by Dominique Yarritu, PhD, LMFT
Fall 2022 Newsletter

Dear Colleagues,

Yesterday (22 September) was Fall equinox, that second time in the year when day and night are of equal length and in perfect balance, very temporarily. I was inspired by Rev. Connie Habash's newsletter speaking of the impermanence of that balancing act we expect to create and sustain in our lives. It reminded me, after a very busy and work-oriented summer, that "we are not intended to be in perfect balance all the time." After a couple of months of unusual heat it feels good to be on the other side of summer and feel the sun at a lower angle. I hope you had a more relaxing summertime and you will have plenty of quality time to enjoy the cooler weather.

Last month, Jacqui Gerritsen, our Past President elected to step off the board and I would like, here, to thank her for five years of unwavering commitment to our chapter. We are still looking for volunteers and board members so we hope that you will consider joining our team! When I finally got my MFT license, I thought I would never volunteer: the practicum and internships had felt like I had given my time and energy away. However, there is something very nourishing and rewarding to be of service and part of a group of like-minded individuals who are offering the most precious commodity they have: time. 

The overall theme of this issue is diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as well as social justice. Our community focus is Perry Clark, LMFT who tells us about his experience working with men, the LGBTQ+ community, as a black male therapist. We have a new (DEI) column featuring Ellie Vargas, LCSW who speaks about her work doing immigration evaluations. On the topic of social justice, we are featuring Dr. Sherry Wang sharing her views on how clinicians can include social justice and advocacy into their clinical work.

We hope that you will enjoy these offerings! Please check our next presentations here. 
As usual, we look forward to hearing from you and getting any feedback.

Be well,

Dominique

Fall 2022 Newsletter

by Dominique Yarritu, PhD, LMFT
Back to Summer 2022 Newsletter

Dear Colleagues!

We are coming up on summer, a time for adventures, opportunities for play and greater lightness, the apex of the year when soon we will reach the longest day of the year. It is also a period of growth when many flowers are coming to full bloom and the baby animals born in the spring are in exploration mode. Some of our plans for this year are coming to fruition: we held our first in-person hybrid luncheon on May 20th! Maureen Johnston, LMFT presented Supporting the Supporters: Understanding and Assisting the Families and Friends of Gender Expansive Kids, Teens, & Adults at Michael's at Shoreline in Mountain View. People were in person at Michael's eating lunch, and people also joined online. All our luncheons and workshops are organized as hybrid offerings this year and we hope to continue using this modality.  This way, people who feel comfortable can attend in person while those who cannot be there in person or prefer to listen from the comfort of their home or office can join online.

It was such a pleasure to be back at Michael’s after a long hiatus. Most of all, it was a treat to get to meet some of you in person… you know, place a face on a name, and get together with colleagues and friends. After a couple of years doing only online presentations, getting this first in-person meeting was a feat and for this I would like to specifically recognize the work of our board members Vanessa Ventura, Brandon Hoshiko, and Liliana Ramos. We were also aided by chapter member Justin Gillespie and our chapter coordinator, Nancy Orr. You can see pictures of this event HERE. All in all it was a success and we are looking forward to the next in-person hybrid luncheons and workshops scheduled for the rest of the year. See the list HERE.

We continue to seek various ways to support the community. We have added a Black Therapist support group that will be held every fourth Saturday of the month, starting on 25 June at 10:00am, led by Erica Jenkins, LMFT. As some of you have noticed, we have been sending e-blasts to celebrate various occasions, either national/global recognitions of communities (LGBTQ+, Asian, Veterans Day) or spiritual (Eid, Passover) to name a few. I would like to thank those of you who have reached out with feedback and particularly those who have caught our mishaps. We are exploring, and learning as we go, to be more inclusive and we may very well not use the right words. We appreciate your efforts to support our willingness to create change and expand our reach.

Have a beautiful, sunny, and breezy summer!

Back to Summer 2022 Newsletter

by Dominique Yarritu, PhD, LMFT

Back to winter 2021 newsletter
Dominique Yarritu, PhD, MFT, 2022 Board President

Before I reveal to you our vision for the chapter in 2022, I would like to do a quick review of what we have accomplished this year. 

