LIVE TRAINING: MAY 12TH | 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM

 2 CEUs

Presenter Bios:  Judy Richardson-Mahre a Marriage and Family Therapist specializing in ADHD and Parenting. She has navigated 32 years of marriage and 27 years of raising high-energy, chaotic kids that don’t fit in, don’t seem to measure up to society or school’s standards, but who are quirky, funny and have ginormous hearts. She's spent the last several years helping her family navigate this crazy world with ADHD and now she's helping others navigate these often very challenging waters to find independence, success and bring the fun back into parenting and family life!

Judy is a compassionate and understanding therapist with a passion for helping individuals, couples and families navigate through the often misunderstood and challenging world of ADHD. She provides education on ADHD, normalizes the struggles and then turns to problem solving. She help to co-create solutions to the problems that individuals, families and couples deal on a daily basis as a result of their ADHD.

Description: 

ADHD is an often misunderstood diagnosis. We often hear that ADHD is an inability to pay attention or causes hyperactivity. But we now know that ADHD is so much more than that and it can impact every area of an individual's life. Not only does ADHD impact the individual but it impacts everyone in the family. Come learn about ADHD and how you as a family member can support your loved one with ADHD as well as gain valuable tools to help manage it. Whether your a parent, practitioner, or partner, understanding ADHD is the first step to successfully coping with it.

Objectives: 

1. Understand ADHD what it is and what it isn't

2. Understand Executive Functions

3.  Understand how it impacts each family member differently

4.  Learn some practical tools to deal with ADHD and it's impact on your family

LIVE TRAINING: MAY 16TH| 12:30 pM - 2:30 PM

 2 CEUs

Presenter Bios:  Anika Walstrom, LPCC, is a member of Generation Z. She is a mental health therapist at Ellie Mental Health. She graduated with her Master’s degree in the spring of 2022 and doesn’t know what it was like to be a therapist before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Presenter Bios:  Barb Stanton PhD, LPCC, is a member of the Boomer generation. She’s the director of Ellie Mental Health in Moorhead, MN. Barb describes her early years as a therapist as “flying by the seat of our pants and making it up as we went along.”

Presenter Bios:  Emily Coler Hanson, LMFT, is a member of the Millennial Generation. She is the Clinical Practice Director at Ellie Mental Health. She remembers alphabetizing handwritten notes for case files and has now lost track of how many EHR systems she has been trained in.

Description: 

This presentation explores the dynamics of multigenerational supervision among mental health providers. It highlights effective strategies for giving and receiving supervision across age groups, emphasizing communication styles, values, and expectations. Attendees will learn to bridge generational gaps, foster collaboration, and enhance professional growth, creating a supportive environment that leverages the strengths of diverse perspectives.

Objectives: 

1. Participants will identify unique traits and strengths of generations in the workforce, specifically in the mental health field.

2. Participants will examine challenges each generation faces while working in mental health.

3. Participants will develop skills to improve leadership for different generations of employees in supervisor/supervise relationships.

LIVE TRAINING: MAY 19TH| 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

 1 CEU

Presenter Bios:   I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Minnesota specializing in therapy for adults and teens struggling with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Anxiety. I have been working with OCD since 2018. I have lived experience with recovering from the grip of OCD and am subsequently committed to helping others. My OCD presentation appeared with primarily mental compulsions (sometimes called Pure-O), so I have an abundance of understanding of mental compulsions as well as physical compulsions.

Currently, I use Inference-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (I-CBT) as a preferred method to treat OCD. I find the approach provides an enlightening "manual for the OCD brain", and I've seen clients improve greatly, often in a matter of months. I attend several peer consultations and also consult with Frederick Aardema, one of the founders of I-CBT.

Do address rumination and worry in OCD, anxiety and depression, I use Metacognitive Therapy. Metacognitive Therapy, developed by Adrian Wells, addresses the layer of thought ABOUT worry and rumination that keeps it alive. I also treat Panic Disorder through teaching clients they don't need to fear the sensations that lead into panic attacks. Anxiety Sensitivity frequently coincides with OCD.

I bring to treatment a wealth of experience personally and as a therapist. I have a background in exploring Buddhism and mindfulness, which is beneficial for the therapeutic process. As an OCD provider, I was trained in Exposure and Response Prevention through the Behavioral Therapy Training Institute.

