The Colorado Counseling Association is made up of more than 1,500 members throughout the state of Colorado. We are so grateful to serve each member! 

 

The mission of the CCA is to serve its membership by promoting legislative advocacy efforts, education resources, and professional resources offered to its members.

 

 

What's in this newsletter:

Please find all of this important information below. If you have any questions, or any information to share, please email us at: info@ColoradoCounselingAssociation.org

 

Thank you from all of us here!

The 2024 Foundations and Annual Conference is over and by all accounts it was a success. More than 275 clinicians attended the conference over the three-days and came away inspired, fulfilled, challenged, and with a better direction for their own practices. Over the next several months, we’ll be bringing you via this newsletter articles by some of the presenters. We kick this off in this edition with a reflection by Khara Croswaite Brindle, our keynote speaker who opened up her own story of Confidential Grief.

 

The CCA thanks all its sponsors and exhibitors whose financial support made this conference possible. The CCA also thanks everyone who entered into the raffle and congratulates all the winners: Alyce Sebring - free registration to the 2025 Annual Conference, Laura Shughart - yearly membership to CCA, Martha Biastoch and Daniel Schellenger who received a free CCACE training, and  Steven Glasser who received a signed photo of Avalanche player Nathan MacKinnon. We also thank Sweet Bloom Coffee who donated coffee gift cards. Recipients were: Matthew Mccue, Steven Glasser, Lydia Storey-Lopez, Frances Novak, Dr. John Kreimer and Jessica Ladd.

 

We’re excited to announce the dates and keynote speaker for the 2025 conference! Join us Monday, August 18 – Wednesday, August 20 at Keystone for the Foundations and Annual Conference. 

 

Look for the Request for Proposals for workshop presentations to come out in early November. Start thinking about your presentation topic now.

“How’s it going?” My close community kept checking in on me as a I prepared to give my keynote at the Colorado Counseling Association Annual Conference in Keystone the next day. “I keep crying at certain parts of my speech,” I shared. I’d already given myself a grief hangover just writing my speech, now I was doing my best to stay composed as I said it out loud. “It’s okay to cry, your message is important,” each of them said. I agreed with them and continued to prepare. When it was time, I stood in front of almost 300 members of my community and introduced them to the term confidential grief. Defined by Dr. Lena Salpietro as losing a client to suicide and not being able to talk about it, I invited the audience to apply confidential grief to all the experiences in our industry that feel secretive due to feelings of shame, guilt, and judgement from others. I named the Big Five Fears of client suicide, client death, client violence, subpoena, and grievance as examples. We got to know our shame monsters together as a group. I had chosen to share my personal and professional journey of becoming a Confidential Grief Specialist.

 

To help my colleagues understand the impact of confidential grief, I took them through six impactful and painful points in my 14 years as a therapist. These were stories that weren’t public knowledge due to confidential grief, and I named them as moments of self-doubt, shame, and leadership trauma. We grieved the loss of community members to violence and clients to suicide. We shared outrage at circumstances outside our control. And this time, I didn’t cry so hard that I lost my place. Instead I carried that emotion with me as I embodied vulnerability to a group of people I felt I was just starting to know more fully.

 

As the talk continued, there were invitations to laugh, cry, and connect. I shared how I’d learned from my experiences that introversion is welcome (and necessary sometimes), vulnerability in leadership is allowed, and stories eliminate isolation in our field and as humans seeking connection against burnout. We talked about how to combat confidential grief through building community, showing up fully, and creating healing spaces for ourselves and others. I introduced bread crumbs imagery as bite-sized messages of hope and healing for folks to find when they were ready. Lastly, I shared a beautiful image on screen to start and close the talk. “There are not enough words” became an anchor amidst waves of emotion that come with confidential grief, and I invited my audience to share those words with others.

 

After my keynote was finished, I was given the gift of my community approaching me in both in the moments after and for hours into the next day to share their stories. You felt safe to share your losses of client suicide, your leadership trauma, and how you needed the term confidential grief to feel more seen. I heard countless exclamations that having a name for your experiences (both confidential grief and leadership trauma) was encouraging you to heal from here. I’m confident in the ripple effect of collective healing that will come from this gathering of clinicians, and find myself full of gratitude and with ‘not enough words’ to express the profound effect this experience will have on me for years to come. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the collective healing and sharing together at CCA’s annual conference, I can’t wait to hear where your journey takes you from here.

 

The prevailing media narrative is that social media and other screentime is destroying the mental health of adolescents (Hampton & Shin, 2023), but research shows that the impact of social media on teens is complex and nuanced (Hilty et al., 2023; Khalaf et al., 2023; Keles et al., 2024; West et a., 2021). It appears to be true that social media use can increase depression and anxiety symptoms in adolescents (Khalaf et al., 2023; Shannon et al., 2022). At the same time, there is evidence that social media can enhance connection and life satisfaction in teens and young adults (Hampton & Shin, 2023; Hilty et al., 2023). Understanding the varying ways that social media use can impact teens will help counselors to create more effective treatment for their clients.

