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Did you miss the BBS-MANDATED  3 CE Telehealth course? 

Telehealth: Law & Ethics, Technology, and Best Practices for Connecting with Your Clients with Dr. Lisa Wenninger, PhD, LPCC, BC-TMH

Catch it on video here, and get your mandated 3 Telehealth CEs.           Return to top

RECAMFT's Mission Statement

The purpose of RECAMFT is to promote and maintain professional competence and integrity with knowledge, innovation, compassion, humor and respect for human dignity and diversity.

We do this by providing opportunities for networking, education and community outreach.

RECAMFT's Racial and Social Justice Pledge

Dear RECAMFT Members:

We are thrilled to share that our recent Law & Ethics event on March 7th was a huge success! It was wonderful to see so many of you in person, and it reminded us how valuable these face-to-face connections are. A huge thank you to the event committee for organizing such a fantastic event. A special shoutout to our President-Elect, Pat Hromalik, who not only orchestrated the event, but also put together the scholarship fund prizes. Your hard work and dedication truly made the event memorable!

Photo below of RECAMFT's March 7, 2025 Law & Ethics by Tara D'Orazio. 

Earlier this month, several of our board members also had the pleasure of attending Drinks with Shrinks at Aqus Café in Petaluma. It was fantastic to connect with more of our members and other clinicians from the broader community. Events like these are a great reminder of the strength and warmth within our professional network.

We also want to acknowledge some important feedback we’ve heard, both at Drinks with Shrinks and beyond. Some therapists have shared that RECAMFT has felt a bit Santa Rosa-focused in the past. Since Santa Rosa is the largest city in our county, this is understandable, but we want to assure you that we are committed to being a resource for all of our members across our chapter’s wide reach. Today, RECAMFT proudly serves therapists in Sonoma, Mendocino, Napa, and Lake counties.

We hear you, and we want you to know that we are committed to making RECAMFT more accessible to everyone. Our goal is to foster a sense of connection and support for all of our members, no matter where you are located.

Thank you for being part of this incredible community. We look forward to seeing you at future events—and as always, we welcome your ideas and feedback on how we can better serve you.

Warmly,

Emily Larkin, LMFT

President, RECAMFT.org

Emily Larkin, LMFT is the President of RECAMFT's Board of Directors. She has a private practice in Sebastopol. 

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Are you creative? Please join us for our Crafting Group!

Bring any craft you like, get on Zoom with us and visit with your colleagues while we knit, sew, paint, draw, cook, create, etc. (Note: No Crafting Circle in April.)

Join us at our next meeting:

• Fri., May 9th, 11:30 am
• Second Friday monthly, 11:30 am
• Register here                    

Call for Submissions for the May 2025 Issue of

The RECAMFT Therapist! 

May is Mental Health and BPD Awareness Month. It is also AAPI and Jewish American Heritage Month. See more here. We especially welcome submissions where awareness themes intersect with mental health. Please send your submission (500 word max) to therapy@recamft.org by the 15th.

Questions? therapy@recamft.org.        Return to top

Welcome back, RECAMFT community! We are so excited to share some of the upcoming monthly CE events.

RECAMFT Zoom presentations

• April 4th - Neurodiversity-Affirmative Therapy with Katy Higgins Lee, LMFT, ZOOM
• May 2nd - Introduction to PACT with Dr. Hans Stahlschmidt, PhD 
  
• June 6th To be announced soon

Are you interested in seeing what we have coming up? Consider microvolunteering with the Programs & Conferences Committee! Microvolunteering opportunities: screening speaker applications; providing support at in person CE events; monitoring Q&A for speakers during monthly Zoom presentations. We are especially looking for a Programs Committee Chairperson.

We look forward to another year of bringing you quality, enriching presentations which support your professional growth and development.

With gratitude,

Gwendolyn Watson, LMFT

Programs Chair

Director at Large

Programs & Conferences Committee

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Members! Your SHORT DESCRIPTION is the most important thing on your profile. Why? Because that shows in our online directory. It matters! Please log in and complete yours today! 

We Need You! Jobs for Awesome Volunteers

Scholarships for Pre-Licensed and

Newly Licensed Members

We’re offering two scholarships to support our pre-licensed and newly licensed members:

• The Joe & Pamela Ward Memorial Scholarship offers three $1,000 awards and a free RECAMFT membership. Deadline: May 17, 2025.

• The Tzedakah Scholarship, in partnership with Therapist Development Center (TDC), offers $250 toward exam prep materials. Winners are drawn monthly through the end of 2025.

Learn more and apply at recamft.org/scholarship    Return to top

Prelicensed Support - 3000 Hour Club

Hello to all RECAMFT clinicians, and a special welcome to all our Prelicensed members!

My name is Nicolette Gottuso. I am an LMFT and a Substance Use Counselor. I have recently joined the Board as a Director at Large and the Prelicensed Chair, 

You are welcome to contact me with your questions and concerns about the road to licensure. Please send me an email via therapy@recamft.org. I look forward to connecting with you! 

Nicolette Gottuso, M.A., LMFT, SUDCC IV-CS

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The Mar. 2025 Board meeting - the Board plus member Brian Crites. Photo by Dr. Laura Strom.

