In our roles as therapists,
how do we navigate the ever-increasing sorrows of the world?
How can we tend to our own grief
while spending so much of our day supporting others?
how do we navigate the ever-increasing sorrows of the world?
How can we tend to our own grief
while spending so much of our day supporting others?
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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.”
This is not your typical consult group.
In this upcoming clinical collective for therapists, we will:
- Merge the idea of radical grief and loss with social justice.
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We’ll rise to the call of grief activist Malkia Devich Cyril, who asks us as healers to consider the “capacity of grief and grief narratives to transform and change our conditions.” This happens through considering the concept of radical loss as the “ability to move grief in the direction of justice.” From this, Cyril gives us our mission for these trying times: “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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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.* |
Each 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
- In-person: October 8 - December 17 from 1:30 - 3 p.m. PST
- Online: October 9 - December 18 from 9 - 10:30 a.m. PST
- Sharing of resources and knowledge among group members
This is the first of two 12-week series. Series 1 will cover Gates 1,2, and 3 of Weller’s model. Series 2, which will begin in January, will cover his 4th and 5th gates of grief.
The group will provide a safe and supportive space to:
Outline of first series (a more detailed outline will be provided once you are registered):
The 12 weeks will be organized into 6 segments, which will include a pre-recorded class, assigned readings, and a live experiential consult-support group on alternating weeks.
Segment I: Evoking the vessel, igniting the flame, entering the terrain
Segment II: Entering Gates 1 and 2: Love, Loss, Shame, and Redemption
Segment III: Reclamation and Witnessing as Healing
Segment IV: Entanglement: Nurturing a Vessel to Navigate the Sorrows of the World
Segment V: Sorrows of the World Part II: Reverence, Reciprocity, and Reclamation
Segment VI: Reflecting on the Journey: Synthesis, awakening, and tending the fire
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.
Outline of first series (a more detailed outline will be provided once you are registered):
The 12 weeks will be organized into 6 segments, which will include a pre-recorded class, assigned readings, and a live experiential consult-support group on alternating weeks.
Segment I: Evoking the vessel, igniting the flame, entering the terrain
- State of affairs: a basic overview of grief theory and practice in our culture and in our field
- Basic introduction to radical grief frameworks
- Review of Francis Weller’s 5 gates of grief
- Delving into the 1st gate: Everything we love we will lose
- Introduction to the concept of the vessel
Segment II: Entering Gates 1 and 2: Love, Loss, Shame, and Redemption
- Tending to the vessel: experiential exercises to gauge our process/what is stirring/forming
- Review of Weller’s 1st gate of grief
- Introduction to Weller’s 2nd gate of grief: The places in us that have not known love
Segment III: Reclamation and Witnessing as Healing
- Deepening into the 2nd gate
- Shame, trauma, and collective loss
- Outposts, predators, and reframing the margins as places of justice and liberation
- Tending to the vessel: Microrituals to explore the 2nd gate
Segment IV: Entanglement: Nurturing a Vessel to Navigate the Sorrows of the World
- Introduction to the 3rd gate of grief: The sorrows of the world
- Understanding the medicine of entanglement
- Tending to the vessel: Microrituals and exercises to explore the 3rd gate
Segment V: Sorrows of the World Part II: Reverence, Reciprocity, and Reclamation
- Exploring how to grieve for and with the Earth
- How do the sorrows of the world manifest in our lives and the lives of our clients?
- Building a bridge: A preview of the second series; reflections on what has been sparked
- Tending to the vessel: Experiential exercises
Segment VI: Reflecting on the Journey: Synthesis, awakening, and tending the fire
- Reviewing the journey thus far
- Fostering an intentional and mindful closing to the first series
- Noticing shifts in the vessel: What has awakened in us and in our clinical work?
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?
Sign up for a FREE INTRODUCTION TO THE PRACTICE OF VESSELING
LIVE ON ZOOM
SEPTEMBER 19 6-7 P.M. PST
Sign up for a FREE INTRODUCTION TO THE PRACTICE OF VESSELING
LIVE ON ZOOM
SEPTEMBER 19 6-7 P.M. PST
Details:
- Cost: $750 for 12-week series if paid in full, or 3 installments of $265. Sliding scale may be available for those in need. Please 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. Members are expected to pay whether they can attend each group or not. In essence, you are signing up for a "membership" to this collective.
- Eligibility: Open to licensed therapists, social workers, and other helping professionals, as well as AMFTs*. 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.
- 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.
In-person meetings will be held every other Tuesday from 1:30 - 3 p.m. PST.
Dates: 10/8, 10/22, 11/5, 11/19, 12/3, 12/17
Online meetings will be held every other Wednesday from 9 -10:30 a.m PST.
Dates: 10/9, 10/23, 11/6, 11/20, 12/4, 12/18 - 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.
*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.