I am writing to you with some news about our community. The Board went on a retreat for a weekend in the Laurel Highlands in October. We all enjoyed finally being able to spend time together in person, and we would like to bring this experience back to our community, too.

For 2023 we will start in person events again.  In January we will be coming together as a community for a midday Happy Hour to celebrate our 7 years of existence at our usual meeting place at the Community Room at the Kenmawr building in Shadyside - our familiar pre-covid meeting place.

For those of you who live further away or still like the online format we will continue to provide online trainings. Our 3-hour workshops on various topics were very popular and helped our community members learn from our leaders and connect with national and international EFT trainers and earn continuing education credits.

Now that 2022 comes to a close, I am thinking back to how it all started, about seven years ago in February 2015, with the question “Is there anyone else interested in learning and connecting about EFT?”.

We started the consultation and other supervision groups, and look where our learning together took us: A solid community with over 20 members, at least 3 certified EFT therapists, one supervisor and a few more “almost there” certified therapists.

We definitely connected and built a home in EFT for therapists in our region as well for clients, who in ever growing numbers are searching for this wonderful therapeutic method.

There is a referral system in place through our website and folks now know how to find an EFT trained provider. 

With all this growth and change, it is also time for change within the leadership of our community. I will be stepping down from the presidency in the New Year and Dr Meagan Alder will be taking on the role of president.

Together with the Board, Meagan and her team will continue to fulfill our mission to facilitate the promotion of secure and resilient relationships through a connected and supportive EFT community in our region. I will still be on the Board, focussing on outreach and supervision.

It is time for me to say thank you for all the support you have given to our community, as members and EFT learners, and a particular heartfelt thank you to the Board Members, who have given so much of their time and energy to make the community grow and make our vision become a reality.  It would not have been possible without you!  Thank you so much!!

I am looking forward to seeing you all at the January Happy Hour and celebrating 7 years of EFT in Pittsburgh with you.

This has been such a rewarding journey and I hope some of you will consider joining our Board in the future!

Warm Regards, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year,

Karin

Some of our community members at the Untethered Therapy Group are hosting Hold Me Tight workshops! Please check the flyer below for more information!

February 19, 2021
12-2 PM (Eastern) on Zoom

Cost
PCEFT Members: Free
Non-member Rate: $30

The Philadelphia Center for EFT is thrilled to present our first Quarterly Seminar of 2021: EFT with African American Couples, featuring a panel discussion and clinical case exploration. This seminar will serve as the introduction to our EFT community to our newly formed Diversity and Outreach Committee.  

Join us as we explore an EFT-informed approach in working with African American couples, along with a look at issues of race, diversity, cultural sensitivity and competence as it presents in the couple context.  Some familiarity with EFT is helpful but not required to benefit from this event.

About Our Panelists:

Dr. Shalonda Kelly, PhD (clinical psychology – urban studies), is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology (GSAPP) at Rutgers University, Co-Director of the NJ Couples Clinic at Rutgers, President of Division 43 (Society for Couple and Family Psychology) of the American Psychological Association, recipient of diversity awards from the National Council of Schools and Programs of Professional Psychology, Division 43, and Rutgers, and she is a psychologist licensed in NJ. Dr. Kelly conducts both research and clinical scholarship focusing on African American couple relationships, measurement of racial perspectives, and understanding how race, culture, and ethnicity impact individual and couple functioning, such as exemplified in her recent edited book, Diversity in Couple and Family Therapy. Dr. Kelly teaches couple therapy and diversity courses and conducts couple and family therapy and supervision from emotionally focused, cognitive behavioral, multicultural, and systems orientations, often integrating two or more of these approaches using a principle-based model.  

Dr. Algernon Baker, PhD is a psychotherapist in private practice in Philadelphia, PA and Willow Grove, PA. He holds a PhD in Marriage and Family Therapy from Eastern University. His passion is to de-stigmatize psychotherapy in the African-American Christian community, especially among African-American clergy. His dissertation was entitled, “Where Could I Go But To The Lord? How African American Senior Pastoral Couples Describe the Factors that Facilitate or Deter their Engagement of Psychotherapy.”   Dr. Baker is dedicated to the work of healing and encouragement for Black and African-American families through Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT). He and his wife Coeli have two sons, A.J. (23), Caleb (17), and a daughter, Moriah (14).

Kim R. Jetter, LPC is a therapist in private practice based in Langhorne, PA and holds a master’s degree in counseling from Cairn University. She is currently the Director of Counseling Services at the Oasis Counseling Center and is a faculty member in the graduate counseling department at Cairn University where she currently teaches Marriage and Family classes. Kim is passionate about using the EFT model to help couples from across cultures and different ethnic backgrounds move from feeling stuck in unhealthy and insecure relational patterns towards a more healthy, emotionally safe and secure connection. Kim recently joined the board of the Philadelphia Center for Emotionally Focused Therapy.

