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The Redwood Empire Therapist
RECAMFT's Online Newsletter
April 2025
Coming Fri., Apr 4th!
There is an increasing need and demand for therapists to understand the Neurodiversity Paradigm and to implement neurodiversity-affirming care in practice. Increasing numbers of clients are being diagnosed and/or self-identify with Autism and/or ADHD, but most therapists have had little (or no) training in accurately identifying and supporting these clients. Katy Higgins Lee, LMFT is a multiply neurodivergent therapist and clinical supervisor in private practice in Northern California. She has been in private practice for nine years and has been a supervisor at the Lomi Psychotherapy Clinic for five years. She is a CAMFT-approved Continuing Education Provider and offers trainings on neurodiversity, with a focus on Autism, ADHD, and Giftedness. MORE.... | Coming Fri., May 2nd! "Introduction to PACT – The Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy Part 1 – Understanding the Convergences of Developmental Neuroscience, Arousal Regulation and Attachment Theory in Treating Couples"
Presented by Dr. Hans Stahlschmidt, PhD
PACT was developed by Dr. Stan Tatkin, PhD, fusing attachment theory, latest understanding of developmental neuroscience, and human arousal biology. PACT can effectively treat many challenging couples. Dr. Stahlschmidt is the Dean of Students at the PACT |
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Featured member
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
We strive to advocate, educate, collaborate, and strategize for positive racial and social justice change within our membership and our community. | 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
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:
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 |
RECAMFT is committed to equity including addressing structural racism and systemic injustice. We endeavor to be inclusive and value individuals from all ethnicities, ages, races, sexual orientations, genders, languages, abilities, religions, citizenship statuses, and socioeconomic backgrounds into our chapter and into treatment.
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A look at our Law & Ethics event on March 7th, 2025!
Oxford Suites in Rohnert Park was a great spot for this event with lots of good food and fun for all!
We are extremely grateful to our Sponsors for sponsoring our March 7th, 2025 Law & Ethics! |
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FREE to Members - Visit our On-Demand CE Video Library!
Multiple new ONLINE offerings! Find all the latest here (including 6 CEs Law & Ethics)
Check it out! RECAMFT's On-Demand CE Library link: https://recamft.thinkific.com/
Members - you can access recordings of our zoom events from 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2021 in our new on-demand library which has been migrated over to Thinkific (https://recamft.thinkific.com/).
NEW! RECAMFT On-Demand Programs: https://recamft.thinkific.com
NEW! RECAMFT discount codes are posted for members only here: https://www.recamft.org/member-discount-codes (requires sign-in using your RECAMFT member email/password)
NEW! Identifying and Treating Imposter Syndrome, 2 CEs with Stevon Lewis, LMFT https://recamft.thinkific.com/courses/2025-02-imposter
NEW! Understanding Hoarding Disorder, 1.5 CEs with Dr. Robin Zasio, PsyD, LCSW https://recamft.thinkific.com/courses/2025-hoarding-ondemand
Law & Ethics: How to Write a 10-Minute Treatment Plan, 3 CEs, with Barbara Griswold, LMFT. https://recamft.thinkific.com/courses/2022-law-and-ethics-treatment-plan
Law & Ethics: What Should be in Your Notes, But Probably Isn't, 3 CEs, with Barbara Griswold, LMFT. https://recamft.thinkific.com/courses/2022-06-15-law-ethics-progress-notes
LGBTQ+: Affirmative Family Therapy with Gender Diverse People and Their Loved Ones, 2 CEs, with Dr. Shawn Giammattei, PhD https://recamft.thinkific.com/courses/2024-transgender-families
Working with Dissociative Disorders & Plural Communities, 4 CEs, with Serenity Serseción, PhD, LMFT https://recamft.thinkific.com/courses/2023-12-DID
LGBTQ+: How Sexuality Influences the Clinical Picture for Female Clients, 2 CEs with Dr. Jenn Kennedy, PhD, LMFT https://recamft.thinkific.com/courses/2024-09-06-sexuality-female-clients
Three Underlying Beliefs That Cause Anxiety and How to Change Them, a CBT Approach, 2 CEs, with Jennifer Shannon, LMFT https://recamft.thinkific.com/courses/2024-06-3-Beliefs-Cause-Anxiety
Members can watch the video, pass the test, fill out the evaluation, and download your certificate. It's that easy! You can earn CEs for any recorded event if you didn't already earn CEs from the live event.
