Dear Healing Arts Professional,
Welcome to The Colorado Association of Psychotherapists |
May 2008 President's Message
Dear Members and Friends:
What is a community? Wikipedia provides the following definition:
"In biological terms, a community is a group of interacting organisms sharing an environment. The word community is derived from the Latin communitas (meaning the same), which is in turn derived from communis, which means "common, public, shared by all or many". Communis comes from a combination of the Latin prefix com (which means "together") and the word munis (which has to do with performing services)."
So, I distill that down to a community being a group of like-minded people coming together performing services. Doesn't that sound exactly like all of us?
Communities provide an opportunity for support, nurturing, and growth. The saying, "it takes a village to raise a child", says it all. But that isn't limited to just children, it applies to the entire village. The village, the community, can't survive without everyone helping everyone else.
What if our village was greater than just our families, friends, and clients? What if it was greater than our neighborhood, town, state, country? What if...what if our village was the Earth, and all peoples its children? If we all came together to raise these children, what would it look like?
Recently, I've been reading about intentions and manifesting, primarily from the standpoint of growing my practice. I'm also looking into an intentions-setting group one of our members told me about. Additionally, I completed Insight Seminars Insight I workshop, which was about being heart-centered. So this evening while listening to Iggy Pop's "Wild Child", I was pondering what I might write about for the newsletter. I wondered what sort of world we could create if all of us set our intentions for a world free of hunger, evil, and want, and full of abundance, peace, love, and of course, we can't leave out rock and roll! A community of like-minded people coming together with a common goal of recreating humanity.
Your intentions can start off small and build up to a huge WOW! CAP is a community of like-minded people who have set our intentions to help our fellow man. To do this, we help each other thrive in our practices, however those may look to each of us. Whether it be legislative efforts to protect our right to practice or workshops to educate and enlighten us, CAP is helping to "raise" us. But we can do more. There is much more we can do to create a sense of community, a sense of family, providing support for each of us.
The CAP Board directs CAP's activities but we can't do that without input from you. Without your help, we can't raise the child. As I begin my tenure as President my intentions are that we grow in number, come together not only as a group of therapists but as friends and family, and provide workshops and talks that support you and your practice. And how about some social get togethers! Wouldn't it be wonderful to meet others in CAP? To do this, we need your ideas but most of all, we need your participation.
My challenge to you - help us raise the CAP child so that child can help raise the children of the global village. Together, we can achieve miracles!
Take care.
Ed Robb
President of the Colorado Association of Psychotherapists
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CAP Legislative Update
Greg McHugh (legislative chair), Ellen Brilliant (lobbyist for CAP) and Suzy Walz (CAP vice president), attended the Department of Regulatory Agencies Grievance Board meeting on April 26, 2008. We had been invited by Shelley Hitts, administrator for DoRA, to make a presentation as to address the issue of perceived categorical prohibition of dual relationships for unlicensed psychotherapists and our suggestion for a rule change to address that.
Upon the urging of Shelley, CAP collected emails from the practitioners' community as to whom is being affected by the perceived categorical prohibition of dual relationships within the current mental health statute. These statements were provided to the board.
Greg gave a clear and concise presentation as to how the national codes of ethics referenced in paragraph
12-43-222(10(g) allow that some dual relationships are not conflictual
and may even be beneficial. And further, that the paragraph concerning dual relationships 12-43-222-(1)(i) of the current statute is vague and can be interpreted as a categorical prohibition against all dual relationships. He presented potential ways of rectifying the current situation by enacting a rule change. Greg also gave numerous references to various national professional organizations' codes of ethics which cite how dual relationships should be addressed.
The Grievance Board stated that they would discuss the proposal in private and let us know of their decision. Subsequently they announced that they would not be making the proposed change.
The CAP board is currently weighing our options in moving forward with this issue. CAP may once again look for a sponsor in the next legislative session to have the statute rewritten so that this categorical prohibition against dual relationships, which serves neither the client nor the therapist, may no longer take place in the state of Colorado.
As always, members are encouraged to get involved with CAP and protect your rights to practice. Board meetings are held at The People's House in Denver and are open to ALL members. The next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, May 13th at 7:00 p.m.
