2025 Spring Workshop Series
Join us for our 2025 Spring Workshop Series! All workshops take place virtually over Zoom.
IDFPR, IL Certification Board & EAP Approved:
Counselors, Social Workers, CADC, Employee Assistance Counselors, Psychologists, Nurses
NOTE: These workshops are 3 CEUs each. Earn up to 12 CEUS.
Workshop Schedule- 2025 Lineup
| Workshop | Date | Time | Topic | Presenter(s) |
| A | March 15, 2025 | 9AM – 12:15PM | Do No Harm: Integrating an Anti-Oppressive Lens as a Mental Health Professional | Richla Davis, MED, LCPC |
| B | March 29, 2025 | 9AM – 12:15PM | Sexual Trauma: Embodied Oppression to Expression | Becky Carter, LCPC |
| C | April 12, 2025 | 9AM – 12:15PM | Contextual Approaches: Integrating Mindfulness & Behavioral Therapies in Addiction Treatment | Laura Angel, LCPC |
| D | April 19, 2025 | 9AM – 12:15PM | In Search of the Conscience: Working with Clients with Antisocial Personality Disorder and SUD | Mark Sanders, LCSW, CADC |
| E | April 26, 2025 | 9AM – 12:15PM | Feminist Counseling Theory in Action | Shannon McCray, LCPC |
Pricing:
| # of Workshops | General | Student/Senior Discount |
| 1 | $80 | $70 |
| 2 | $125 | $115 |
| 3 | $195 | $170 |
| 4 | $260 | $220 |
| 5 | $300 | $260 |
Contact
For questions or concerns, please contact:
Ryan Patterson, Project Specialist at rpatterson@hcenter.org or (312) 226-7984 Ext. 594
OR
Lisa Abrams, LCPC, CSADC, Director of Staff Training & Development at labrams@hcenter.org or (312) 226-7984 Ext. 581
If you are mailing your payment, please make check payable to:
Haymarket Center
ATTN: Education Department
932 W. Washington Blvd.
Chicago, IL 60607
Workshop Details
WORKSHOP A: Reducing the Impact of Bias on Treatment Outcomes
Saturday, March 15, 2025
9:00AM – 12:15PM
3 CEUs
Presented by Richla Davis, MEd, LCPC
This interactive workshop is designed to help clinicians explore the complex and often uncomfortable themes of working with marginalized clients. Building on concepts introduced in Part 1 of my Do No Harm Anti-Racism Training, this session will encourage deeper reflection and engagement with issues surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion in mental health spaces.
Learning Objectives:
- Discuss the meaning of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in mental health spaces
- Discuss internalized racism and its impact on marginalized communities
- Address intersectional invisibility
About the Speaker:
Richla Davis is a psychotherapist, social justice advocate and an anti-oppressive consultant. As the cofounder of Ida Lillie Psychotherapy and Wellness, a private group practice in Chicago, Illinois, Richla co-leads a clinical team committed to providing evidence-based counseling to individuals, couples, polycules, and families, with a focus on serving marginalized populations.
In addition to her clinical practice, Richla serves as a consultant for group therapy practices across the country, offering guidance on implementing anti-oppressive frameworks and promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion within therapeutic settings. She also conducts anti-oppressive trainings for academic institutions and corporate organizations, fostering dialogue and action towards social change.
WORKSHOP B: Sexual Trauma: Embodied Oppression to Expression
Saturday, March 29,2025
9AM – 12:15PM
3 CEUs
Presented by Becky Carter, LCPC
The embodied impact of sexual trauma is important for therapists to assess, explore and address in order to facilitate holistic healing with their clients. Feelings of isolation, shame, betrayal, anger, confusion, and fear are often present after the experience of sexual trauma. Each are held somatically within the client’s nervous system. Sexual trauma is a trauma of oppression, and survivors of color and other oppressed populations experience additional challenges in coping with sexual trauma as they navigate the ongoing assault of systemic racism. This training will explore the impact of sexual trauma through the lens of somatic experiencing. Participants will learn about dissociation in sexual trauma, memory work, internalized perpetrator beliefs, and how to access intimate expression after oppression. The training will include somatic methods of guiding clients slowly, mindfully, and somatically through their trauma work. The training will also explore how sexual trauma impacts survivors’ sense of their sexual selves and sexual functioning. Somatic sexual healing methods will be discussed.
