Training, Consultation, and Supervision

Presentations

I am available to provide training on a variety of topics in clinical, community, and academic settings. We can work together to craft the right presentation for your team. Reach out to me at mackenzie@metaphortherapy.org to discuss your organization's need.

Available Now

All trainings include engaging lecture, discussions to deepen participant understanding, and experiential exercises to try out new skills.

Clinical Issues in Consensual Nonmonogamy, BDSM, and Kink (3 hours): Working with clients with unconventional intimate practices. Includes definitions, assessment, case conceptualization, common clinical issues, and interventions. This training can be lengthened to include a panel of speakers.
Co-Occurring Disorders (3 hours): Working with clients experiencing both substance use and mental health challenges. Includes diagnosis information for substance use disorders, assessment, and interventions.
Clinical Risk Assessment (3 hours): Assessing and intervening with clients who may be a danger to themselves or others. Includes risk factors for suicide and homicide and safety/self care planning.
Crisis De-Escalation Basics (3 hours): Preventing and managing blowups in clinical or community settings. Includes channels of communication, risks and precursors for violence, and de-escalating interventions to support staff in managing their own responses to big client behaviors.
Treatment Planning (3 hours): How to co-create therapeutic goals with clients based on the client's stage of change. Includes stages of treatment and MediCal requirements for writing treatment plans. Can include specific group discussions of different therapeutic orientations, which is particularly useful to MFT candidates studying for the clinical exam.
Motivational Interviewing Basics (3-6 hours): A primer on MI, usually split into two sections. The first covers spirit and style of MI, establishing rapport, and OARS (open ended questions, affirmations, reflections, summaries: the four basic MI skills) with many role plays to try out a variety of skills. The second section is usually for more experienced practitioners who have taken an MI class before who want to delve more into change talk and agenda-setting with clients, as well as discussing resistance and how to roll with it in the room.

Four white people sit and stand in a garden looking into the camera

Experienced trainers cover topics ranging from consensual nonmonogamy to clinical documentation

Training Background

MacKenzie is passionate about presenting and sharing information and has over twenty years of teaching experience. She began her career in public speaking as an adolescent, creating school-based peer education programs around LGB issues for middle and high schoolers in her community. She continued to speak on panels covering topics including queerness and spirituality during her college career. At Crisis Support Services, MacKenzie not only led training sessions for volunteers and interns on agency programs at Crisis Support Services, but also spoke in the community about teenage depression and suicide. She has been a professor at the Wright Institute since 2017.

Past and Current Clients

Consultation

I am available to provide consultation on a variety of topics related to psychotherapeutic practice in clinical and community settings, including:

Consensual nonmonogamy, especially polyamory
BDSM and kink
The use of self-disclosure in psychotherapy
Serving communities you yourself are a part of
Chronic depression and suicidality
Psychosis
Writing good documentation
Handling burnout and compassion fatigue while working in community mental health settings

Depending on your needs, we might chat on the phone for half an hour about how best to explore your client's relationship orientation, meet monthly to go through your treatment plans, or spend an afternoon at your office creating a workflow to get your process notes turned into progress notes in a timely manner.

I work with mental health professionals, especially other LMFTs, as well as trainees, associates, coaches, and peer counselors looking to expand their knowledge and expertise. Reach out to me at mackenzie@metaphortherapy.org to discuss your needs and questions.

Short-Term Supervision

I am available to provide short-term supervision for pre-license clinicians seeking hours toward licensure. This is perfect if you've found a brief clinical placement like a summer camp and only need supervision for a handful of weeks.

Supervision and Consultation Background

MacKenzie has been providing clinical supervision since 2016. She has worked with multidisciplinary clinical teams at Horizon Services, one-on-one with interns at Crisis Support Services, and with her own team of associates. Her psychotherapeutic practice centers around communities she herself is a part of, and she has extensive experience with the use of self-disclosure. MacKenzie's practice is only a mile from her Alameda home, giving her plenty of opportunities to become skilled at navigating running into clients outside of the office. She has served as a quality assurance auditor during chart reviews at both Bay Area Community Services and Horizon Services, and has four years of experience providing feedback to clinicians on their MediCal documentation.