January 16, 2013
Happy New Year Fellow Healer!
Please listen to my video message to you this month. You will find it below.
I entitled this one "Hope" because of my overwhelming sense of hopelessness I discovered I was carrying on New Year's Eve this year. I was struck by the contrast of this emotional state with my usual experience on New Year's Eve of great hope and anticipation of growth and good things to come in the new year.
Hopelessness can come in part due to being depleted. Many of us continued in our roles of Healer and Helper when with our families over the holidays. Many of us learned this role within those families while children. Even as adults in our new families that we have created, we often continue to play the role of healer and helper even when "off the clock!" This alone can yield hopelessness at times. And I must confess I played my Healer role over the Holidays with friends and family at times. But in this season we have addiitional stressors and depleters. As human beings we experienced a collective trauma in the Newtown massacre of our precious children. We continue to experience the grind of opposition and non-cooperation within our nation's government. We experience 24 hour news cycles that reveal violent pain and loss throughout the world. In our current climate and culture and as Healers at this time of year, we have to make an extra effort to practice mindfulness, paying attention to our own needs for rest, nurture, restoration, and yes, fun and play!
In my last newsletter I spoke of a clarion call that the Newtown shootings had sounded. I noted that we must take a stand as Mental Health Care Professionals (MHCPs). I am aware of numerous groups that are forming who are attending to gun violence, a culture of violence and yes, mental health needs as they look at and attempt to learn and respond from our collective trauma at Newtown. I encourage you to stay informed, be involved where you can. Let's correct what we know needs correcting. Action can combat hopelessness. (Google Search: President Obama and VP Joe Biden Gun Control/Violence Control Proposal: Semi-Automatic Guns and Ammunition, Mental Health Treatment, and Research Culture of Violence in Media and Video gaming. Google Search: Gabby Giffords and Gun Control that honors 2nd Ammendment Rights - mental health treatment key component; www.cnn.com)
And so can rest, meditation, and mindfulness. As we move forward, let us remember to pause and listen and provide care to ourselves as Healers. As I said in the December 2012 newsletter, "Speaking the truth and requiring what is needed to truly offer hope and a promise of stabilizing treatment and improved functioning and quality of living can attend to this overwhelm, vulnerability and sense of helplessness." Sometimes we also need to speak truth to ourselves, our families, our partners re: our needs as individuals and as professionals.
Let us continue to move forward speaking our truth as Mental Health Professionals. Let us take a moment to attend to ourselves, in our own re-centering from the sometimes disorienting hecticness of the Holidays. Let us offer gratitude for what we do have and choose hope as the lens through which we consider and contemplate our vision for 2013. There is a scripture in the Bible that says, "I (God) am able to do far beyond all that you ask, think, or imagine." Spiritually, we are not alone. There is hope.
Please read my piece below on the Power of Consultation: Personal and Professional Self-Care.
Please watch the video message to you below.
We have many things to look forward to in 2013 at Moonstone Center. Check out the rest of the newsletter to see them.
I look forward to writing you in February of 2013.
Until then, we at Moonstone Center wish you a Hopeful and Healthy New Year full of peace, joy, and healing.
With Peace, Joy, Love and Light,
Elisabeth and the Moonstone Center Team
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The Healer's Life - Hope |
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The Power of Consultation: Personal and Professional Self-Care
Consultation is a powerful form of professional self-care that is often overlooked or understood in an incomplete manner. Often we consider it an activity we engage in as therapists as a replacement for supervision. Supervision implies a power differential that as a licensed professional can at times be inappropriate. Consultation however, can be more collaborative when seeking help from someone with more experience and knowledge or a different perspective than you may have in a certain area. Yet some of us have a sense of shame if we determine consultation could be helpful or needed in our own professional practice. In fact, many of us as Healers often struggle with our own sense of dependence or need as individuals who are healers. For some of us, our role as a Healer can become a source of defense against getting our own true and important needs met (mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, and relationally). In reality, seeking consultation with an experienced and effective consultant to the issue(s) for which you are in need of help can be a powerful source of self care to you as a Healer.
Consultation can provide and meet a need of deeper understanding or increased knowledge re: a certain therapeutic approach as well as increased understanding and confidence re: a certain patient or client's presentation with you. Those of us who do seek consultation often stop here. However, there are more aspects to consultation than the single individual case or the focus of deeper training. While these are valid and important aspects of consultation, consultation can provide so much more to your practice and your life as a Healer. It can result in increased longevity and sense of fulfillment for you in your career and calling as a Healer. It can result in increased completion of treatment with individual clients, yielding more personal satisfaction in your work. It can yield an increased caseload. Good work and positive energy re: your practice often results in increased referrals and new patients finding their way to you. It can also result in increased revenue in your practice - per patient and in your practice over time, due to increased number of patients paying their balances, increased number of patients in your caseload, and/or improved fee structures. Ultimately, consultation can be a powerful source of self-care to you individually. Consultation can counter the isolation that private practice can commonly yield. It can provide a safe haven for you to process the myriad emotions that surface in your counter-transference with patients that can interfere with therapeutic process or in your clear conceptualization of certain cases. As a Health Care Professional, consultation can provide a space in which you can honestly look at the areas in which you experience difficulty or could benefit from some experienced guidance - clinically and practically, as a clinician and if applicable, as a business owner.
The consultation that I provide is highly collaborative and based in the courses that I teach: Dancing the Transference, The Power of Collaborative Treatment Teaming, and Restoring the Healer. The consultation I offer is steeped in the attachment processes of the patient/client based in the intersubjective dynamics of the therapists and her/his patient's transference in the therapy as well as an understanding of our patients as interconnected wholes, mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, and relationally. Those with whom I have had the joy, delight and honor of consulting often have reported clearer and deeper case conceptualization based on these latter foci. Many have also reported increased confidence in their work as a therapist, movement to new developmental phases as a clinician, and improved finances within their practice. Consultation is a powerful form of self-care and a worthy investment in yourself professionally and personally. More info at www.moonstonecenter.com or Email me to schedule an appointment or simply inquire and learn more of how consultation could help you in your own psychotherapy practice. I look forward to connecting with you directly!
Peace,
Elisabeth
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Elisabeth's Speaking Schedule
Come Join Me!
Saturday, March 16, 2013 Dancing the Transference: Honoring the
Relationship Between Therapist and Client
Moonstone Center
6 CEUs
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To Invite Dr. Elisabeth Crim
to Speak or Write
Topics:
Dancing the Transference: Honoring the Relationship Between Therapist
and Client
- Transference: Personality/Attachment Disorders
- Transference: Couples
- Transference: Parents
- Transference: Fellow Treatment Team Members
- Somatic Transference: The Body's Process in Psychotherapy
Power of Collaborative Treatment Teaming: Bridging Complementary-Alternative Therapies with Traditional Mental Health Treatment
- Integrative and Holistic Mental Health Treatment
- Yoga Therapy, Acupuncture, Psychiatry and Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
Restoring the Healer: Exploring Somatic Transference and Compassion Fatigue
- Somatic Transference for the Therapist, Health Care Provider
- Compassion Fatigue, Vicarious and Secondary Trauma, Burnout
- Yoga as Restorative Intervention
The Power of Consultation: Personal and Professional Self-Care
- Individual
- Group
- Collaborative
- Attachment and Transferece-Based
- Practice Building/Maintenance
- Finance/Business Improvement
- Self-Care
For More INFO,
Please Contact Julie Brown,
Dr. Crim's Speaking/Events Manager
[email protected]
310.938.3203