Substance use and overdoses have skyrocketed in both El Paso County and Teller County, Colorado. Those struggling can enroll in Khesed’s pro bono program to receive 16 free sessions.
While mental health concerns are universal, those of us with marginalized identities (such as BIPOC, LGBTQ, disabled, veteran, Spanish-speaking, or other demographic characteristics) bear the weight of additional mental health barriers.
Whether you're sober curious, looking for a place to celebrate New Year's Eve sans booze, or preparing for Dry January, here are 65 spots in and around Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, and San Francisco to enjoy an alcohol-free drink this season.
Khesed’s Illinois State Manager Dawnn shares a personal story about where her passion for mental health stemmed, why accessible therapy in Chicago matters - especially on the South Side, and how Khesed aligns with her values.
We have created the First Session Free Program, launching January 2021. Our goal is to raise $30,000 by December 8th, providing the first session free to our next 500 new clients. Together we can make mental health affordable for everyone.
When COVID-19 came in and changed so much in our lives, it left many of us stressed about dealing with more than we could have imagined, and now, many of us are feeling the effects of emotional exhaustion. While the pandemic has not become the zombie apocalypses depicted in the movies, it has turned us into zombies. What can you start doing or doing again to help bring you back to life?
When we are unfamiliar with something, we make up in our heads what it will be like, and we are not always the kindest when painting these pictures. Calling a crisis line sounds scary, and walking into a center to talk to someone about suicide sounds scary. Lisa shares a realistic picture of what the process is like for accessing mental health crisis services to lessen those fears.
We are so pleased to announce that Megan Steedman, MA and Brittany Duncan, MA will be continuing their clinical career with us after graduating in May 2020. We sat down (virtually) to interview these new grads so that you all could get a closer look at who they are as clinicians and the amazing people they are.
Megan Steedman, MA
Khesed Interviewer:
What draws you to work with clients?
Megan:
I feel drawn to work with clients because I believe in the power of connection. I think in a safe relationship, people's experiences of pain and their developed patterns that follow can be explored. It's beautiful to be able to provide people one realm of safety to deeply explore themselves. I feel drawn to the deep healing that can happen in therapy.
Khesed Interviewer:
How does kindness play out in therapy?
Megan:
One way kindness plays out in therapy is by bringing my full self-- my experiences, my personality, and my strengths-- generously to therapy. Showing up whole heartedly allows for deep connection, deep belief in my clients, and deep space for clients to explore themselves. I think having unwavering belief in therapy, amidst challenging days and weeks, is a kind way to approach my work. Having confidence in humanity's ability to heal, though it is oftentimes slow and painful, allows me to continue to show up. It's kind to keep showing up.
Khesed Interviewer:
When clients come into your office what can they expect?
Megan:
Clients can expect to experience a human-- someone with their own story and passion for healing. They can expect for my passion to intersect with my clients. They can expect to feel known for me to want to encourage them to explore themselves. I hope my clients feel a sense of belief in me-- belief in the therapeutic process and belief in my clients to further live into themselves and into health.
Khesed Interviewer:
If you could travel anywhere in the world where would you go and why?
Megan:
I would want to fly into southern France and rent a car to drive through the Alps, seeing Switzerland, Italy, and Austria in the summertime. I would want to stop in little towns, go camping, appreciate nature, and get to see and experience a variety of different cultures. Something about the grandness of the Alps feels exciting to me-- I would love to see them up close.
Brittany Duncan, MA
Khesed Interviewer:
What draws you to work with clients?
Brittany:
Throughout my life I always knew that I wanted to work in a role that was both personal and relational. I have continuously felt a deep compassion and desire to understand those around me and assist them in feeling valued because I believe every story is unique and worth telling. To be able to hear the narrative of my client’s lives is an honor that I cherish. Not only is witnessing one’s story a privilege but getting to walk alongside my clients through moments of struggle and joy is an incredible opportunity. I believe the power of relationship has the potential to stretch, grow, and heal each and every one of us.
Khesed Interviewer:
What are the most important qualities that you feel a therapist should have?
