential to move the rediscovered stream of life towards self-regulation and personal realization.
This seminar is didactic and experiential. It is aimed for people who feel ready to step out of the cycle of limitations and restrictions in their life and for practitioners who want to bring a body-oriented and heart-centered dimension to their work. Siegmar Gerken, PhD sponsored by Body-Psychotherapy of Seattle 14 hours CEU's $195 if enrolled by March 30, 2009; $245 thereafter
CORE EVOLUTION TRAINING with Siegmar & Cornelia Gerken May 18-21, 2009 1st training in the Pacific Northwest!
CORE EVOLUTION� is an Energy and Consciousness based Training in Body-Oriented Therapy and Whole Person Psychology. Core Evolution addresses the different levels of being, the unity of Body - Feelings - Mind and Will within each person.
CEU's available for all training hours Training Commitment:
- First training contract: participants commit for Training Units 2 - 4
- The second training contract is for Training Units 5 - 7
- The third training contract is for Training units 8 - 10
Sponsored By Body-Psychotherapy of Seattle Contact Aylee Welch, LICSW(206) 910-9766 or [email protected] Or [email protected] (707) 937-1825 INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF CORE EVOLUTION� � CORESOMA� Directors: Siegmar Gerken, Ph.D., ECP & Cornelia Gerken, CMP, ECP
Divorce Is Hell: Is It True? An 8 week class beginning Saturday, March 28, 2009
THE BREAKUP OF A MARRIAGE OR SIGNIFICANT RELATIONSHIP is one of life's biggies. It requires you to make practical decisions about a future you can't begin to imagine, adjust to new living arrangements and financial realities, take care of the other members of your family-all at a time when most people are so swamped with fear, guilt, shame, rage and sadness, they can't begin to think clearly. But what if those emotions weren't actually the cause of confusion, but rather its effects? What if clarity was the way not only to good decision-making, but also to joy, peace and happiness?
And what if all you needed to move from confusion to clarity was pen, paper, an open mind-and a method of inquiry called The Work of Byron Katie that was so simple, even a child could do it?
Grace Bell is a Certified Facilitator of The Work of Byron Katie (The Work) and has a private counseling and coaching practice. She knows the confusion of divorce first-hand. She has been awakened more nights than she can count by thoughts like People shouldn't lie... I need more money... She's a homewrecker... Divorce traumatizes children... I did it wrong... He abandoned me... I need a new relationship... I'll never love anyone again...
Class cost is $360 for 8 sessions, Saturday 3/28 - 5/16 from 10:00 am - Noon in North Seattle (Lake Forest Park). Class is capped at 12 participants. This class is an excellent supplement for clients in divorce counseling, in divorce mediation, or for anyone wanting to make peace with past or future visions of divorce. We will primarily use the Work of Byron Katie to dive deeply into inquiry around the experiences and stressful beliefs about primary relationships. It is not necessary to be divorcing to take the class. For more information please contact Grace at 206-829-8048 or [email protected].
Yoga for Depression an 8 Week Workshop, Sunday Evenings 7:00 - 8:30pm March 22nd through May 10th, 2009 Cost : $160 NW Community Yoga studio in Ballard For more info: nwcommyoga.com Instructor: Carey DeMartini LMHC, ATR-BC, RYT-500 Phone: (206) 200-2173 Instructor phone conversation required for admission "Depression manifests as our inability to be present for the experience of life." ~Stephen Cope
The practice of yoga can provide physical relief for symptoms that often accompany depression as well as calm the flow of negative thoughts, help to release stuck emotions, decrease anxiety, and allow for greater overall balance between the mind and body. We will explore how yoga philosophy, asana practice, and creativity can liberate us from living in the past or future to being in the present moment. This 8 week long workshop is designed to offer tools for individuals who are currently experiencing mild-moderate depression. It is not intended to be a substitute for therapy, but would be a supportive adjunct to current treatment.
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SCA meets on the 3rd Friday of each month (except July, August & December) from 8 to 11 am at the Swedish Cultural Center 1920 Dexter Ave. N. More info: 206-283-1888, or www.seattlecounselors.org
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2008-2009 Board and Committees
President AnnMarie Stankovich MA, LMHC, NCC [email protected] 206.354.6384
Vice President Jeffrey L.Morrison, MA [email protected] 206.935.7850
Past President Andrea Davis, MA, RC [email protected] 206.304.1102
Treasurer Margaret Sutro, LMHC Margaret@InnerSpace Studio.net 206.715.2227
Secretary Lorynann Nichols, MS, LMFT [email protected] 425.889.0832
Committees
Membership Barbara Farwell Alexander [email protected] 206.949.7929
Newsletter Grace Bell, MA, RC [email protected] 206.829.8048
Program Elaine Duncan [email protected] 425.883.4939
Web Site Pete Fabish [email protected] 206.545.4818
Hospitality Sarah M. Heath, MA [email protected] 206.282.7223
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Join SCA! For membership information and an application to join SCA, please log on to our website: www.seattlecounselors.org/ application.html or call Barbara Alexander at 206.949.7929 or email her at alexander@ oasiscounselingseattle.com
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Membership & Meeting Fees
Annual Membership Fees Individual ...........$85.00 Agencies ..........$115.00 Student/Senior....$42.50 Half-year ............$42.50 (Apr.-Sept.)
Meeting Fees Member .............$20.00 Non-member.......$30.00 Student/Senior....$15.00
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Mission Statement
Seattle Counselors Association is a professional community of mental health counselors serving the entire Puget Sound region. We challenge ourselves to continue growing in our work. We invite an exchange among diverse individuals and disciplines, embrace creative tension, support the self-reflection that underlies ethical practice, and welcome new practitioners.
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Meeting Schedule
8:00 Registration
8:15 Introductions
8:50 Networking 9:00 SCA business 9:15 Speaker 10:45 Networking 11-12 Board Meeting (Open to all) Refreshments provided!
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SCA Connections is the newsletter of the Seattle Counselors' Association and is published five times a year. All rights reserved� by Seattle Counselors Association. Submissions may be sent to [email protected]. Please use email for all inquiries and submissions. If you don't have access to email, call Grace at 206.829.8048
Design & Production: Spear Studios 206.621.0240
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