There were two priorities: fill out the open seats on the board and getting to know you, the membership.  In the last 8 months, we have confirmed five directors and we are still looking to fill out a few more positions, the most pressing ones being treasurer and director-at-large.  We have created opportunities to meet with you in person while following CDC and county Covid  requirements: we met 4 Saturdays in summer and fall for Coffee Talks, which were quite lovely as we created friendly professional connections.  We found out we have poets and writers in our community; some of you have published books, we learned about the diversity of your practices, your ideas, your involvement in various therapeutic activities, and your interests.  Many of you offered suggestions for our chapter.  These meetings were rich and allowed us to take the pulse of our community.  We kept up with the Saturday online socials for those of you eager to network remotely; to these we added art-related activities, which were graciously provided by two of our members.  We added one support group for experienced therapists and explored the idea of providing support for owners of group practices.  In the background, we started to streamline our processes and brainstormed about what we intend to provide next year in terms of events, support.  We continue to look for ways to to enhance our presence in the community, and develop our message and the position of our chapter in terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion.  We have reached out outside of our membership to provide you with relevant and engaging online events and articles in the newsletter.

For 2022, we have five main objectives: continue to fill the open positions on the board, incentivize members to take on positions in various committees, increase our membership, offer a wide variety of luncheons, 3hr- and daylong workshops, and expand our outreach in terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion.  To increase our membership, we envision creating connections with local universities, agencies, supervisors, and clinical directors.  We will reach out to current CAMFT members who are not chapter members through various marketing events.  Our aim is to connect with the new generation of therapists and provide them with a place where, outside of school or work environment, they can mix with peers and potentially mentors, create durable connections, and find various types of support.  We intend to reach out to the community of therapists at large, currently non-members, and advertise our offerings and the state of our chapter.  With time, we plan on providing more support in business development for budding and experienced therapists, for those who decide to make the move to solo or group practice for example.

In terms of programs, we are working on filling out the calendar with luncheons and workshops of various lengths.  We aim at promoting the talents of our members: some of you have written books, have various artistic skills, and fascinating therapeutic approaches that others in our group would benefit from hearing about.  One goal is for our chapter to become a resourceful place for our membership and offer those learning and growth opportunities right here: your membership dues at work!  Any new Covid-restrictions aside, we are planning on resuming in-person programs while following CDC and county recommendations, starting at Michael’s in Mountain View for the first part of the year, and then at Los Gatos Lodge and other venues around the bay starting in the second half of the year.  The majority of our programs will be hybrid (in-person and livestream) and recorded for those of you unable to make it the day of the presentation.  We are working on adding longer programs on weekends, mostly Saturdays, for those of you wanting to meet in person but working on Fridays.  We are brainstorming ideas about other ways to providing means to connect in various settings and other formats. We are looking at ways to incentivize active volunteer participation from the membership. We also welcome your suggestions and will continue to probe you via short surveys throughout the year.

In a nutshell, we are committed to creating more visibility for our diverse community, doing more outreach to various groups, and providing support to those whose voice remains unheard.  As an already diverse board in terms of ethnicity, professional, socio-economic, and citizenship backgrounds, we aim at embracing and welcoming members regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender identities, gender expressions, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, disabilities, religion, regional background, citizenship, status, nationality, or any other diverse identities.  In doing so, we hope to create a chapter that reflects the beautiful diversity of our region.

Overall, our vision is a dynamic, energetic, and strong chapter in our community offering meaningful ways to connect with colleagues from various horizons.

back to winter 2021 newsletter

Back to Winter 2021 Newsletter

by Jacqui Gerritsen, LMFT

Greetings and Happy Holidays to you all.

This is my final column as chapter President. I want to thank you for your support over the past 4 years. I have enjoyed meeting and getting to know a lot of you, and for those I have not met, I look forward to meeting you in the future. I am also looking forward to an exciting year in 2022 with Dominique Yarritu as President and a new board. I know she will work hard and will bring her many skills and talents to the job! As I have worked with her over the past year, I am confident she will take the Santa Clara Valley chapter of CAMFT to new heights.