Brittany:
Three that come to my mind are authenticity, acceptance, and empathy. I believe in the transformative opportunity provided by a therapeutic relationship. A relationship is healthiest and most beneficial when both parties are their true, authentic selves. Modeling authenticity for clients encourages them to live out congruence in their own life and within relationships. However, acceptance of one’s true self is necessary for therapy to be effective. It takes an incredible amount of vulnerability to show the tender parts of our self. If these parts are not warmly embraced and acknowledged our growth is inhibited. Lastly, empathy provides space for clients, which communicates worth and belonging. As client vulnerably expose themselves, they need to not only be accepted, but reminded of their worth and value.
Khesed Interviewer:
When clients come into your office what can they expect?
Brittany:
When clients come into my office they can expect to be warmly accepted without fear of judgement. My priority is to understand, empathize, and assist them in working towards who they want to be. I am honest and at times direct, but always with an undertone of compassion. Often, we can feel alone in our pain. Others are either unable or unwilling to understand. I aim to provide an opportunity where my clients can feel support and encouragement, while simultaneously getting permission to feel their pain and take up space. I will not rush my client towards growth or tell them how to get there. I believe that my clients are the experts of their own life and that each individual grows at their own speed and pace. Most of all, I will be there to hold hope for my clients even in the moments they feel utmost despair. I hold hope because each and every person that walks into my counseling office is worthy of love and capable of growth.
Khesed Interviewer:
If you could travel anywhere in the world where would you go and why?
Brittany:
Traveling is one of my greatest passions and experiences abroad hold some of my fondest memories. Exploring new cultures has been incredibly stretching during my development in understanding myself and expanding my empathy for others. If I could travel anywhere in the world, I would choose Norway. Norway is known for their amazing fjords. These natural waterways formed by glaciers are immense and beautiful. To be given the opportunity to experience such a sight is something I have been hoping to see for quite some time.
Megan Steedman (sher/her), MA holds a Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Denver Seminary. Megan has experience working with children and adolescents, is passionate about helping young adults pursue a holistic sense of wellness, and is committed to engaging her clients with compassion and attentiveness. Megan spends her free time hiking, skiing, and exploring Denver—she loves bringing a good book or friend along to check out the newest coffee or ice cream shop.
Brittany Duncan (she/her), MA, LPCC has her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and her Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. She enjoys working with clients navigating relational grief or dissatisfaction, transitional difficulties, attachment, trauma, and identity formation. Through a holistic and integrative approach, Brittany assists clients in exploring their innermost needs and patterns of relating in order to break the cycles they feel stuck in.
Maintaining and reclaiming intimacy is never easy even when the rest of life is going smoothly. Our current struggle to understand and manage the uncertainty of the Coronavirus Pandemic makes it even harder to put our partners anywhere but at the bottom of our long list of priorities. Maybe it’s time to reclaim your relationships. One way to do that is to carve out a few sacred moments each day. Consider going on daily 10-minute dates and recall your partner of yesterday while getting to know your partner of today.
How does it work? Each person dedicates ten minutes completely and exclusively to their partner. This means you will have two 10-minute dates each day, one for each partner. Busy households consisting of multiple people find this easiest at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day. Are you feeling a little overwhelmed about one more thing to learn, relearn, and implement? No worries! A quick yet deeply meaningful way to both know your partner and be known by your partner is by asking each other the 36 Questions developed by Arthur Aron and his research partners designed to foster vulnerability and intimacy. According to Aron and his associates a key element in developing and maintaining close relationships is sustaining and deepening mutual, personal self-disclosure.
When thinking of where to have your date; make sure the date location is not in the same physical space as you or your partner’s work from home space. The location can be fun and creative or as simple as spending 10 minutes together on the front porch. The only rule is the focus of the date completely on listening to your partner’s responses to the questions and not on the long lists of things each of you have to do. Start with just asking one of the 36 questions. You can ask each other the same question each day or you can mix it up a bit and pick a different question. You may find it will be more fun and spontaneous to ask different questions so you both have the opportunity to be equally spontaneous. The questions are divided into three sets. It works best if you work your way through the question sets in order, even though you may decide to ask each other different questions from within each set. Get ready and make your first date!
Below are the questions referred to in the Blog. Please feel free to print the PDF and take it with you on your first date. Happy dating.
Set I
1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?
2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?
3. Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?
4. What would constitute a "perfect" day for you?
5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?
6. If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?
7. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?
8. Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.
9. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?
10. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?
11. Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.
12. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?
Set II
13. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?
14. Is there something that you've dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven't you done it?
15. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?
16. What do you value most in a friendship?
17. What is your most treasured memory?
18. What is your most terrible memory?
19. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?
20. What does friendship mean to you?
21. What roles do love, and affection play in your life?
22. Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items.
23. How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people's?
24. How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?
Set III
25. Make three true "we" statements each. For instance, "We are both in this room feeling ... "
26. Complete this sentence: "I wish I had someone with whom I could share ... "
27. If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know.
28. Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you've just met.
29. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.
30. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?
31. Tell your partner something that you like about them already.
32. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?
33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven't you told them yet?
34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?
35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?
36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner's advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.
Claudia Nell Hawley, Apprentice is an unlicensed psychotherapist pursuing a Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Denver Seminary. Working alongside clients in her former career as a realtor instilled in Claudia a deep empathy, and a sincere desire to serve couples, families and individuals in the journey through depression, anxiety, and fear to healing, connection, and self-worth. Claudia spends her free time cooking for friends, capturing the beauty of Colorado with her camera, and reading.
The word is spreading.
When people first learn about Khesed Wellness I am always asked, “Who do you serve?”
My response, “The underinsured, which is almost everyone in the United States today.”
An underinsured person includes someone who does not have health insurance, and does not qualify for public insurance for free coverage. Also, underinsurance means someone has private insurance, and they do not have sufficient, or any, mental health coverage.
People of color, women, the LGBTQ+ community, immigrants, families needing multiple providers, and millennials are at particular risk for insufficient mental health coverage. However, most in the U.S. today cannot afford the starting market-rate cost of $120 per counseling session.
Nationally, cost is the main reason people are underinsured, and why many do not get mental health support when they need it. 41 states report 7% or more of their population as underinsured, and that is just in regard to physical health coverage (1). According to the Colorado Health Institute, the top reason Denver residents do not get mental health care is because they cannot afford it. The second reason is the belief that insurance will not provide coverage (2).
Who is underinsured may surprise you, it has shocked me.
In graduate school I needed therapy, researched options, and I could not find anyone I could afford.
Lisa works at a tech startup as a contractor; she has self-employed health insurance.
Bill owns an insurance startup. His daughter is neurodiverse, and their policy does not have any specialists in network.
Why is this happening?
To understand why this is happening, we need to understand who runs the show in the mental health industry. Private and public insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry, and government contracts oversee most industry revenue and activities. This means, the mental health industry is mostly led by for-profit companies known for producing the highest profit return possible to owners and investors, while workers and clients suffer. For example, pharmaceutical and biotechnology sales revenue increased from $534 billion to $775 billion between 2006 and 2015 (3).
How can you help?
There are ways, at no cost to you, that we can immediately help.
Promote organizations thoughtfully addressing these issues, like Therapy For Black Girls.
Share affordable and free local mental health resources like Khesed Wellness, support groups, a meditation app, and meetup groups in-person and online. Sharing increases awareness and normalizes mental health within our communities.
Talk with fellow underinsured friends to figure out a local business you know with part-time unused space, and connect your business contact with us.
If we all believe mental health is part of what it means to be human, then everyone deserves access to a mental health clinician they can afford. Let’s get creative and make this possible together.
Written by:
The holidays can bring about so much! Tricky family dynamics, isolation, aging family members, youthful family members, the potential absence of a bereaved loved one, the possible addition of an important loved one, traditions, “shoulds, ” relationships of all kinds. They’re all here, harnessing the power to completely exhaust our mental, physical, and emotional stamina if we are not aware of the toll the holidays can take on us. But how do we know what that toll is? How do we prepare in a way that allows us to remain present and conscious of our pause? And how do we respond when things may not go exactly as planned?
For many, we turn to food. Food is the ultimate connector. It connects us to each other, to our needs, and to ourselves. It, and our relationship with it, can communicate for us if we don’t have the words or are feeling unsafe to express ourselves. It can calm, pacify, provide companionship, decrease anxiety, befriend us, provide safety and comfort, offer unconditional acceptance, provide a social lubricant for uncomfortable conversations, etc. Food can meet us where we are at, and when we see food this way, it becomes a way of expressing our thoughts, feelings, and emotions. It fills our needs, often times without any words at all. At a time of the year when food is almost everywhere you turn and emotions tend to run high, disordered eating can make an appearance.
