This group is for mental health professionals and health professionals generally

For those who feel the need

to sit in relationship to the political realities that are upon us, and 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:

The world is spinning.  

Priorities, energies  and goals are being changed dramatically right now for all 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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ACCEPTING MEMBERS

This group can welcome several new members, three, four, possibly more over time

This group actively welcomes members of different professions, races/ethnicities, gender identities and socioeconomic realities, spiritual/religious beliefs and practices.  The expectation is that we come together to hold each other’s diverse experiences with mutual respect.

Meeting Day/Times

• 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.

By DONATION

The suggested donation for these groups is $45 per session for those who are financially secure.

If you are in more precarious financial circumstances, pay whatever is affordable for you.

Members who are financially comfortable are welcome to supplement their donations

GROUP PRACTICES  

• Sitting with uncertainty as a psychological 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.

•  Locating ourselves and each other in the hall of mirrors, generated agendas presented as realities.

• Laughing at ourselves and together whenever possible

•  Hanging onto our values and our realities

•  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.

• Creating, sharing & circulating strategies to preserve ourselves and others.

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Questions that are important to us NOW:

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?

How do we hold ourselves & others up under distortion, deceit, the manipulation of reality, the replacement of human beings with AI fabrications?

What is mental health in an era of oppression, retaliation, propaganda, surveillance, illusion and deceptive technology?

What is psychotherapy now?

            (It doesn’t have to be fast.  We are sorting ourselves as we go.)

What if don’t obey in advance is sound and essential health advice?

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 and exposure?

How can we share strategies that may keep ourselves and others tethered, and grounded?

How we may make use of our

fury, sorrow, fear,

our joy, our capacity for love and care, our victories?

Application

Please fill out the registration questionnaire below. Answers will be confidential.

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