A soft place to land

Working for Oakwood Roots

Oakwood Roots is determined to set ourselves apart as a group of clinicians who desire to grow alongside our clients, whether we are just getting started or have been practicing for decades. As an internship site, we aim to be a coveted clinical training site for master’s and PhD level students, as well as for associates, with a heavy emphasis on the clinician’s development of self and the importance of authenticity and candor in clinical work. Our seasoned clinicians are encouraged towards the same growth, that our clients are our best teachers, and their work towards healing is contingent on our own work within ourselves.

PhD and Masters Student Practicum/ Internships

Masters & Ph.D. Student Practicum & Internship

The season of practicum and internship during your graduate school training is a unique moment in your burgeoning career.  Your time in the classroom diminishes, but as you begin sitting with clients, the need for connection with peers, for oversight on your work, and space for praxis-oriented training increases.  Your studies in theory are now tested with each client’s story that you encounter.  At Oakwood Roots, our aim is to be a soft place to land as you find your bearing in wrestling more directly with the question, “Who am I as a therapist?” 

Theory and therapeutic orientation doesn’t actually move the clinical work if you can’t figure out how to bring yourself into the approach and make it yours.

So, in addition to weekly supervision with a licensed and seasoned therapist, you will join a cohort of students from a variety of graduate programs for regular consultation groups that are specifically geared towards understanding yourself better as a clinician.  Our training as a clinic focuses on developing your therapeutic self, with both your unique story as a person, as well as your client work in the office as primary guides to this discovery process.

For all students, we offer:

  • weekly supervision by a licensed clinician

  • coordination with your university for mid-term/end of term evaluations

  • recording equipment for recording sessions

  • clientele that fits your preferred area of work and development

  • all supplies needed for therapy (play therapy, sand tray, etc.)

  • 2x/month all-staff meetings

  • 1x/month all-student meeting and 1x/month small pod student meeting

  • 2x/month Relational Consult Group

  • For Practicum (master’s level), 1 day/week of office use for clients (6 direct hours/week)

  • For Internship (master’s level) and Advanced Practicum (PhD level), 2 days/week of office use for clients (12-15 direct hours/week)

  • monthly optional mixers with colleagues (birthdays, graduation, licensure celebrations as well)

The ultimate touchstone of relationship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self: the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.

-David Whyte

LPC & LMFT Associate Employment

For all associates, we offer:

  • W-2 employment

  • Relational Consult Group - 2x/month (9 months/year)

  • 1-on-1 monthly professional development

  • training stipend after 1 year of employment

  • staff meetings 2x/month for training and community building

  • monthly professional development (led by colleagues, including you!)

  • monthly mixers with colleagues, birthday & licensure celebrations

  • office use, supplies, and referrals to build your practice

LPC & LMFT Associate Employment

The harrowing process towards licensure holds a lot of emotion for recent (and soon-to-be) graduates.  Finding employment that will enable you to earn those hours and somehow cover your rent, along with student loans, can feel daunting.  Oakwood Roots offers a unique opportunity for a limited number of Associates at a time, to work with private pay clientele under the supervision of seasoned, licensed private practice clinicians in a cohort model where consultation and training are also provided to help prepare you for full licensure.  While we continue to encourage you to define your clinical approach, our focus as a clinic is on you finding your unique and authentic voice - as a therapist and also as a colleague. Every clinician participates in consult groups, 1-on-1 professional development, and will also facilitate clinical development for the group as well.  There is a common misconception that your time as an associate is the one season of your career that you will need supervision, consultation, and personal therapy.  Instead, we take the approach that you are learning how to use these resources now to prepare you for a career where you will lean on supervision, consultation, and personal therapy throughout the lifespan of your growth as a therapist.

It is a joy to be hidden, and a disaster to not be found.

D.W. Winnicott

Supervisors, Mentors, and Seasoned Clinicians

Therapy in a private practice can become a uniquely lonely profession, despite the deep connection we feel with our clients. We can become really stale in our work when we do not have a community of like-minded colleagues to help us see ourselves better.

At Oakwood Roots, we view our clinical work as a posture of life-long learning, and our learning happens best in relationship. If you are interested in investing more in your own learning and the growth of other newer clinicians, reach out to Jeremy about opportunities to work with Roots or to join one of our consult groups to deepen your clinical work and therapeutic community.

Interested in deepening your work through consultation?

As clinicians, we often join a consultation group to feel more connected in an isolating profession and to gain clarity about our work with clients.  The structure of consultation is often focused on getting/giving advice about our work.  Similarly, many of us are drawn into this profession for a deeper sense of connection to ourselves and clarity around understanding others.  Most of our profession, through our training and consultation, however, becomes focused on fixing others and maintaining enough distance from our selves to be helpful.

What is Relational Psychodynamic Therapy?

As we feel less connected to ourselves and our clients, we tend to burnout and feel exhausted in our work.  In Relational Psychodynamic Therapy (RPT), there is the intentional movement towards connection with yourself, and learning to grow a deeper curiosity about what’s going on with you as you sit with your clients, and where it might be related to things going on with the client as well.  RFPT teaches you to tap into your greatest clinical asset – your presence.  Our avoidance of this connection to ourselves and to our clients is what frequently exhausts us in this work and leads to burnout.

“In Relational Psychodynamic Therapy (RPT), there is the intentional movement towards connection with yourself, and learning to grow a deeper curiosity about what’s going on with you as you sit with your clients.”

How does this work in a Relational Consult Group?

In an RFPT consultation group, the invitation from all of the consulting clinicians is an unending curiosity about your own emotional responses to the client/therapist being presented, and whether you present one of your cases or not, the work is equally dynamic and inviting of your emotional presence.  The consult space becomes a context to create a deeper imagination for our clinical work.

RFPT enables you to utilize the depth of this connection to move further into your work together, and the RFPT consultation process models and practices this depth of connection with your fellow consultants.  The RFPT consultation model is a fundamentally experiential learning process, so learning happens as we work the process together, learning to both listen intently to the client and yourself, and both metabolize and articulate this in a way that is useful for your clinical work.

The consultation group is a 8-month commitment to the same group, 2 times/month, and given the structure of the consultation, it tends to move quickly into a deep connection with your peers in the process.  Regardless of your therapeutic orientation, the process is intended to provide a place of connection and authenticity with colleagues in a field that regularly burns us out from isolation and disconnection.

This is not your ordinary consultation group.

The Details

  • Our consult groups run September 1 - April 30, and we meet 2x/month for 90-minutes each (16 total consultations).

  • Zoom (virtual), 1 RPT-trained facilitator and no more than 4 participants in each group

  • $180/month (pay-as-you-go or upfront for 5% discount, and additional scholarships available – inquire for more info);

    24 CEUs provided for LMSW, LPC, & LMFT at the end of consult group year.

  • Consultation Groups are not a replacement for supervision. Participants may be graduate students, associates, or fully licensed master’s or PhD level clinicians. All RPT Facilitators have received certification in RPT training, and hold a license as a professional clinician. See details for RPT Certification here.

Resources for Clinicians