Maintaining a private practice, Pivot Psych MN, in Southwest Minneapolis, Minnesota, I am available for telehealth and in-person appointments. License #2314

Description: 

Persistent Worry and Rumination can be debilitating issues that are often difficult to resolve in therapy. Metacognitive Therapy (MCT) is an evidence-based treatment that was developed by English psychologists, Dr. Adrien Wells and Dr. Hans Nordahl, to address Worry and Rumination, which they see as the root of many mental health issues. MCT is a trans-diagnostic approach and can be used to treat generalized anxiety disorder, PTSD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, social anxiety, and depression.

MCT addresses not the content of what we are ruminating about as in traditional CBT, but rather the thought processes involved. Often, the mechanism of thought intended to solve problems becomes the problem. MCT helps to shift this.

Metacognitive Therapy can fill a gap in treatment. This training serves as a primer to learn basic information about MCT.

Objectives: 

1. Understand what makes worry and rumination difficult to treat, needing a specific protocol

2. Learn to identify basic concepts behind MCT

3. Understand what differentiates MCT from CBT and other approaches

LIVE TRAINING: JUNE 16th 2025 | 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM

 3 CEUs

Presenter Bios:  Becca Manthe, MA, LAMFT, ART-P (she/her) received her Master of Arts in Counseling at Adler Graduate School in MN in 2023. Becca is pursuing full licensure in Marriage and Family Therapy and Art Therapy. She is a musician, artist, writer, teacher, group facilitator, and mental health practitioner. She has formal education in mental health services, fine arts, industrial design, Classical violin, and Irish fiddle. Becca has completed Nature-Based Expressive Arts for Trauma and Grief and Climate Aware Psychology training. She serves children, adolescents, adults, families, and couples outdoors, indoors, and online at Intuitive Therapy & Consulting in Golden Valley, MN.

Presenter Bios: Becky Krenz, MA, LMFT (she/her) received her MA in Marriage and Family Therapy from Appalachian State University in 2007. She is a licensed MFT in WI and MN and sees adult clients at Minneapolis Nature-Based Therapy, both indoors and outdoors. Becky has provided ecotherapy sessions for clients since beginning her career. She completed her certification in Ecotherapy from the Earthbody Institute in August 2024, focusing on integrating embodied activism into clinical work with nature.

Description: 

Clients and providers alike are increasingly entangled in uncertain ecological, political, and cultural circumstances. This workshop calls on MFTs as systems therapists to acknowledge the impact of the dominant culture on mental health, and to restore wholeness and humanity to ourselves, our clients, and wider human-built and Earth systems. To do this, we will explore three case vignettes of populations directly impacted by the environmental, political, and cultural effects of climate change and the current polycrisis.

This three-hour, vignette-driven virtual workshop works toward decolonizing therapy and is presented with neurodivergent-affirming methods. Participants will be introduced to specific environmental, cultural, emotional, and systemic challenges within the spotlighted populations. Issues such as intergenerational conflict and trauma, the impact of colonialism, gender conflicts, marital crises, environmental degradation, future planning, ecological disasters, and more will be explored. Each vignette provides experiential learning of therapeutic interventions that ignite creativity, emotional stability, perspective-taking, cultural humility, resensitization, and ecological well-being.

If you strive to bolster your professional practice through ecotherapy methods, nature-based therapy interventions, creative arts expression, climate awareness, and polycrisis acceptance, this workshop will support your efforts. According to Joanna Macy, this is the work of The Great Turning. “The shift from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilization. It is, [Joanna Macy] believes, the third major revolution of human existence, after the agricultural and industrial revolutions. This one, though, has to unfold much more quickly” (Hawken, 2024).

Objectives: 

1) Develop an introductory awareness of how the field of Marriage and Family Therapy is situated within larger structures founded on the idea that humans are separate from the natural world around them.

2) Develop an introductory understanding of several frameworks that expand your professional orientation towards climate-aware, polycrisis competency.

3) Explore three case vignettes of populations presently impacted by the environmental, political, and cultural distress of climate change that include experiential learning of interventions you can use to work with symptoms.

4) Increase an understanding of the value of reorienting to new ways of viewing our role as systems therapists to address mental health from a more connected and compassionate approach to therapy informed by nature.