Dr. Roslyn Still, PhD is a Philadelphia-based therapist working with individuals and couples. She is a graduate of Eastern University’s doctoral and master’s programs, and she has been providing therapy since 2008. Her dissertation, “The Impact of Attachment Styles on Black Heterosexual Women in Romantic Relationships”, is reflective of her natural curiosity about intimate/romantic relationships and the lived experiences of Black women. Dr. Still recently joined the board of the Philadelphia Center for Emotionally Focused Therapy, where she serves on the Diversity and Outreach Committee.

Attn PghEFT members! Take your practice and your skills to a new level with EFIT! This online course will show you how to use attachment science and harness the power of deep emotion to move your clients into a place where they are FIT for life – robust – resilient – ready to engage fully with life and with love!

Register today!

https://courses.eftvancouverisland.com/courses/efit-trauma-level-1?fbclid=IwAR1dJ0Ow5xjPuWuclTpqfUxiPsQfZO9oB384id1E0vMtMEJ-0Gi0rAqJrJc

Here is an exciting CE opportunity from the Philadelphia Center for EFT! Join one of our favorite EFT trainers Dr. Ting Liu to learn about treating depression with Emotionally Focused Therapy: Evidence-based Strategies for Choosing Individual EFIT or Couple EFCT.

Check it out here!

We, members and board members of The Pittsburgh Community for EFT, stand in solidarity with those in the US and beyond who demand an end to injustice, oppression, white supremacy and police violence.  We wholeheartedly believe Black Lives Matter. And we are committed to acting on that belief.

As a community committed to “facilitating the promotion of secure and resilient relationships”, we commit to creating a world in which every person can access the safety necessary to embrace their universal attachment needs and risk sharing these needs from a vulnerable place with those they love.

Our community began 5 years ago with a handful of white therapists who all valued EFT and we realize that we need to do so much more to make space for the voices, experiences, and bodies of Black and brown therapists. We commit to sustained conversations about how to do this and we commit to taking action. We commit to continued conversations about how to be anti-racist therapists and create an anti-racist community. We commit to owning up to any mistakes we make and learning as we go in the continuous work of anti-racism. 

We are committed to transparency and accountability in our efforts to create an anti-racist community of EFT therapists. As such, we will report on the actions that we have taken towards making this a reality within our community.

We also stand behind a statement published by ICEEFT earlier in June:

At this time of national trauma in the United States, ICEEFT shares the grief and outrage at the ongoing killing of Black Americans at the hands of police. We recognize that safety for our Black colleagues and the Black community requires us to identify and speak against systemic oppression in the United States and other countries if we are to support the essential value of human life and human connection.

The pain and oppression being visited on the Black community must also be our pain. The tragic killings in the United States of George Floyd and countless other Black men, women and children at the hands of police and citizens, and the systemic racism that has driven these actions, is antithetical to our core values in ICEEFT, and we are determined to fight racism and inequality. At this time we recommit to being a diverse and inclusive organization that promotes the same in the lives of our members and our clients.

Elana Katz and James McCracken for the ICEEFT Diversity Working Group Sanctioned by the ICEEFT Board of Directors

Dear EFT Community,

During this health crisis our therapy world has changed drastically. You probably have made transitions to providing online therapy at this point.
While I was uncertain about whether EFT would work in the virtual world, I am having some encouraging experiences.

I would like to invite you to come together for a community meeting next Friday at our consultation group time to connect, talk about our new realities, and lend support to each other.

We will keep this meeting to 1.5 hours max.  Please let me know if you want to participate and I will send you a zoom invitation Thursday evening.
You don’t need to install zoom on your computer ahead of time —just click on the link when it is time for this meeting and follow the instructions.

I hope to see you all next Friday,

Karin
karin.arnds@gmail.com

Morning, members of PghEFT! We hope that you are taking care of yourselves and practicing as much social isolation as you can with your daily life tasks, work, family responsibilities, etc.

Due to the increase in information from Gov. Wolf about the COVID-19 pandemic, we have decided to suspend our monthly consultation groups and our Road To Certification workshop until further notice. 

We hope this doesn’t last long because, as we know as EFT therapists, is that it is the secure attachment that heals, and during tough times, it’s the relationship that can provide support, safety, and calm. 

We will still be available through email and through our website. Please check either on our website or Facebook page for breaking information about when we will resume face-to-face meetings.

If you have already registered and paid for the Road To Certification workshop, we will be rescheduling! However, if you would like a refund, please reach out to Karin directly to address those concerns.

These are scary times, but please take care of yourselves, and we hope to see you soon!