Learn from MacKenzie
A vibrant presenter who consistently receives glowing feedback from attendees, MacKenzie is available to provide training on a variety of topics in clinical, community, and academic settings. With over 20 years of teaching experience in front of hundreds of students, she can bring the most mundane topics to life and make the intimidating accessible.Â
MacKenzie is trained in deliberate practice and relational supervision, and has been helping associate clinicians move confidently towards licensure since 2016. Her warmth and practicality inspire clinicians to do their best work. She has support to offer clinicians in any setting, from multidisciplinary full-service partnership to private practice.
Reach out to mackenzie @ metaphortherapy.org schedule a training, get consultation, or talk about supervision for you or your organization.
Ready-to-Deliver Trainings (Click to Expand)
All of MacKenzie's trainings include engaging lecture, discussions to deepen participant understanding, experientials, and deliberate practice exercises to try out new skills. Need something bespoke? MacKenzie will work with you to craft the right presentation for your team.
Clinical Issues in Consensual Nonmonogamy, BDSM, and Kink (2-6 hours): Working with clients with unconventional intimate practices. Includes definitions, assessment, case conceptualization, common clinical issues, and interventions. Longer trainers can include a panel of speakers, additional discussion, and additional opportunities to practice. This training can be split into one training on CNM and one on BDSM and kink to allow for additional depth.
Clinical Issues in Psychopharmacology (2-6 hours): Working with clients taking or considering psychotropic medication. Includes definitions, key concepts, clinical issues, and personal reflection. 2-hour trainings include a review of four common pharmaceutical interventions for mental health challenges (second generation antipsychotics (SGAs), selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), benzodiazepines, and stimulants). Training can be lengthened to include virtually any topic related to psychopharmacology.
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 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-informed instructions for writing treatment plans. Can include specific group discussions of different therapeutic orientations, which is particularly useful to MA-level associates studying for clinical exam. With four years of experience providing feedback to clinicians on their MediCal documentation as a quality assurance auditor and program manager, MacKenzie can make sure your team has the support they need to write clawback-resistant paperwork.
Client-Centered Advocacy (90 minutes): A comprehensive review of advocacy work in community mental health and private practice settings. Includes journal break and group discussion to encourage self as therapist work and class discussion of case studies.
Subpoenas and Depositions (1 hour): A basic review of definitions, responding vs. asserting privilege, and how subpoenas differ from working with insurance or traditional records requests. Includes a subpoena pair exercise and the story of my deposition and court testimony on behalf of a client.
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 exercises 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.
Deliberate Practice
The best way to learn is through repetition, but clinicians and educators don't often have the opportunity to practice. MacKenzie provides personalized coaching to address growth opportunities and skill deficits using deliberate practice. She can support you and your team with:
Identifying opportunities to deepen or expand use of skills appropriate to your setting, whether it's a business, school, or practice
Creating "just difficult enough" opportunities to practice or deepen clinical skills ranging from microcounseling to clinical supervision
Designing your own exercises to support the learning of students, staff, and supervisees
Educational Consultation
MacKenzie provides educational consultation to counselor educators and counseling psychology programs. She can support you and your team with:
Integrating deliberate practice into courses and advising to support students making the shift from conceptual to procedural knowledge
Creating deliberate practice exercises to meet program learning objectives
Cohort program dynamics
Syllabus preparation and grading
Creating standardized assignments to compare student outcomes over time
Clinical Consultation
MacKenzie provides consultation and personalized instruction to mental health professionals including therapists, trainees, associates, coaches and peer counselors working in clinical and community settings. Expand your knowledge and expertise on topics including:
Adapting your existing clinical knowledge to a new population
LGBTQIA2-S people
People in ethically nonmonogamous relationships, including polyamorous and open relationships
BDSM/kink practitioners and community members
Serving communities you yourself are a part of while managing dual relationships and countertransference
The use of self-disclosure in psychotherapy
Case conceptualization and treatment planning
DSM-5-TR diagnosis, including differential diagnosis
Medication management and psychopharmacological interventions for mental health symptoms
Demanding clinical issues including, chronic depression, suicidality, and psychosis
Supervision
MacKenzie is available to provide supervision for pre-licensed clinicians seeking hours toward licensure in organizational and milieu settings. An experienced relief supervisor, MacKenzie is able to quickly adapt to organization norms to facilitate group and individual supervision while your usual supervisor is out on vacation or leave. She has also worked with non-traditional therapeutic settings like summer camps to provide short-term supervision to allow associates to accrue hours while they support your mission. Whenever possible, MacKenzie incorporates deliberate practice into her supervision work. New to deliberate practice? See tape from a real supervision session with MacKenzie below.
Client List
