Addiction

Lynn Aguilar

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I teach chronic dieters how to become “normal eaters”. Have you been dieting most of your life and you realize it’s just not working…but you’re thinking about trying yet another one. Have you joined and rejoined WW over the years, even reaching lifetime status but always gained the weight back… but here you are, ready to join again. The chatter in your head is never ending and your brain won’t stop obsessing…but you’re looking up another recipe, watching another cooking show, planning another menu, going to another blog…. You’re thinking three words… I’m. So. Done. I can help you get off of the diet roller coaster.

You have been listening to Diet Culture messages your entire life and it is natural to internalize them and be self-critical. You don’t have to do that anymore. Your value is not dependent on your weight or body size. You are enough in your now body. Food is not good or bad. It’s just food. You don’t have to be hypervigilant or asahmed of what you eat.

Food is both for pleasure and fuel. You don’t have to rely on anyone else to tell you what to eat. You have agency to choose to eat whatever feels right for you. It starts with education that leads to transformation: about culture, mindset, Intuitive Eating, body neutrality, and shame resilience. It’s learning to trust yourself and to trust your body.

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Maria Thompson

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Maria is a first-generation Mexican-American woman who has worked in the mental health field and with the geriatric population for over 10 years. She has provided grief counseling, transitional support through life changes with couples, families and groups of unrelated persons. We are all individuals who require different interventions for navigating our personal goals and challenges/changes in life. The process of creating individual plans based on a patient’s strengths and resources is a creative process that helps Maria find joy and excitement in the work that she does. She loves that her work allows patients to build their tool box for managing phases in their lives. In addition to being a psychotherapist, Maria is a Certified Therapeutic Recreation Specialist (CTRS), Substance Use Disorder Rehabilitation Counselor (SUDRC) and Zumba Instructor.

Online Mindfulness Group for Teens

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The Online Mindfulness Group for Teens will be an 8-week online skills-based group for high-school-aged teens targeted toward those with an interest in developing mindfulness skills. We’ll cover a number of topics, including:

  • introductory mindfulness skills

  • skills for navigating intense emotions

  • befriending boredom

  • understanding defenses

  • managing social media, substance and alcohol use

  • self-acceptance, self-compassion

  • relationships

This group welcomes clients across gender, sexuality and neurodiversity spectrums. The facilitators are committed to the continual pursuit of culturally responsive care.

 

This group is run by Jeremy Prillwitz LAADC and Darcy Dittrich AMFT.

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Virtual Ongoing Harm Reduction Therapy Support Groups

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These groups are designed to provide additional support for clients who have completed the 8-Week Harm Reduction Psycho-educational Group or have had previous experience with harm reduction therapy.

In this support group, we will go into a more in- depth exploration of substance use strategies, check-ins and goals. Everyone is encouraged to share their experiences with moderation of or abstinence from substance use.

On Wednesdays, group one from 5:30 to 7pm and group two from 7:10 to 8:30pm.

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Psycho-educational Harm Reduction Therapy Group

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The 8 week Introductory psycho-educational Harm Reduction Therapy group is for those who are new to Harm Reduction.
Group members will learn about the philosophy of harm reduction and help identify effective harm reduction techniques that work for them. They will also work to identify and help navigate the feelings are associated with alcohol and other drug use. CBT, DBT, self-compassion and mindfulness are used to teach coping skills. This group will implement modest goal setting and exploration around the ability to adhere to set goals.
Assessments are being scheduled now for the upcoming group.

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Wendy Taylor

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Trauma, like most things, exists on a spectrum. The key to overcoming it is to identify where you are on that spectrum and identify your individual challenges to happiness. That’s where I come in.

In my time as an integrative hospital therapist, I learned just how essential a holistic response is to facilitating proper healing. My practice takes into account the specific details of your personhood, and will progress at the pace that works best for you – one step, one breath at a time.

In therapy, my hope is to help turn judgement into curiosity, and to convert one’s inner critic into one’s most nurturing confidant. Together we can develop strategies to face anxiety and depression with self-assurance.

Take the first step. Call or email to schedule a consultation.

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DBT Mindfulness & Skills Group Series – Start Date: Sept 15

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The DBT Mindfulness & Skills Group Series is a 22-session series for adults that teaches all the core skills of Dialectical Behavior Therapy to a committed group of recovering individuals. This group may be helpful for those who struggle with their own emotional volatility or hypersensitivity in their personal or professional lives, unstable friendships, self-harm, emotionally manipulative communication patterns, reactive suicidality, overwhelming helplessness, emotional eating, codependent interpersonal style, sex or gambling or other form of process addiction, and substance abuse.

The series includes the following:

  • Required: DBT Mindfulness & Skills Group – Tuesdays 5:30 – 7pm ($75 per group)

  • Required: DBT Homework & Diary Card Review – Thursdays 5:30pm – 6:30pm ($35 per group)

  • Recommended: DBT Individual Therapy (Fee varies from $150-200 depending on the licensure level of the clinician)

  • All clients in this program receive a DBT binder with all skills, homework and diary cards.

All clients must be assessed in order to participate in this group series.

Kat Zwick runs this group, and they will be joined in the Fall of 2020 by post-doctoral associate Zo Amaro Jimenez. Kat was trained in a DBT treatment program and was supervised by a certified DBT practitioner for 3 years in Chicago, and Kat has also received intensive DBT-PTSD training directly from Behavioral Tech, Marsha Linehan’s training institution. Kat brings as much of adherent DBT as they can to an outpatient private practice, though it is modified to fit the setting.

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Kat Zwick

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Ride the wave…

Ride the wave is an expression that reminds us that sorrow, pain, happiness, triggers, relapses, slips, high highs, low lows, and everything in-between need not be waves that consume us, overtake us, define us, or drown us; rather we can gently and skillfully navigate these waves, from the surface, as if on a psychological or spiritual surfboard, with the help of others, our Wise Mind, our Higher Power, or Self, or Source keeping us afloat.

Land Acknowledgment

Our offices in Santa Cruz sit on the unceded territory of the Awaswas, one of the eight divisions of the Ohlone people. Their descendants are known today as the Amah-Mutsun Tribal Band. You can learn more about their conservation efforts that continue to this day and consider a donation HERE. Our offices in Oakland sit on the unceded territory of the Bay Miwok, also of the Ohlone people. Some of their descendants are members of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe.

We honor the history that precedes us, we are grateful for the opportunity to work and live here and offer healing and relationship to clients and each other, on these indigenous peoples’ traditional homelands.

Please join us in taking a moment of silence to pay respect to all Ohlone people past and present.

IN RECOVERY, ABOVE ALL, WE HAVE OPTIONS, AND REMEMBERING WE HAVE OPTIONS HELPS US RIDE THE WAVE. 

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