Those with disordered eating patterns find themselves here. In between worlds of safe and accepted self-expression and fear of judgmental relational interactions in some way creating or furthering past pain. This fine line is come by honestly, always touting a reason based on a lived experience. Those with disordered eating patterns approach this line daily. But how do you know when it begins to cross the line into a diagnosable eating disorder? That conversation must be carefully and sensitively navigated with a trusted health care provider, yet in the meantime, here is some food for thought. Pun intended.
Eating disorders can manifest themselves in many ways, and each has its own unique set of symptoms, medical complications, and potentially fatal repercussions. They are very serious illnesses, and require medical, psychiatric, and therapeutic care in order to heal. Listed below are some questions to ask yourself if you are wondering where you may land amongst that fine line.
-Do I find myself eating significantly large quantities of food in a short span of time?
-Do I find myself eating alone or in secret?
-Do I eat past the point of being full regularly?
-Can I tell when I am full?
-Do I find myself eating the majority of my daily intake after 4 pm?
-Do I struggle with my self-esteem? Find myself struggling to say no?
-Do I struggle to stop eating?
-Do I feel out of control when I eat, often followed by shame and guilt?
-Do I feel numb after eating a large amount? Like my problems have momentarily dissipated?
If you can answer yes to these patterns of behavior occurring weekly for at least three months, you may wish to explore a binge eating pattern with a trusted health care provider for further assessment.
-Do I think about my appearance and my body often? Does my opinion of my body impact the way I see myself and interact with others?
-Do I struggle to share my thoughts and feelings openly?
-Do I find myself eating alone or in secret?
-Do I eat past the point of being full regularly?
-Can I tell when I am full?
-Do I struggle with my self-esteem? Find myself struggling to say no?
-Do I struggle to stop eating?
-Do I feel out of control when I eat, often followed by shame and guilt?
-Do I feel numb after eating a large amount? Like my problems have momentarily dissipated?
-Do I feel a need to compensate for the amount eaten after a binge to avoid weight gain by engaging in self-induced vomiting, laxative use, diuretic use, or overexercise?
If you can answer yes to these patterns of behavior occurring weekly for at least three months, you may wish to explore a binge-purge eating pattern with a trusted health care provider for further assessment.
-Do I spend a lot of time reflecting on the appearance of my body? Does my opinion of my body impact the way I see myself and interact with others?
-Am I scared of gaining weight?
-Have I recently lost a significant amount of weight?
-Do I eat significantly less than others or not at all?
-Do I spend a large portion of my time exercising?
-Do others make comments on how much time I spend working out?
-Do I feel that I take up too much space in the world, despite others telling me otherwise?
-Do I feel more in control of my life when I restrict my food intake?
-Do I feel badly about myself if I cannot do something perfectly?
-Is my hair thinning? Am I fatigued often? If I identify as female, has my menses been delayed or absent?
If you can answer yes to these patterns of behavior occurring weekly for at least three months, you may wish to explore a restrictive eating pattern with a trusted health care provider for further assessment.
If you identify with any of the above patterns of behavior, but experience them less frequently than weekly, you may wish to explore a disordered eating pattern with a trusted health care provider. All patterns of disordered eating are destructive, complex, and very real, no matter which category you may identify with most.
This holiday season, no matter where you find yourself, please know that you are not alone. Should you identify with any of these descriptions above, there is hope! Treatment is available, and our wholeness remains. Food is but a symptom of our emotional health. The more we can learn to speak the language of our own emotions, the less we will need food, or our relationship to it, to do it for us. Take heart, there is much healing to be had. May we all find spaces to visit our pauses throughout the season. You are oh so worth it.
Alisha Bashaw (she/her), MA, LPC, LAC is a Licensed Professional Counselor and a Licensed Addiction Counselor in the state of Colorado. She also serves as Khesed’s DNA Manager. Alisha has worked extensively in the treatment of eating disorders and addiction. She is passionate about helping people authentically live the lives they desire, holding space for mystery and wonder as each person's journey unfolds, and integrating mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health into a holistic wellness based-approach.