We have many exciting things planned for 2022. First off, we will be offering hybrid events next year starting with the January luncheon: there will be live-streaming options for those of you not able to come in-person and we will continue to offer recordings of all our events. We are returning to Michaels at Shoreline, where I understand they have done some remodeling during the pandemic. I am excited to see what changes they have made. The first luncheon will be held on Friday January 28th, titled The Athlete’s Mindset: How to help normalize mental health in the athletic community, presented by Megan Hankins-Maldonado.

Wishing you warm and relaxing holidays.

Jacqui

Back to Fall 2021 Newsletter

by Jacqui Gerritsen, LMFT

Greetings and Happy Fall! I hope you all were able to enjoy your summer, and get out and do something fun this year, safely of course. Whatever it was, I hope it was relaxing and reinvigorating. Personally, I was invited to go to Georgia and South Carolina for a few days and was shocked at the number of trees they have, they are everywhere. Of course they don’t have the amazing food and weather we have, so there is a trade off.

In this issue, we are talking about psychedelic-assisted therapy. Psychedelic-assisted therapy is becoming mainstream, more widely advertised in the media, and is generating a high level of interest.  It involves using psychedelic medicines in combination with talk therapy and the guidance of an experienced and trained therapist. Research studies show promise that this combination of psychedelics and talk therapy can be especially effective for PTSD, depression and anxiety, and addiction. Research is ongoing to determine if it might be helpful in treating autism, smoking cessation and many other conditions. While this may seem outside of our comfort zone for many of us, introducing this leading edge approach to therapy seems timely. The Bay Area is a hot spot for this research, with the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) headquartered in Santa Cruz, and many other not-so-well-known clinics and organizations already providing these services. We wanted to give you a peak at this area in our current issue. Please read on.

The SCV-CAMFT board is continuing to add new members. In this issue, you will meet Genevieve Altwer, LMFT, who is joining as the Director of Membership/Outreach. We are excited about the energy and new ideas our latest board members are bringing to our organization. We hope you will get a chance to meet some of them in person soon.

Over the summer, members had the opportunity to meet in person at 3 coffee shop gatherings Coffee Talks, hosted by board members: one each in June, July and August. The location is different each month to provide members with easier access to this new activity. Members came together for a free cup of coffee or tea of their choice, talked about their practices, enjoyed connecting or reconnecting. People expressed how nice it was just to BE together. We have another in-person Coffee Talk scheduled for Saturday, September 25 at Sues Gallery Cafe in Saratoga (9-11am). Also, we are planning an in-person "Meet and Greet" opportunity specially for owners of group practices. The first meeting is scheduled on Sunday, October 3 at Blvd Coffee in San Jose, (10am-12pm). 

We have a CEU luncheon scheduled online for October 8, from 12:00-1:30, on working with South Asian Women in Therapy. SCV-CAMFT member Moitreyee Chowdhury, LMFT, LPCC, will share about her own journey to becoming a therapist. The main focus of the presentation will be on providing culturally-informed services to South Asian immigrant women in the US—in particular, first generation immigrant South Asian women. You can register here. See our website to register for other scheduled events for this Fall, including Barbara Griswold, LMFT, on October 22 for What's missing from your documentation: Writing great progress notes.  

We are also starting to get programming in place for next year and we have some exciting speakers. We’ll be happy to unveil these upcoming events as soon as we can.

Take good care of yourselves. We continue to be an important part of helping each other and our clients through these strange and difficult times. Your own self-care will enable you to do that.

Best Wishes,
Jacqui Gerritsen

Back to Fall 2021 Newsletter

Back to Summer 2021 Newsletter

by Jacqui Gerritsen, LMFT

Jacqui has been licensed since 2007. She joined the SCV-CAMFT board in 2015, initially as the Communication and Technology Director. She has a private practice in Palo Alto and San Mateo and is certified in TEAM-CBT level 2. She works with teens and adults and uses both a family systems model as well as a supportive, humanistic approach.

Greetings, all! As we move into summer, we hope you will have an opportunity to do some traveling or self care to decompress from the past 16 months of isolation. Personally, I am going to Tahoe later this month and very much looking forward to it. 