 

It is true that social media can have a significant negative impact on adolescent mental health. One of the primary negatives is the impact of social media and cell phone use on sleep. According to Khalaf et al, 36% of teens claim that they wake up at least once per night to check their phones, while 40% state that they use their cell phone within five minutes of going to bed (2023). Overuse and “addiction” to cell phones can impact teens as well. More than 80% of 13-18-year-olds have a smartphone, and many report that they struggle with spending too many hours on social media (West et al., 2021). Many teens also report that social influences can have detrimental effects on their mental health. Social media accounts often glamorize mental health disorders and can actively encourage teens to participate in unhealthy activities, such as eating disorders (Issaka et al., 2024) or suicidal behaviors (Khalaf et al., 2023). Teens also report that cyberbullying can have a significant effect on their mental health, particularly when they perceive themselves as helpless to defend themselves (Keles et al., 2024).

 

Studies indicate that social media use is correlated with increases in depression, anxiety, and suicide ideation, particularly when used for more than three hours daily (Hilty et al., 2023; Khalaf et al., 2023; Orben et al., 2022; Shannon et al., 2022). Some researchers theorize that the increase in mental health symptoms associated with higher levels of social media use is due to sleep disruptions (Hilty et al., 2023). Others state that it could be due to the glamorization of mental health symptoms, particularly suicide ideation (Issaka et al., 2024). Gender is a factor in the severity of mental health symptoms associated with social media use, with studies indicating that the decrease in life satisfaction among adolescent girls who use excessive social media is substantially higher than it is in boys (Khalaf et al., 2023; Oberon et al., 2022).

 

Social media use does not appear to be all bad, though. Some studies indicate that accessing social media for shorter periods of time is associated with increased life-satisfaction, connectedness, and wellbeing (Hampton et al., 2023; Keles et al., 2024; Oberen et al., 2022). Teens report that having access to social media increases their feelings of connection with others, gives an avenue for self-expression, and allows access to resources for their mental health (West et al., 2021). Adolescents report that following social media influencers who achieve difficult goals increases their self-motivation (Keles et a., 2024). Over 80% of teens in one study reported that social media increases their feelings of connection with family and friends (Khalaf et al., 2023). It appears that accessing social media in moderation may be better than not accessing social media at all. Teens who were unable to access social media, either due to family restriction or to not having access to internet and broadband, report decreased life satisfaction and wellbeing (Hampton & Shin, 2023).

 

Although the results are mixed when it comes to the specific effects of social media on teens, it is clear that high engagement with social media results in negative consequences to teen mental health, including increases in depression, anxiety, and suicide idedation (Hilty et al., 2023; Khalaf et al., 2023; Orben et al., 2022; Shannon et al., 2022). Despite this, teens appear to benefit from some access to social media and even report that they feel that they understand themselves better as a result of social media (Keles et al., 2024). Counselors who work with adolescents should encourage their clients to engage in social media in healthy ways and reduce screen time before bed, and should monitor for symptoms of depression, anxiety, and suicide ideation that may be arise when social media is overused.

 

SB115 made several changes to the LPCC licensure process that are effective immediately. If you are a student or a supervisor, it’s important that you understand how these changes will apply to you.

Have you heard that the IRS created a new federal W-9 form?  It changed in March 2024 and has a few changes you should be aware of.

Line 1 asks for the name of entity or individual. For a sole proprietor or disregarded entity, enter the owner’s name on line 1, and enter the business/disregarded entity’s name on line 2. The owner of the company's name is usually your name if you are a sole proprietor.

Line 2: Enter your company’s name.

Line 3a ask to check the appropriate box for federal tax identification. For my business, I'm a single owner (LLC/disregarded entity) so I check sole proprietor/individual as I am the sole owner of my business. You enter based on who the owner of the company is (typically it's an individual). This may be different if you are a SCorp/Corp etc.

I have chosen to not give all my payers a new form because none of my information has changed. I am going to complete and sign a new form to give to payers in the future for credentialing. This should not limit your resubmission; it’s just to share under what circumstances you send this updated form to your payers.

Link to the updated form: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw9.pdf

Good luck! We here at CCA are here to help navigate all your private practice needs.

The CCA would like to recognize its members for their contributions receiving state or national acclaim. If you have been recently recognized for your contributions to the profession to include article contributions, speaking engagements, etc., please let us know so we can tout your achievements to all of our membership. You can email your achievement to: newsletter@coloradocounselingassociation.org
 

This month we want to honor Dr. Stacy Pinto who recently collaborated with ACA to produce an article for ACA's Counseling Corner: Personal Identity and the Importance of Respecting Pronouns. Dr. Pinto is a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Denver. She is also President, Society for Sexual, Affectional, Intersex, & Gender Expansive Identities (SAIGE) and Past-President, Colorado SAIGE.