vocation & Discernment
For Mental Health Professionals
The proper role of psychology is to assist people in understanding their own realities through a reflection of their own social experience
~ Ignacio Martín-Baró
This group is for mental health professionals and related professions
For those who feel the need
to sit in relationship to the political realities that are upon us,
tend to how it impacts our state of heart and mind as human beings,
as care-practitioners
and to consider the impact on the mental health of our communities at large:
Priorities, energies and goals are being reformed dramatically right now for most of us.
This is not supervision, or psychotherapy.
This is peer support. This is supporting each other so we can support others
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Time: Alternate Thursday evenings, at 4:00 Pacific, 5:00 Mountain, 6:00 Central, 7:00 Eastern
Duration: This group will meet for 90 minutes via Zoom, and is an on-going group.
Attendance: This group offers grace around emergencies, conflicts, exhaustion, illness, self-care, vacations and crises, but is not a drop-in group.
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The suggested donation for these groups is $45 per session for those who are financially secure.
OR pay whatever is affordable for you.
Members who are financially comfortable are welcome to supplement their donations
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Sitting with uncertainty as a community practice through global poly-crisis
Sharing & circulating concrete, practical information for survival, in the face of pervasive harm
Contending with cognitive dissonance, confusion, distorted and manipulated realities.
Locating our touchstones, finding essential ground
Digesting, sharing & circulating data, resources, reliable information
Preserving our relationship to what is real in the face of deception, distortion, propaganda, & the attempts to suppress and invert truth.
Laughing at ourselves and together whenever possible
Guarding our limits, cognizant of the dangers and vulnerabilities we face ourselves
Sharing space as human beings who happen to clinicians, without having to be professional together.
Wrestling with nuanced & liberation-minded ethical decisions beyond those outlined by our professions.
Preserving ourselves and others as best we can.
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Distilled from the notes of a group meeting
How do we navigate *all this* and everyone else’s too?
How do we sustain ourselves, our clients? What do we do when we can’t?
What risks & actions can we take however small?
What must we protect?
How do we support clients in immediate harm's way?
How do we support those who are emotionally fatigued,
those who are necessarily self-preserving?
How do we support those who are called to action?
And those who want to take action but cannot, those who won’t, who cannot even imagine it.
who despair,
who injure themselves with inflated heroics,
who need rest,
who are afraid,
who are confused,
who are lost,
who seem impervious,
who are isolated,
who have fallen?
What is mental health in an era of oppression, retaliation, propaganda, surveillance, illusion and deceptive technology?
How do we help others discern what is real for themselves?
Is our work focused on something beyond individual happiness and the alleviation of individual suffering?
Does our work serve community health and wellness?
How might psychotherapy serve wider notions of liberation and justice?
How do we help others and ourselves:
be clear,
be brave,
be prudent?
How do we help others discern what is real for them?
What are our moral obligations?
How do we define and re-define our professional obligations?
What anchors us?
How do we preserve ourselves from a tidal wave of vicarious traumatization
while tending to our own vulnerabilities to collective and personal trauma ?
How we may make use of our
fury, sorrow, fear, our joy, our capacity for love and care, our victories?