The Governor has announced that on June 15 the mask mandate will be lifted with the exception of a few places including Healthcare settings. How does this impact our practices? Many of us are getting requests to return to our offices. Are you ready to go back to in-person sessions and are you comfortable seeing patients with masks? Personally, I am planning a hybrid practice going forward. I plan to begin seeing a few vaccinated clients in the office (without masks). I would eventually like to have 1-2 days a week in my physical office. But many of my clients are very happy with Telehealth, so I will continue to offer this option. 

This past March we were pleased to have Tiffany McLain of www.heytiffany.com present on Working with Fees in a Clinical Situation. She was a dynamic and energetic presenter, whose content was pertinent to our work. If you missed her presentation and want to see it please contact Nancy Orr, our Chapter Coordinator, at mail@scv-camft.org and she will send you the link. I joined her Lean In Make Bank community and I can vouch for the effect it has had on me personally. I am getting more comfortable talking about fees with clients. And I am also reaching out more to the nation-wide community of therapists who are in the Lean In Make Bank community. This community is my favorite part, you can talk to people and know they are going through the same things that you are. I have a specific goal of what I want my earnings to be this year (which is new for me). And the goal of the training is to increase your income by 30-50% in the first year. This is about knowing what we are worth, asking for what we need. There is no shame in asking to get paid for the work that we do.

Coming up this summer we have our next online social on June 19 hosted by Ursula Jorgensen. We are calling it Art Therapy Encore, because her first online social offering Art Therapy sold out!  So this is your chance if you missed the first one.  Space is limited so sign up early. On 17 July, Phyllis Klein, a certified poetry therapist will lead an experiential workshop, Writing for Healing, on the therapeutic use of poetry in groups. We hope to see you there as well! Space will be limited to afford as many participants the time to share their creation. Sign up early! We will also have a luncheon training on August 27 by Kathryn Ford on Couples Therapy. 

You may have received a blast email letting you know that we are continuing our efforts to get to know you, members of our community, better. So, we are planning on meeting with those of you interested in a free cup of coffee or tea at your favorite cafe. Learn more HERE, stay tuned for dates, times, and locations around the Bay.

On September 17 we are pleased to announce the return of Dave Jensen for our Law and Ethics Workshop. At this point we are still unclear whether it will be in person or virtual: stay tuned for details as things open up. 

I hope you stay well and healthy, and I look forward to seeing you all in person again. Hopefully in September at the Law and Ethics Workshop!

Jacqui Gerritsen
President SCV-CAMFT

Back to Summer 2021 Newsletter

Back to Spring 2021 Newsletter

by Jacqui Gerritsen, LMFT

Jacqui has been licensed since 2007. She joined the SCV-CAMFT board in 2015, initially as the Communication and Technology Director. She has a private practice in Palo Alto and San Mateo and is certified in TEAM-CBT level 2. She works with teens and adults and uses both a family systems model as well as a supportive, humanistic approach.

Happy Spring! As of this month, it’s been a year since the words Pandemic, COVID, Coronavirus and Social Distancing became part of our daily language. It seems odd to have a COVID anniversary, but here we are. I am so happy to see things returning to some kind of normal, like eating indoors, and recently I saw what looked like a youth soccer team practicing. Hopefully we are close to the finish line. I was able to get my first dose of the vaccine and am waiting for the second. I hope you all sign up as well, we qualify as heath care workers.

The Board of SCV-CAMFT has some exciting things planned for this year. On March 26th, bring your lunch and get comfy, while joining us for an online presentation by Tiffany McLain, founder of HeyTiffany, a website and blog dedicated to making life better for psychotherapists. In this training, we will explore the symbolic function of money for both the therapist and the client within the clinical setting. This event is free for members of SCV-CAMFT.

We continue to have online socials. Last month one member suggested we try something different like an Art Therapy-themed social. Stay tuned for more details as to when that will be. And please join us for this month’s social.

Stay healthy,
Jacqui Gerritsen
President SCV-CAMFT

Back to Spring 2021 Newsletter

back to the Winter 2020 Newsletter

by Jacqui Gerritsen, LMFT

Jacqui has been licensed since 2007. She joined the SCV-CAMFT board in 2015, initially as the Communication and Technology Director. She has a private practice in Palo Alto and San Mateo and is certified in TEAM-CBT level 2. She works with teens and adults and uses both a family systems model as well as a supportive, humanistic approach.