Suzy Walz, CAP, Vice President
oohsusana@gmail.com
Greg McHugh, Legislative Chair
gregmchughcht@earthlink.net
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Building Resources to Heal Trauma
Have you suffered something traumatic without being traumatized? If so, you know what it is to be "well-resourced", to have support and safety in your life in good measure. It may have been friends, family, or community, a meaningful spiritual practice or teacher, or a huge oak tree you could lean against when you felt poorly. Whatever it was, it made you feel better. Having such resources in our lives makes us less vulnerable to real damage from harmful events, and makes recovery afterwards proceed much more quickly.
Often our clients are not well-resourced, or were not when they suffered their past wounding. But the good news for them and for us as helping professionals is that helping them build resources today impacts yesterday's traumas. Or, as I'm fond of repeating, "It's never too late to have a happy childhood."
In our first session, even before I knew him and his issues, I asked Ted my basic resourcing question, "What is there in your life, past or present, which makes you feel happy, safe, or empowered." He paused, closed his eyes for 15 seconds, and answered that he loved to remember when he was a young man and had a job at a buffalo ranch. He would walk among them and even though he was aware of the potential danger, he was never attacked, but instead felt that he got some of their power. I said "and as you tell me that, what are you aware of in your body?" If this resource were to be not only a pleasant memory, but a healing force, it was necessary that he fully feel it in his body. He described feelings of relaxation in his chest, of deepening breath, of tingling in his arms, and I saw that his eyes became damp with tears. I knew these were all physiological signs of release, of moving away from a chronic fight-flight or frozen state. For several more minutes, I encouraged him to hold his attention on these sensations and to notice how they shifted as he acknowledged the importance of this experience. We took much of the first session to anchor this as a powerful resource. And even though we had barely touched on his "presenting issues", he left feeling excited and optimistic about our work. And he came back.
Later, when we moved into work on his severe abuse history and his very difficult feelings of helplessness, fear, and anger, I would sometimes remind him of these buffalo and his connection to them, and he could easily access again the feelings which those memories evoked, which helped him to discharge the pent-up anguish stored in his body. He had a place to go in his body and his memory which felt safe and powerful. This made it possible for him to move through the traumas without being re-traumatized, and to gradually integrate and lay them to rest.
Each of you can find ways within your modality to help your clients deepen their experience and sense of resourcing. If you'd like to explore this topic further from the body-centered perspective, a good read is "Crash Course" by Diane Poole and Laurence S. Heller.
Paul Chubbuck, S.E.P.
www.releasingthepast.com |
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Save the Date
The CAP annual meeting and seminar will be Nov. 15, 2008. The topic will be: "Safeguarding Your Private Practice". Be smart. Learn the do's and don'ts to safely work as a non-licensed psychotherapist in Colorado. See you Nov. 15th. Registration information coming soon.
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Free CAP Member Announcements
Members of CAP wishing to announce their workshops or classes to the Membership may do so here.
View member announcements and how to post
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How to join CAP
If you are not a member of CAP, please consider joining us.
More information about CAP
Join CAP
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Free Publicity for Your Practice
Can you write well about your area of expertise? Then spread the word about your practice by contributing an article of approximately 500 words to this CAP newsletter on a topic that would be of general interest to CAP membership, such as the article on Building Resources by Paul Chubbuck in this issue. Your email or website link will be included with the byline.
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CAP Board of Directors
President
Edward Robb, CCHt.
(303)733-9962
ed@edwardcrobb.com
Vice-President
Suzy Walz, RN, BSN, CCHt.
Whole Health Hypnotherapy 1552 Bergen Parkway Evergreen, CO 80439
(303) 674-1191
oohsusana@gmail.com
Treasurer
Greg McHugh
303.995.4276
Fax-303 733.2064
gregmchughcht@earthlink.net
General Board members
Steven Blakely
303-913-8370
Steven.Blakely@Transformations.net
Jennifer Welch
303-393-1062
jensnote@gmail.com
Nancy Harris
303-692-9092
nancy.r.harris@gte.net
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