This is Carol Rose Adkisson, your newly-elected IE-CAMFT Chapter President.  Thank you for entrusting me to lead our organization into this new season.  I hope that along with our newly-elected board we will bring a fresh new perspective to our new positions.  My vision is to grow IE-CAMFT to the next level.  I have no doubt this is attainable.  Like all of us in our new positions, I am grateful to have our predecessors passing down their experience and knowledge.  Look for new marketing techniques, amazing education, and growth in our future.  The sky is the limit and limitless possibilities can only be a good thing.

Greetings CAMFT members. I hope you are all enjoying this cool weather while it lasts. We have a big meeting coming up in May, including both our annual board elections and a presentation by state CAMFT executive director, Nabil El-Ghoroury, on the current state of the profession, including an update on legislation that will affect MFTs, regulatory practices of the BBS, and information on legal resources offered by CAMFT. I hope you will all consider attending and voting for our slate of nominees.  We are still in need of a secretary, so if you are willing to serve in this capacity, please let us know as soon as possible. We also encourage those who want to be more involved to come volunteer at our events.  Please email us at iecamft@gmail.com  for more information.  Have a great month!

Happy April, everyone! I hope everyone is enjoying their spring so far. At IE CAMFT, we are welcoming spring by preparing to nominate a new team of officers. We are very lucky to have such wonderful leadership who put in a lot of team work every month to bring us our CEU events. Though we are committed to continuing to bring you quality events and support as an organization, you may have noticed in the recent email regarding the upcoming election that our team will be changing. I encourage you all to come and share your voice by voting at our next meeting. I also hope you will join me in welcoming our new team, who will continue working together to grow and strengthen our chapter.

Happy February, everyone!

I hope you are all staying warm and dry this winter. I want to thank Dr. Joan A. Friedman for her presentation “A Twin’s Dialectic” last month.  We received overwhelmingly positive feedback regarding the information she provided about working with twins and some of the unique challenges that presents. 

We are having our annual law and ethics training coming up in this month in a couple of weeks. It is an all-day training at which lunch will be served. We hope to see you there!  Also, if you enjoy our IE-CAMFT trainings, please consider joining the chapter if you haven't yet and letting others know about the benefits of IE-CAMFT membership and encourage them to join! 

Members may attend our monthly 2-unit seminars for free as well as receive a substantial discount on our 6-unit seminars; free classified ads that appear on our website and in our monthly ad bulletin; an online therapist directory open to the public; and the opportunity to participate in our "Members Only" pages on the website including a member directory, a forum, and discussion and information pages regarding our monthly presentations all for an annual fee of $40 for clinical, affiliate, or associate members or $25 for pre-licensed members. Meetings also allow attendees the opportunity to network and collaborate with other professionals. To join, go to www.iecamft.org and click on the "Join Us" tab.

Hope you all have a great month!

Amanda Cavicchi, MA, LMFT

The next IE CAMFT 3000 club meeting will be held on February 9th from 12 to 1:30 p.m. at 2641 Hamner Avenue, Suite 210, Norco, CA. It will be a Q&A with a focus on getting into private practice.

Simple Practice is hosting a free CE workshop and lunch on Saturday, February 23 from 10am - 1pm for CAMFT members.  Simple Practice is an online documentation program. For more information and to register, go to: Simple Practice Workshop

    Happy New Year, everyone!  I hope you are all well rested and ready for 2019.  Quick note: if you are currently in school, or are participating in advanced training, and have not yet looked into the scholarship opportunities currently being offered by CAMFT I urge you to follow this link to see if you might qualify.  The deadline is January 4^th by 5pm, so don’t delay!  Good luck!

    First and foremost I would like to congratulate IE-CAMFT’s Program Chair, Ilse Aerts, on being nominated for the Outstanding Leadership Award, which will be awarded at next month’s CAMFT Leadership Conference.  Ilse is responsible for creating the wonderfully varied and relevant training program that we offer through IE-CAMFT, and we are incredibly grateful for all of her hard work and dedication that makes it all possible.   In addition to Ilse, our entire board does some amazing team work with regards to membership development, including Carol A. Bouldin, Membership Chair and webmaster for our website, Steve Gray, Financial Officer, the CEU committee, and hospitality committee, who always provide a wonderful breakfast spread for our monthly meetings.  This amazing talent and teamwork has also earned IE-CAMFT a nomination for the Chapter Excellence Award in the area of Best Membership Development.  Congratulations, everyone!  And thank you for all that you do for our members and our community!

Amanda Cavicchi, MA, LMFT

President’s message:

Greetings everyone.  I hope you all had a happy and festive Halloween.  First of all, I would like to thank Stephanie Sherbon for a wonderful presentation on play therapy that she facilitated for us last month. She shared several creative interventions, and gave us wonderful insights into using these interventions to help children process and heal.  

Secondly, I would like to take some time to remind you all of the importance of self-care.  As we all know, we have a very contentious national election coming up next week.  We are also entering the holiday season.  Though the holidays can be a very joyful time of year, they can also be very stressful for a number of reasons.  Not only are we trying to coordinate our own schedules with regards to holiday gatherings, shopping, and the like, but we are also often addressing the needs of our clients who have suffered losses and for whom the holidays can be a trigger.  It can be easy to lose sight of our own needs and well-being in the midst of all of these obligations.  I hope you will all take some time to check in with yourselves regularly and make sure you are meeting your own needs, whether that be meditating, exercising, or just remembering to eat lunch!  I know that we are a caring and compassionate community, and that we want to do everything we can to help our patients and our loved ones, but in order for that to be sustainable, compassion for one’s self must come first.  I wish you all a happy and healthy holiday season.

In light of the recent Senate hearings and the fact that women comprise the vast majority of clients, as well as therapists, not to mention are 52% of the population, we therapists would be well-advised to be especially attuned to our female clients, co-workers, and ourselves as many of us will have been triggered by this replay of the Thomas hearings nearly 30 years ago where Anita Hill was grilled by some of the same men questioning Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. 

Given the fact that the testimony of the women who came forward to share their sexual abuse experiences at the hands of the nominee was ultimately disregarded, and the solicitous attention given to the nominee while they were subjected to the usual disbelief, scrutiny re motives, and in Dr. Ford’s case, even death threats, these events have to be evoking strong feelings that are difficult to manage.  In addition, the profuse apologies by several of the men in the Senate to the nominee for “what he has gone through” and then the president’s callous, insensitive statements about how it is “a dangerous time to be male” have to be especially excruciating to bear for female victims of male violence and assault.  Women need safe spaces to recover.

Those of us therapists who have specialized in treating women and abuse victims realize that when dealing with our female clients, whether individually or in couple therapy, these kinds of events will very likely be eliciting anxiety, rage, depression, and/or an exacerbation of PTSD symptoms, and may be causing a lot of tension in women’s relationships, especially with males with whom they may be intimate.  It is crucial that we act in a manner that telegraphs our unequivocal support, empathy, and understanding for the real victims in order to not only help them heal, but to not inflict more wounds.

 Carol A. Bouldin, LMFT

I hope everyone is enjoying their back-to-school season!  I want to thank Holli Kenley, LMFT, for an amazing presentation on “Powering Down and Parenting Up.”  She gave us insight into the effects of technology on our children’s brain development, helpful guidelines for technology use for different age groups, and taught us the criteria for Electronic Screen Dependence.  It was a very well-researched, relevant presentation and we hope she will come back again sometime soon!  Next month we look forward to a training by Stefanie Sherbon, LMFT on "Stepping Outside of the Box:  Creative Play Therapy Interventions."  We hope you will be able to join us! Till then, have a safe and productive back-to-school season!