In our roles as therapists,
how do we navigate the ever-increasing sorrows of the world?
How can we tend to our own grief and outrage
while spending so much of our day supporting others?
How can radical grief perspectives connect us to collective healing and deepen our clinical work in these dystopian times?
How can we protect our joy and honor our own humanness as wounded healers?
how do we navigate the ever-increasing sorrows of the world?
How can we tend to our own grief and outrage
while spending so much of our day supporting others?
How can radical grief perspectives connect us to collective healing and deepen our clinical work in these dystopian times?
How can we protect our joy and honor our own humanness as wounded healers?
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Inspired by psychotherapist and soul activist Francis Weller, I am captivated by the concept of a vessel - a secure container that holds and nurtures the deep work needed to process both our own and our clients’ experiences of individual and collective sorrows.
Weller describes the vessel as a space where profound therapeutic change can occur. |
What resonates with me deeply is the dual role we play as therapists: we are both vessels and the creators of the vessels we provide for our clients. This is serious work, with profound implications. It takes time and care and compassion--for our own souls as well as our clients'. Weller invites us to “slowly build a vessel spacious enough to contain all the wild movements of a soul in grief.”
Consultation rooted in radical grief, depth psychological, and deep ecology perspectives that . . .
Recognizes your humanity as an essential part of who you are as a therapist--a part that often is neglected or rendered to the margins.
Introduces concepts from radical grief, deep ecology, and depth psychology to evoke more of a soul-based focus to your work with clients.
Equips you with the tools and resources you need to navigate this current world with your clients.
Introduces concepts from radical grief, deep ecology, and depth psychology to evoke more of a soul-based focus to your work with clients.
Equips you with the tools and resources you need to navigate this current world with your clients.
Grief Activist Malkia Devich Cyril reminds us: “We need new skills, we need new techniques, we need new ways of understanding the world. We need a grief-informed approach to change.”
- Use the metaphor of the vessel to explore the intersections of our humanness with our therapeutic identity.
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During live meetings, we will co-create our own vessel to engage our humanness, which often gets eclipsed by helper and caregiver roles. As trained and educated therapists, professional identity can sometimes overshadow our being human, cutting us off from our own vulnerabilities and experiences in an effort to seek perfection or maintain a sense of control.
Our live meetings will offer:
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Pricing
Contributing Tier$750
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Balanced Tier$650
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Community Access Tier$550
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All tiers give you the same experience within the program.
Please take the time to read how to determine your tier.
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The Practice of Vesseling: A Clinical Collective to Deepen Into the Therapeutic Self is an experiential consult-study-support group that will pair the ancient symbol of the vessel with the framework of radical grief and loss to explore the clinical realms we travel through as therapists in a world of collective sorrow.
This group is open to licensed therapists, social workers, and other helping professions as well as associate marriage and family therapists and pre-licensed professionals.* |
The Collective is portioned into three levels:
Module I: Forming the vessel and stepping into the terrain of grief and loss
This 12-week series will help us build the vessel of the group and introduce us to Francis Weller's first three gates of grief and loss. Click here for an outline of this series.
Module II: Keeping the vessel warm as we trek deeper into the wilderness of radical grief
In this 12-week series, we will continue to fortify our vessel as a group and journey through Francis's 4th and 5th gate of grief. (Please note: Part I is a pre-requisite for Part II)
Module III: The Vessel--A Clinical Collective for Ongoing Support and Connection
This is the last phase of our group, where we will move forward as a long-term consult-support group. We will vision this stage together, manifesting an ongoing community for us to stay connected in consultation, reflection, and sharing. Annual in-person and online gatherings, grief rituals, and other community-building events will be made exclusive to all members who reach this phase of the collective.
Each of the first two 12-week series will include the following:
Module I: Forming the vessel and stepping into the terrain of grief and loss
This 12-week series will help us build the vessel of the group and introduce us to Francis Weller's first three gates of grief and loss. Click here for an outline of this series.
Module II: Keeping the vessel warm as we trek deeper into the wilderness of radical grief
In this 12-week series, we will continue to fortify our vessel as a group and journey through Francis's 4th and 5th gate of grief. (Please note: Part I is a pre-requisite for Part II)
Module III: The Vessel--A Clinical Collective for Ongoing Support and Connection
This is the last phase of our group, where we will move forward as a long-term consult-support group. We will vision this stage together, manifesting an ongoing community for us to stay connected in consultation, reflection, and sharing. Annual in-person and online gatherings, grief rituals, and other community-building events will be made exclusive to all members who reach this phase of the collective.
Each of the first two 12-week series will include the following:
- Assigned readings on Francis Weller’s 5 Gates of Grief from his book The Wild Edge of Sorrow, as well as from other grief therapists and activists
- 6 Pre-recorded 1-hour segments, which will include:
- Highlights from the readings as well as other resources to dive deeper into the material
- Additional resources to grow your toolbox.
- 6 1.5-hour clinical consultation meetings, held every other week, with the option for online or in-person meetings. See below for current cohort dates.
- Sharing of resources and knowledge among group members
The group will provide a safe and supportive space to:
The culture of the live consult groups:
All members are asked to honor confidentiality: what is shared in the group stays in the group.
