Mental Health Workshops

Offerings

• Workshops

• Presentations

These workshops weave in both professional, evidence based knowledge and skills, as well as my own stories.

I also invite participants to consider how their own stories have shaped them in how they make sense and navigate their relationships, work, and home.

My goal is for participants to have a better understanding of themselves, others, and ultimately so they can live with more authenticity and freedom at work, home, and in the world.

Topics I Speak About

For Corporations/Agencies

Trauma 101 (What is Trauma?)

• Learn the causes, signs, and risk factors for trauma

• This presentation is more didactic and less experiential, meaning the focus of the workshop is on providing education and theoretical knowledge such as:

  • Types of trauma (complex, single incident, little t, big t, shock, intergenerational, historical, racial)

  • Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

• I include knowledge I’ve learned over 8 years of being a trauma therapist, in an easy to understand manner for non-clinicians.

• Knowledge and education will be adapted based on your organization’s preferences and needs.

• Sample practical knowledge I can offer include:

  • Framework shift from “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?” to “How did you get through this?”

  • Physical well being effects such as poorer health outcomes

  • Emotional well being effects such as emotional dsyregulation

  • Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn, Fright behavioral responses as an adaptation to trauma and survival

  • Trauma informed care AKA assume everyone may have a history of trauma, to prevent re-traumatization and create more safety

  • The trauma brain AKA amygdala

  • SAMHSA’s Six Guiding Principles

    • Safety

    • Trust & Transparency

    • Peer Support

    • Collaboration

    • Empowerment & Choice

    • Intersectional Identities

  • Organizational Self Care

    • Secondary and vicarious trauma

    • Boundaries to prevent burn out

  • Post traumatic growth

Vicarious & Secondary Trauma

• Learn the causes, signs, and risk factors for vicarious and secondary trauma.

• Learn about Vicarious Post Traumatic Growth

• Explore self-care techniques as well as strategies you can use to help ensure balance and self-care for those that you supervise or manage. Strategies can be adapted based on your organization’s preferences.

• This presentation is less didactic and more experiential, meaning I focus more on practical therapeutic strategies so participants can experience healing in real time.

• Strategies will be adapted based on your organization’s preferences and needs.

• I include strategies I’ve learned over 8 years of being a trauma therapist, in an easy to understand manner for non-clinicians. Sample practical therapeutic strategies I can offer include:

  • Trauma Resource Institute skills such as

    • The Resilient Zone

    • The Six Wellness Skills

      • Tracking

      • Grounding

      • Resourcing

      • Help Now

      • Pendulating

      • Titrating

  • Interpersonal Neurobiology skills such as

    • Understanding one’s Window of Tolerance

    • Name it to tame it and feel it to heal it

  • Mindful Self Compassion skills such as

    • Common Humanity: Recognize that professional struggles, setbacks, and overwhelm are shared human experiences rather than personal failures.

    • Self-Kindness: Replace harsh internal self-criticism with encouraging, supportive language you would offer a stressed colleague.

    • The Self-Compassion Break: Pause during a tense workday to acknowledge distress ("This is a moment of stress"), remember it is normal ("Stress happens to everyone"), and place a soothing hand over your heart

    • Metta or lovingkindness affirmations

  • Somatic Experiencing (SE) skills such as

    • Resourcing

    • Orienting

    • Pendulating

    • Titration

  • Mind-body connection or nervous system regulation such as

    • Subjective Units of Distress (SUDs)

    • Co-Regulation: Create team spaces where people can talk, laugh, and connect openly, because human connection signals safety to the nervous system.

  • Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) skills such as

    • The container

    • Butterfly hug

    • Safe/calm place

    • Wise/protective/nurturing figures

  • Internal Family Systems (IFS) skills such as

    • Parts mapping to understand one’s parts and how they affect well being

    • Unbending from parts

    • Becoming Self led and having Self energy

    • Releasing legacy, ancestral and personal burdens

    • Recognizing work parts (over worker, inner critic, caretaker, people pleaser)

    • Leading with the 8 C’s (calm, curiosity, and compassion (along with clarity, confidence, courage, creativity, and connectedness).

  • Narrative therapy’s exercise such as the Tree of Life

  • DBT skills such as

    • TIPP

    • STOP

    • DEAR MAN

    • Self soothing

  • Mindfulness skills such as

    • Body scanning

    • Taking a real pause

    • Ways to anchor (breath, scent, body, touch, sight)

    • Progressive muscle relaxation

    • Grounding exercises such as 54321

    • Breath work such as box breathing and belly breathing

  • The differences between self care vs. self soothing

  • Boundary setting

  • Empathy and boundaries including merging, cognitive empathy, affective empathy, and compassionate empathy

  • Self reflection of one’s own triggers, wounds, growth edges/weaknesses, strengths, and how they show up in one’s life

• Resources will be provided for each organization including:

  • Vicarious trauma questionnaire

  • Compassion fatigue/depletion questionnaire

  • Books and articles

Mindfulness

• Learn how mindfulness can be one tool/skill to manage stress

• Learn about the myths and realities of mindfulness

• Learn how to use mindfulness personally and professionally toward health and wellness

• This presentation is less didactic and more experiential, meaning I focus more on practical strategies and tools so participants can experience in real time.

• Strategies will be adapted based on your organization’s preferences and needs.

• I include strategies I’ve learned over 8 years of being a therapist as well as a meditator who has gone on multiple 7-day meditation silent retreats/courses, in an easy to understand manner for non-clinicians. Sample practical therapeutic strategies I can offer include:

  • Mindfulness and the power of the present moment without judgement

  • Mindfulness and emotional regulation

  • Mindfulness and distress tolerance or tolerating stress

  • Trauma informed mindfulness such as keeping eyes open, offering choices, adapting instructions, and starting small

  • Cognitive mindfulness skills such as:

    • Recognizing automatic pilot

    • Pleasant and unpleasant tracking

    • Decentering thoughts

    • Mindfulness of daily activities

    • Body scanning

  • Taking a real pause and one-minute mindfulness

  • Ways to anchor (breath, scent, body, touch, sight)

  • Guided meditations such as leaves on a stream, calm place visualization,

For Therapy Group Practices

• Core Effective Skills for Therapy

  • Learn about the common factors and how they can be used no matter what modality you employ (CBT, DBT, ACT)

  • Learn 1-2 practical skills to build and sustain a strong therapeutic alliance to reduce client drop out and attrition

  • Help clients right at the beginning of therapy

• Working With Insecure Attachment

  • Learn about secure and insecure attachment styles

  • Learn how attachment styles show up in therapy and impacts treatment negatively (“resistance”, difficulty asking for help, difficulty relating, high levels of anxiety, people pleasing, withdrawing, shutting down)

  • Learn 1-2 practical skills to use with clients with insecure attachment strategies

  • Learn 1-2 practical skills to self manage/supervise your own insecure attachment strategies

Past clients include

• University of California

• University of Washington

• University of San Francisco

• Highline College

• Asian Mental Health Project

• Seattle University