Learning Objectives Part I:
- Learning Participants will identify traumatic phases of sexual trauma.
- Participants will learn about sexual trauma treatment models.
- Participants will explore differences between healthy versus traumatic sexual views.
Learning Objectives Part II:
- Participants will learn about the somatic impact of sexual trauma.
- Participants will gain understanding of coupling and dissociative aspects of sexual trauma.
- Participants will explore the reconfiguration of self after sexual trauma.
About the Speaker:
Becky Carter is a licensed trauma therapist at Family Resilience Group in Arlington Heights, IL. She brings more than two decades of experience in helping people of all cultural backgrounds and genders heal the wounds of relational trauma that occur in utero and beyond and is trained in both Somatic Experiencing and Transformative Touch Therapy.
As a biracial, cisgender, transracially adopted female whose ancestors are West African and Sicilian, Becky has a particular capacity and interest in racial trauma, adoption, racial identity, & intergenerational trauma.
In her practice, she strives to create a space where clients can understand, through a new lens, the impact of trauma, stress and pain on their whole being. She enjoys the process of nurturing resilience in clients and supporting the regulation of the nervous system.
She works with adults and teens and has special expertise in repairing complex trauma, dissociation and sexual abuse. As a parent to two black adopted children, she has a special dedication to supporting adoptees and their families.
Facilitating groups for both male and female survivors of sexual trauma she creates a safe and collaborative process for oppressed, shamed and vulnerable clients to be witnessed and to find their voice. Some additional group training offers include groups on systemic racial trauma & the body in grief. Services are also offered for organizations, consultations, and small group discussions.
In her free time, I love expressing myself creatively through blogging and poetry.
WORKSHOP C: Contextual Approaches: Integrating Mindfulness & Behavioral Therapies in Addiction Treatment
Saturday, April 12, 2025
9:00AM – 12:15PM
3 CEUs
Presented by Laura Angel, LCPC
“Third-wave” behavioral therapies such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) have been around for over thirty years, and there is evidence for their effectiveness in treating a wide variety of issues, including treating additive behaviors. Too often, teaching these approaches is distilled down to lessons and skills that can be passed along to clients. Yet, it is also essential that clinicians learn to view individuals through a contextual lens and how to respond to clients in a manner consistent with our chosen therapeutic model. This workshop will include a particular emphasis on the integration of ACT and DBT alongside other clinical approaches common to substance use recovery and how to adapt these therapies for use across different settings.
Learning Objectives:
- Identify the core principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) and apply an ecological lens to the modern practice of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).
- Apply ACT and DBT principles to substance use treatment and recovery, including identifying example treatment goals, adapting interventions across settings, and integrating these approaches with other treatment models.
- Gain mindfulness-based techniques to help individuals enhance present-moment awareness and acceptance, increase psychological flexibility and emotion regulation, and engage in value-driven, skillful behavior.
About the Speaker:
Laura Angel, LCPC (she/her) brings over fifteen years’ experience across Illinois’ community behavioral health sector. In her current role as Deputy Director of Adult Outpatient Services at Kenneth Young Center, she has trained clinical staff on evidence-based practices including Mindfulness-Based Sobriety (MBS) and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). Her approach to therapy is firstly rooted in client empowerment, harm reduction, demystifying the therapeutic process, and attending to the person-in-context. She is certified in DBT and has practiced DBT since 2017, including as a skills group facilitator, individual therapist, and staff consult coordinator.
Laura has a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an M.A. in Clinical Psychology (Counseling Practice) from Roosevelt University, where she also worked for the Illinois Consortium on Drug Policy. She currently represents Kenneth Young Center on the Behavioral Health Workforce Center’s (BHWC) Community Mental Health Advisory Group. She also serves as a coordinator for KYC’s clinical internship program, which partners every year with social work and counseling students from graduate programs across the Chicagoland area.
WORKSHOP D: In Search of the Conscience: Working with Clients with Antisocial Personality Disorder and SUD
Saturday, April 19, 2025
9:00AM – 12:15PM
3 CEUs
Presented by Mark Sanders, LCSW, CADC
Research indicates that clients with antisocial personality disorder stir up the most negative reactions from clinicians who work with them, and they often have high recidivism rates. Counseling these clients are sometimes described as working with an opponent. Seventy five percent of individuals with antisocial personality disorder have a concurrent substance use disorder, which further impacts outcomes.
Topics covered in this skill-building workshop include: diagnosing antisocial personality disorder; contributing factors for developing antisocial personality; increasing empathy for clients with antisocial personality disorder; addressing addiction and antisocial personality disorders concurrently; evidence based practices with clients with antisocial personality disorder and addiction.
Learning Objectives:
• Utilize 42 questions to accurately diagnose antisocial personality disorder.
• Explain the diagnosis in a clear and concise manner while maintaining rapport with the client.
• Address antisocial personality disorder and addiction in an integrated manner.
About the Speakers:
Mark Sanders, LCSW, CADC is an international speaker and consultant in behavioral health whose presentations have reached thousands throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, West Indies, and Guam. He is the recipient of four lifetime achievement awards including the prestigious NAADAC Enlightenment Award.He was one of three finalists for the National Association for Addiction Professionals 50th Anniversary Legends Award. Mark is also therecipient of the Illinois Certification Board’s Professional of the Year Award, The Illinois Certification Board, Jessica Hayes Lifetime Achievement Award and The Barbara Bacon Awardfor outstanding contributions to the social work profession as a Loyola University of Chicago alumni.
Mark is the author of five books on behavioral health recovery. Recent writings include Slipping Through the Cracks: Intervention Strategies For Clients With Multiple Addictions Disorders and Relationship Detox: A Counselors Guide To Helping Clients Develop Healthy Relationships In Recovery. He was lead writer on a trauma informed gun violence prevention curriculum which is being implemented in several large cities in the United States. His groundbreaking monograph Recovery Management co-authored with historians William White and Earnest Kurtz helped shift addictions treatment and recovery from the acute care model solely towards a recovery-oriented system of care. Mark has had two stories published in the New York Times bestselling book series, Chicken Soup for The Soul.
Mark has also had a 30-year career as a university educator having taught at The University of Chicago, Loyola University of Chicago, and Illinois State University School of Social Work. He is co-founder of Serenity Academy Chicago, a program which sponsors recovery-oriented peer groups in local high schools.
WORKSHOP E: Feminist Counseling Theory in Action
Saturday, April 26, 2025
9:00AM – 12:15PM
3 CEUs
Presented by Shannon McCray, LCPC
In the treatment world, the unique needs of women are often overlooked (think: having no childcare but being mandated to attend treatment). This workshop aims to provide a historical context for the emergence of feminist counseling theory and introduces participants to the basic techniques of feminist counseling theory that they can immediately put to use in their interactions with clients. Additionally, this workshop will help participants understand and identify how gender bias affects treatment outcomes, and how to build therapeutic alliances with clients utilizing appropriate gender-responsive interventions.
Learning Objectives:
- Participants will be able to describe the principles of feminist counseling theory;
- Participants will be able to understand the historical context of feminist counseling theory’s development;
- Participants will be able to identify gender bias and its impact on the clinical process;
- Participants will learn how to utilize feminist counseling theory techniques to build therapeutic alliances with clients.
About the Speaker:
Shannon McCray (she/her) is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor based in Chicago, Illinois. Shannon is the Director of Behavioral Health at the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN), where her professional work addresses the intersections of mental health, racial trauma, community violence, childhood adverse experiences and organizing for social change–all of which are her clinical interests. Additionally, Shannon is a professional consultant and facilitates training/professional development workshops for other professionals that are gender-responsive, trauma-informed, socially just, and culturally responsive.