Season’s Greetings to you from my freezing cold garage. As I write this we just finished celebrating Thanksgiving. I personally had a very small Thanksgiving this year of four people. Since we usually have 25-30 people for Thanksgiving, 2020 was very different. Who knew nine months ago that we would once again be back in the Purple Tier and again asked to sacrifice for the greater good.

As we continue to adapt to this ongoing new normal, I hope you all are finding constructive, healthy ways to take care of yourselves. I took a drive over the weekend to look at the autumn leaves and was grateful we live in a beautiful part of the country. I have started knitting again and remembered that I’m not very good at it, but as I continue I’m sure I will get better!

We at SCV-CAMFT have heard from many of you about giving up your offices to work from home and the changes in your business practices. I would encourage you to remember to keep in contact with other professionals in your circle. The isolation of this field can be draining. We will continue to offer the monthly Online Socials next year. We have gotten positive feedback from people who have attended, citing the intimacy of being able to break out into chat rooms and to get to know other members. We hope you will give it a try in the new year.   

As always, the SCV-CAMFT Board of Directors would love to hear from you regarding suggestions or ideas for digital events for the coming year. Please contact us at mail@scv-camft.org

Happy Holidays and I will see you all in 2021!

Jacqui Gerritsen, LMFT
President SCV-CAMFT

back to the Winter 2020 Newsletter

back to Fall 2020 Newsletter
by Jacqui Gerritsen, LMFT

Jacqui has been licensed since 2007. She joined the SCV-CAMFT board in 2015, initially as the Communication and Technology Director. She has a private practice in Palo Alto and San Mateo and is certified in TEAM-CBT level 2. She works with teens and adults and uses both a family systems model as well as a supportive, humanistic approach.

Greetings, this time from my unbearably hot garage. As I write this, it is almost the end of August and we continue to be in a pandemic. The Bay Area is under an extreme heat advisory (causing my unbearably hot garage), which also caused a weird lightning storm, which then started fires all over the place and now we have smoke. We are all adjusting to what could be our new “normal” for quite some time. Here at SCV-CAMFT, we are working to adjust to this new world of doing everything remotely and online.  We are discovering that, while we miss seeing each other in person, there are some upsides to gathering online. In May, we had our 2-day Marty Klein training. Being able to attend the webinar from the comfort of our own homes, and doing it over 2 days in 3-hour blocks, worked well. Breaking longer events up like this has really helped with my Zoom fatigue.  And we were thrilled with the response from the SCV-CAMFT members who attended.

In July we began offering an Online Social for members. That first social, we met for an hour and a half on a Saturday via Zoom. Participants were able to introduce themselves in the larger group, then broke out into smaller groups so they could get to know each other a little better. I met

people whose names I know, but whose faces I had never seen before. It was nice to match the faces to the names! So far we have had 2 online social gatherings, with the next one scheduled for September 26, from 4:00-5:30 pm. See the website for details and registration.

We currently have two CEU opportunities scheduled for September. On September 11 and 12, we will offer a 6-hour CEU training called The New Science of Suicide Prevention, with Ben Caldwell, PsyD. Please see the website on the new requirement from the BBS and who needs to take this training. On September 25, we have a free 1.5 hour CEU presentation on doing Play Therapy via Telehealth presented by Paula Shuer, LMFT, RPT-S and Cecilia Long, LMFT, RPT-S. Also, please save the date for our Annual Membership Celebration (online) on Saturday morning November 7, from 10:00-11:30. This will be a chance to gather, connect and to recognize volunteers. And we have something fun planned as well! Details will be posted on our website as they become available. 

I hope you are all finding ways to take care of yourselves in this difficult time. Those in the evacuation zones, please stay safe. And to end things with a chuckle, according to a meme a friend sent “Relationships are just a scam by big psychology to sell more therapy.”  Happy Fall.

Jacqui Gerritsen, LMFT
President SCV-CAMFT

back to Fall 2020 Newsletter