Welcome back, RECAMFT community! We are so excited to share some of the upcoming monthly CE events. RECAMFT Zoom presentations
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. Programs Chair Director at Large Programs & Conferences Committee
We need help with
Please send an email to therapy@recamft.org if you can help. | Scholarships for Pre-Licensed andNewly Licensed Members |
Members! Your SHORT DESCRIPTION is the most important thing on your profile. Why? Because that shows in our 
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Upcoming events
| Featured member
If you are not currently enrolled in the listserv, please email therapy@recamft.org and ask to be added. You have the option of setting up your account to be
After you have been added to the listserv, you can change the way you receive the emails to any of the above choices. In Gmail the emails will appear under your Forums tab. To send an email to the listserv, simply address your email to recamft@groups.io If you do not want to be on our listserv, you can delete your account or write to therapy@recamft.org and ask to not be a part of the listserv. But we urge you to give it a try. You are missing out on a ton of meaningful collaboration with your colleagues. We hope you will enjoy being part of our online community! |
Our listserv has around 400 members on it, and is active daily with great conversations, resources, offerings, in search of, books, movies, office rentals, jobs, internships, etc. You can view the home page of our listserv at
Contact therapy@recamft.org to advertise a job. Featured member | 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
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.
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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.
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Not consultation, just a great way to get some ideas about how to handle your sticky case. Friendly and open group. Learn more here.
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Book Review:
What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
by Stephanie Foo
Reviewed by Gwen Watson, LMFT,
RECAMFT Director at Large, Programs Chair
"NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A searing memoir of reckoning and healing by acclaimed journalist Stephanie Foo, investigating the little-understood science behind complex PTSD and how it has shaped her life"
"ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, NPR, Mashable, She Reads, Publishers Weekly"
If you’re anything like me, you have a bookshelf of clinical books that you’ve bought with enthusiasm and optimism, and over the years have struggled to chip away at. There are so many insightful and inspiring books by fellow therapists to read. However, when this book was recommended to me, I decided to dog-ear the pages of my clinical books, and make space for this memoir instead. The opportunity to read a memoir of a client’s journey through a challenging childhood, and follow her along her journey through different types of therapy felt poignant to me. I wanted to step into the client’s perspective of the therapy journey, and pause on absorbing all the clinicians’ case studies.
The author describes a challenging childhood, with abuse and neglect that was largely hidden from the public eye, and held up by a veil of perfectionism and high-achievement. I’ll be honest, some of the accounts were quite activating for my nervous system to read. Still, it was valuable to remember how our clients experience and make sense of trauma in her words, versus how a clinician might conceptualize an experience for a case study. Reading the arc of her story supported my clinical work as much as, perhaps more, than absorbing another clinician’s perspective on how to support trauma processing. I bore witness to how she navigated her attachment ruptures, the strategies she used to tolerate them, and the resistance she brought to her early days in therapy. It wasn’t that the elements of her story surprised me – I’ve heard similar themes and experiences from my own clients – it’s the level of honesty and insight she shares about her inner monologue contrasting with the public facing responses. It serves as a reminder for us clinicians that “meeting our clients where they’re at” doesn’t equate with taking their words at face value. Foo illustrates beautifully how she intellectualized her pain, and responded to well meaning therapists by telling them what they wanted to hear instead of sharing her authentic experience. She recounts how her early experience with therapists included “Good Will Hunting” types of therapy scenes with therapists reiterating to her that the abuse wasn’t her fault. She would parrot the words back to them, and pretend to agree (like many of our people-pleasing “well-behaved” clients). However, she shares, “I was a void when I said that. A voice and a body reading facts from a leaflet.” (pg. 110).
Stephanie writes about her experience as an adult to decide to engage in EMDR therapy, and the powerful experience she has in processing her trauma through this alternative to talk therapy. She is skeptical at first, and doesn’t understand why it enables her to access her emotions and build profound insights, but nevertheless she leans in. As an EMDR therapist myself, I understand her initial skepticism. I resonated with her surprise that holding alternating buzzers in your hands allows a shift out of intellectualizing defenses and into the raw emotions you’ve been aching to release. Reading about her first hand account of EMDR has been a gift for me as an EMDR therapist.
I’m not done with the book yet, so I won’t include any spoilers. However, I am touched by the experience I am having as a therapist, reading this memoir and stepping into the felt experience that she has as a client. I’m going to make more space for memoirs on my bookshelf going forward. They offer something poignant and sacred for us as clinicians. Even if they don’t count for CEs, I’m finding they are well worth my time.
Gwendolyn Watson, LMFT, has a private practice in Sebastopol, CA. She is the Programs Chair and a Director at Large on the RECAMFT Board.
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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Thank you for reading this month's newsletter! RECAMFT is great because of involved members like you!! |
Are you looking for help? Find therapists offering free natural disaster and crisis sessions here. Please check out MySonomaStrong.com. Visit the NAMI Warmline. Take a trauma-informed yoga class. We will recover together! ¿Buscas ayuda? Encuentre terapeutas que ofrezcan sesiones gratuitas de crisis y desastres naturales aquí. Visite MySonomaStrong.com. Visite la NAMI Warmline. Toma una clase de yoga informada sobre el trauma. ¡Nos recuperaremos juntos!
Redwood Empire Chapter of California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists |
