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Full Session Descriptions
Tools of Understanding and Hope for the Relational Clinician in Challenging Times
Thursday, April 9, 2026 - 8:45 am – 10:15 am (MT) & 10:30 am – 12:00 pm (MT) 3CE
Presenter: Mauricio Cifuentes, PhD, LCSW
Target Audience: Clinical Social Workers, Social Work Educators, Social Work Students in MSW/DSW Programs
Content Level: Beginner
Description
Today's societal landscape is placing extraordinary demands on relational mental health providers, who — regardless of their personal views — are uniquely positioned at the intersection of their own lived experience and their professional obligation to support clients through crisis. Secondary trauma, the tendency to normalize or avoid difficult realities, and the weight of ethical mandates to provide a holding environment can create significant tension for helping professionals seeking to remain effective and grounded in their work. In this keynote session, Dr. Mauricio Cifuentes draws on Psychodynamic theory and the Strengths perspective to help attendees understand current conditions as a distinct traumatic event, explore practical tools to support clients most vulnerable to its impact, and navigate the conflict between professional core values and the very human impulse to disengage from ongoing trauma. Dr. Cifuentes brings a rich and diverse professional background to this conversation, having worked as a clinician, supervisor, administrator, and professor across organizations including Saint Anthony Hospital, Loyola University Chicago — where he led the first online bilingual MSW program — and CLUES in the Twin Cities. He currently serves as Director of Programs for Family Service and Mental Health Center of Cicero, Illinois. This session offers clinicians a pathway toward greater self-awareness, renewed hope, and a stronger capacity to maximize their impact in the communities they serve.
Learning Objectives
1. Participants will be able to identify current societal conditions as a distinct traumatic event and articulate its potential impact on both clients and relational mental health providers.
2. Participants will be able to apply specific strategies drawn from Psychodynamic theory and the Strengths perspective to enhance the wellbeing of clients who are directly and negatively impacted by today's societal circumstances.
3. Participants will be able to recognize the tension between the core ethical mandates of the helping professions and the tendencies to avoid, normalize, and forget traumatic events, and utilize tools to navigate that conflict in clinical practice.
When Home is No Longer Your Haven: A DACA Recipient's life Uprooted in Times of Turmoil and Chaos
Thursday, April 9, 2026 - 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm (MT) 1.5CE
Presenter: Lucia Anna Leo, LCSW-S, BCD
Target Audience: Clinical Social Workers, Social Work Educators, Social Work Students in MSW/DSW Programs
Content Level: Intermediate
Session Description
In a political climate of heightened uncertainty, DACA recipients face a unique and compounding trauma — the very place they call home has become a source of fear, instability, and grief. This case study presentation invites attendees into the clinical work of an experienced practitioner as she walks through a real case involving a DACA recipient whose life was significantly disrupted during a period of political and social upheaval. Drawing on her 35+ years of behavioral health experience across diverse settings, Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Board Certified Diplomate Lucia Anna Leo will examine the clinical tools, therapeutic frameworks, and relational strategies she employed to support her client through this profound disruption. Attendees will gain an intimate look at the intersection of immigration policy, trauma, and clinical practice, and leave with practical approaches applicable to their own work with vulnerable populations. Ms. Leo is the founder of Mariposa Wellness Center, PLLC in McAllen, Texas, a retired Senior Clinical Social Worker from the Department of Veterans Affairs, and a past president of both the NASW Texas Chapter and the American Board of Clinical Social Work.
Learning Objectives
1. Participants will be able to identify the unique psychological and emotional impact of immigration-related instability on DACA recipients and recognize how political turmoil compounds existing trauma responses.
2. Participants will be able to apply at least two clinical tools or therapeutic frameworks used in the presented case study to support clients experiencing displacement, grief, and identity disruption related to immigration status.
3. Participants will be able to articulate the role of the clinical social worker in navigating the intersection of systemic policy, cultural context, and individual trauma when providing services to immigrant and mixed-status clients.
Balancing Autonomy and Safety in Rural Behavioral Health: Ethical Psychotherapy with an Older Agricultural Producer
Thursday, April 9, 2026 - 2:45 pm – 4:15 pm (MT) 1.5CE
Presenter: James Kuemmerle, MBA, MSW, LCSW, BCD
Target Audience: Clinical Social Workers, Social Work Educators, Social Work Students in MSW/DSW Programs
Content Level: Intermediate
Description
Providing effective psychotherapy to older adult farmers and ranchers requires far more than clinical technique — it demands cultural humility, ethical agility, and a deep understanding of rural identity, values, and the realities of frontier practice. In this case study presentation, Licensed Clinical Social Worker James Kuemmerle draws on his direct clinical work with a 65-year-old farmer and rancher navigating chronic stress, anxiety, depression, and the profound grief of aging out of a life's work. Mr. Kuemmerle will walk attendees through the therapeutic frameworks he employed — including supportive psychotherapy, cognitive-behavioral strategies, grief and life-transition work, and the culturally grounded LandLogic Model — while examining the central ethical dilemma of honoring a client's autonomy and stoic cultural values while maintaining vigilance around safety and suicide risk. Attendees will gain insight into the nuanced clinical and ethical reasoning required when working with a population that is both deeply resilient and statistically at elevated risk. Mr. Kuemmerle is a licensed clinical social worker with over 30 years of experience serving rural and frontier communities, currently serving as Eastern Regional Behavioral Health Specialist for CSU Extension and lead of the Colorado AgrAbility Project, where his work focuses on expanding behavioral health support, stress management, and suicide prevention for agricultural producers and their families across Colorado.
Learning Objectives
1. Participants will be able to identify ethical dilemmas that arise when providing psychotherapy to older adults in rural agricultural communities, particularly tensions between autonomy and duty to protect.
2. Participants will be able to apply a structured ethical decision-making model (e.g., Reamer/Corey) to clinical situations involving suicide risk, cultural norms of self-reliance, and limited-service access.
3. Participants will be able to identify culturally responsive, strengths-based intervention strategies that simultaneously maintain therapeutic alliance, support client safety, and uphold clinical accountability within rural and frontier behavioral health settings.
Considerations of Safety, Therapeutic Presence, and External Realities in Psychotherapy
Friday, April 10, 2026 - 8:45 am – 10:15 am (MT) & 10:30 am – 12:00 pm (MT) 3CE
Presenter: Jennifer Bulow, LCSW, PhD
Target Audience: Clinical Social Workers, Social Work Educators, Social Work Students in MSW/DSW Programs
Content Level: Beginner
Description
At the core of every therapeutic relationship is a human connection — and when the world outside the therapy room is a source of shared fear, chronic stress, and ongoing uncertainty, that reality does not stay at the door. In this thought-provoking learning session, Dr. Jennifer Bulow explores what happens to the therapeutic dyad when clinician and client alike are navigating the same existential and external threats, and the emotional regulation demands on the therapist become as significant as those facing the people they serve. Drawing on regulation theory, interpersonal neurobiology, and the concept of right brain resonance, Dr. Bulow will examine how safety is communicated and experienced between individuals on cognitive, affective, and neurophysiological levels, and invite attendees to reflect honestly on how their own responses to current external realities may be shaping their therapeutic presence. With particular attention to the intrusive and often dysregulating role of news and social media, this session offers clinicians both a conceptual framework and a space for meaningful self-inquiry. Dr. Bulow maintains a private practice in Los Angeles specializing in individual adults and couples, with clinical interests in contemporary relational psychodynamic work, interpersonal neurobiology, and affect regulation. She holds a doctoral degree conferred by the Institute for Clinical Social Work and serves as adjunct faculty at The Reiss-Davis Graduate School, where she teaches neurobiology, affect regulation, and attachment theory to doctoral students.
Learning Objectives
1. Participants will be able to describe the neurobiological and relational mechanisms by which safety is communicated and experienced within the therapeutic dyad, including the role of right brain resonance and affect regulation in shaping therapeutic presence.
2. Participants will be able to identify the clinical and ethical implications of shared external stressors on the therapist's own sense of safety, emotional regulation, and capacity to maintain effective therapeutic presence with clients.
3. Participants will be able to apply concepts from interpersonal neurobiology and regulation theory to assess and reflect on the impact of their own responses to chronic, ongoing external realities — including news and social media exposure — on their clinical practice.
The Illusion of Safety: Moral Injury, Self-Preservation, and Ethical Reconnection After Crisis Deployment
Friday, April 10, 2026 - 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm (MT) 1.5CE
Presenter: Eveitta Shellette Henderson, LCSW, MSW, BCD
Target Audience: Clinical Social Workers, Active Duty/VA Social Workers, Social Work Educators, Social Work Students in MSW/DSW Programs
Content Level: Intermediate
Description
What happens when the very coping strategies that make a clinician effective in crisis begin to quietly erode their presence, relationships, and professional integrity long after the crisis has passed? In this deeply personal and professionally illuminating case study presentation, Licensed Clinical Social Worker and active-duty U.S. Navy social worker Eveitta Shellette Henderson draws on her own experience responding to a humanitarian mission in Sudan to examine the thin and often invisible line between adaptive self-preservation and longer-term psychological and ethical consequence. Ms. Henderson will walk attendees through the realities of delivering clinical care under extreme constraint — limited time, scarce resources, cultural and linguistic barriers, and sustained exposure to mass trauma — and trace the trajectory of how survival-based coping strategies, including emotional compartmentalization, relational narrowing, and task-focused functioning, followed her home and threatened both her personal life and her clinical presence. Drawing on the NASW Code of Ethics, neurobiological frameworks, and hard-won personal insight, she will challenge attendees to examine how professional competence can coexist with diminished relational depth, and what intentional reintegration — not retreat — looks like in practice. This session is particularly relevant for clinicians working in crisis, military, disaster, or high-acuity settings, and offers a rare and courageous look at what it truly means to rebuild safety from the inside out.
Learning Objectives
1. Using the NASW Code of Ethics and principles of trauma-informed care, participants will be able to analyze at least three ethical complexities and risk factors associated with rapid humanitarian deployment and evaluate their potential impact on clinical decision-making in constrained field environments.
2. Participants will be able to differentiate between adaptive self-preservation strategies and clinically significant symptoms of moral injury or depressive withdrawal in clinical professionals following crisis exposure and apply this distinction to assess their own or a colleague's post-deployment functioning.
3. Participants will be able to identify and apply evidence-informed reintegration strategies designed to restore clinical presence, professional integrity, and relational safety following high-intensity crisis or humanitarian field assignments.
Shared Worries: When Therapist and Client Struggle with Similar Concerns About the World They Live In
Friday, April 10, 2026 - 2:45 pm – 4:15 pm (MT) 1.5CE
Presenter: F. Diane Barth, LCSW, LICSW, BCD
Target Audience: Clinical Social Workers, Social Work Educators, Social Work Students in MSW/DSW Programs
Content Level: Intermediate
Description
When the world outside the therapy room feels increasingly uncertain and threatening, the boundary between a client's anxiety and a therapist's own can become remarkably thin. In this case study presentation, seasoned clinician F. Diane Barth draws on nearly 40 years of clinical experience to explore what happens when therapist and client find themselves grappling with the same fears about the state of the world — and how that shared emotional terrain can become both a clinical challenge and an unexpected therapeutic opportunity. Through her work with "Jack," a client who initially presented for anger management and whose deep environmental anxiety, contempt for others, and profound sense of helplessness mirrored many of her own concerns, Ms. Barth illustrates a four-part clinical process: acknowledging the validity of clients' real-world concerns, developing tools to manage the emotions those concerns generate, exploring the interplay between fears about the world and unresolved personal psychodynamics, and uncovering unformulated memories of past strengths that can restore a sense of agency in the present. Drawing on psychodynamic theory, polyvagal regulation, strengths-based practice, and the concept of the butterfly effect, this presentation invites clinicians to examine their own emotional responses as a clinical instrument rather than a liability, and to consider how authentic, carefully calibrated self-awareness in the therapy room can deepen the therapeutic alliance and support meaningful, sustainable change — even when the world itself remains beyond our control.
Learning Objectives
1. Participants will be able to distinguish between internally driven anxiety, depression, and distress rooted in external real-world events, and apply this distinction to formulate a more accurate and contextually informed clinical assessment of client presenting concerns.
2. Participants will be able to analyze the dynamic interplay between a client's internal psychodynamic landscape and external societal stressors and select targeted therapeutic interventions that address both dimensions simultaneously within the clinical encounter.
3. Participants will be able to evaluate specific clinical scenarios to determine when acknowledging shared concerns between therapist and client serves the therapeutic relationship and articulate a clear rationale for when and why refraining from such disclosure better protects the integrity of the treatment.
*Individual Session Bibliographies are available upon request via email to [email protected]
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