Members are encouraged to come to our live meetings ready to share. That said, not everyone may have the opportunity to discuss their cases in one particular meeting. Each meeting will have a segment dedicated to tending to our vessel through experiential activities/micro-rituals, and another segment for sharing of case-related material. These segments will be managed based on the questions: What are we needing today as humans? As therapists? What is alive right now in the group?
Within the larger arc of our group, all members will be engaged in a state of learning and reflection. I will tend to the vessel of our group by tracking over time how we are doing with giving everyone an opportunity to be seen and heard as both humans and therapists.
All clinically related issues (cases, business nuts and bolts, transference, projections, personal associations with grief and loss, etc.) are welcome in the live consult-support meetings, as well as any theoretical orientation and style/approach.
In addition, each consult meeting will serve as a vessel to host what wishes to be seen and heard from the field of radical grief. This ensouled data will be woven into the conceptualization of cases and clinical needs and inquiries presented.
- Increase literacy on grief and loss from a radical perspective by incorporating an awareness of systemic issues that contribute to our clients’ suffering, as well as our own;
- Understand grief as a portal to joy, liberation, and community engagement for both ourselves and our clients;
- Collaborate with other skilled clinicians through case consultation and exploring transference and other “unseen” elements to the therapeutic process to deepen into our work;
- Receive support on other issues that impact our therapeutic work, including our own encounters with grief and loss;
- Be companioned with navigating the nuts and bolts of clinical work—setting fees, navigating feelings around marketing, being a therapist and a human, etc.
The culture of the live consult groups:
All members are asked to honor confidentiality: what is shared in the group stays in the group.
Members are encouraged to come to our live meetings ready to share. That said, not everyone may have the opportunity to discuss their cases in one particular meeting. Each meeting will have a segment dedicated to tending to our vessel through experiential activities/micro-rituals, and another segment for sharing of case-related material. These segments will be managed based on the questions: What are we needing today as humans? As therapists? What is alive right now in the group?
Within the larger arc of our group, all members will be engaged in a state of learning and reflection. I will tend to the vessel of our group by tracking over time how we are doing with giving everyone an opportunity to be seen and heard as both humans and therapists.
All clinically related issues (cases, business nuts and bolts, transference, projections, personal associations with grief and loss, etc.) are welcome in the live consult-support meetings, as well as any theoretical orientation and style/approach.
In addition, each consult meeting will serve as a vessel to host what wishes to be seen and heard from the field of radical grief. This ensouled data will be woven into the conceptualization of cases and clinical needs and inquiries presented.
Want to learn more?
Stay tuned to this website for future Free Intros!
Stay tuned to this website for future Free Intros!
Details:
- Cost: $750 for 12-week series if paid in full, or 3 installments of $265. Sliding scale is available. Please feel free to contact me to inquire further.
- Refund Policy: Due to the small nature of the group, refunds will be granted only up to two weeks before the group starts.
- Eligibility: Open to licensed therapists, social workers, and other helping professionals, as well as AMFTs and pre-licensed professionals*. Because this is not a therapy group, out-of-state practitioners are welcome to join the online offerings. The in-person group will meet at my office in Santa Barbara, CA. The three phases of the Clinical Collective are meant to build upon each other, bringing added warmth and energy to the vessel we are forming together. Members are encouraged to complete the first two 12-week series in succession. Modules I and II will be offered cyclically throughout the year for members who may need more time between series. Of course, members are welcome to complete only Module I if they wish. Please note that members will not be eligible for Module II until Module I is completed, and the last phase of the collective (The Vessel) is only open to members who have completed Modules I and II.
- Inclusivity: I commit to fostering a welcoming space for members who embody diverse identities. All genders, races, classes, and non-dominant identities are welcome. Members also commit to being compassionately curious and engaged in the co-creation of a vessel safe and strong enough to hold the intersections of oppression and privilege present in the group, with an understanding that every gathering mirrors the larger collective we all live in.
- Location: There are two ways to take part in this group. While all supplementary material will be posted in an online classroom, our group meetings can be attended either in-person at my office in Santa Barbara OR online.
- Collective Size: Each group is limited to 6 participants
- Joining Process: Members must go through a simple screening process before joining the group. Start by clicking the "apply here" button below.
Current Cohort Dates: Please check in regularly for updates.
April 2025--Screening and Registration is OPEN
In-person meetings will be held every other Tuesday from 1:30 - 3 p.m.
Dates: 4/8, 4/22, 5/6, 5/20, 6/3, 6/17
Online meetings will be held every other Friday from 11:30 a.m.- 1 p.m.
Dates: 4/11, 4/25, 5/9, 5/23, 6/6, 6/20
Pre-recorded classes will be released every other Monday beginning March 31, 2025.
Module I September 2025 Cohort--Get on the Waiting List!
Beginning the week of 9/8/2025
Dates and times TBA: Stay tuned!
If you are interested in future dates and alternative times, please indicate that on the screening form. You can also contact me at [email protected]
*This group is not intended as a substitute for clinical supervision. AMFTs must be in supervision and have BOTH 1 year of post-graduate clinical experience AND a minimum of 2000 hours accumulated toward licensure.