L-R Top: Emily Larkin, President; Dr. Laura Strom, Secretary; Cynthia Psaila, Director at Large (DAL); 

Middle: Brian Crites, LMFT; Pat Hromalik, President Elect; Dr. Jean Hayes, DAL; 

Bottom: Jessica Heaney, DAL; Gwen Watson, DAL, Programs Chair; Dr. Bob Casanova, Past President

• President Emily Larkin welcomed Brian Crites, LMFT, again this month, a member who works with interns at SSU, and thanked him for coming.  Brian acknowledged Law & Ethics as an excellent event, and has been encouraging students to attend our events as networking opportunities. 
• President said the April 11th Board retreat will be held in Petaluma at the offices of Cynthia Psaila in the conference room. She asked the Board to consider reimbursing the CFO's travel expenses to attend the meeting, since CAMFT reimburses their board members for travel. A motion to reimburse up to $400 of travel was unanimously approved. The CFO was not present at this meeting. 
• The Board will hold its annual holiday party on April 13th. The earlier date was canceled due to many members being sick, or out of town. 
• The new honorarium policy was adopted and begins 9/1/2025. 
• President reported the new storage site now has a combination lock which she can provide to any board or committee member who needs to access it. She asked for volunteers on May 4th to clean and organize it.  
• Our current CPA paid the large IRS penalty incurred when they filed our taxes one day late. President Elect and CFO have a lead on a new CPA. 
• President Elect Pat Hromalik reported Law & Ethics made a small profit, thanks to the sponsors who participated. The ticket price we charged did not cover the full price of the ticket. In the future, we need to be sure the full ticket price is covered by what we charge registrants. 

• Director at Large Gwen Watson, who is our Programs Chair, thanked the Board for passing the honorarium policy which will help guide her in her work choosing program speakers for us. 

• Dr. Bob Casanova, Past President, spoke against having any non-clinicians on our listserv. Dr. Laura Strom removed the one non-clinician on the listserv, and will write to let him know the Board has decided only clinician members may join our listserv. It was decided the Bylaws Committee should review the language of the bylaws to see if they need to be adjusted to prevent non-clinicians from joining our events or organization. 
• The Prelicensed Committee has a survey ready to send out to prelicensed members and non-members. 
• The Board was asked to review the Sponsorship pages (here and here) on our website for a discussion at the April meeting. 
• President Elect reported we made $1440 at L&E for our scholarship program. In Jan. we made $850. We needed to raise $1500 annually to continue the program (the Board contributes the other $1500 from reserves), so she is very happy with how well we did. She wants to be sure the scholarships are well advertised because we have had few applications each time, and she would like to see more. 
• The Board discussed the success of Law & Ethics. Dr. Bob encouraged the Board to consider having a large day-long conference annually in both spring and fall. Dr. Laura said the largest event we ever held was the Suicide training in 2019 which had about 220 registrants. Previous Law & Ethics conferences had about 150+ attendees. This year's L&E had just about 100 registrants because we were limited by the size of the hotel space.  

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Featured Member Article

Where Will He Be Ten Years From Now? Introducing Brian Crites, LMFT

By Dr. Jean Hayes, PhD, LMFT, RECAMFT Director at Large

Whenever one of our RECAMFT members joins us in a Board meeting, I am always curious to discover what sparked their interest. When Brian introduced himself, he stated his goal was to help more people in the community. He has a particular passion for mentoring prelicensed and newly licensed MFT therapists.

Brian is currently teaching in the Marriage and Family Therapy Program at USF (Santa Rosa campus) and works at the Santa Rosa Center for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. He is certified in providing cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for anxiety disorders in children, adolescents, and adults, and conducting evidenced-based treatment protocols for obsessive-compulsive disorder, body-focused repetitive behaviors, insomnia, and Tourette’s syndrome. “I am a thinker, and by using this modality of treatment over the last decade, I have seen great success with clients having significant symptom decreases, and improved quality of life.” In addition, he uses the exposure treatment model. He gave examples of this work, including a frightened client, who drove their car over the Golden Gate Bridge as many times as it took until they were able to cross the bridge without being overcome by panic and fear.

I thought of my own client, a pre-teen boy who could not walk his dog, go hiking, or on camping adventures, for fear of encountering spiders. I worked with his parents to educate him on the importance of having insects in our lives. I wondered how Brian's work using exposure would have impacted this child.

I was curious what this active and professionally engaged therapist does in his downtime and for self-care. Surprisingly, Brian responded, “I play the bass in a blue grass band, attend my 8-year old's Little League games, enjoy my other passion - reading about history, and, of course, discuss life with my wife who is a paralegal at Child Protective Services.”

“I wonder where Brian Crites, LMFT, will be in 10 years?”, I pondered. “I think I’ll be writing a chapter in a book, and creating a workbook integrating ACT and CBT”, he responded. I can imagine even more is in store for this active, professional teacher, trainer, and therapist as he continues down an expanding professional and personal path.

Link to our Therapy Groups page and a PDF of current offerings - RECAMFT.ORG/Therapy-Groups

CLICK HERE to learn more about local group offerings, and payment to advertise your group. 

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