Mental Health Champions: Why & How Colleen Clark Is Helping To Champion Mental Wellness
An Interview With Michelle Tennant Nicholson
Balance… being aware of what I need to retain balance and self-care such as eating well, sleep hygiene, laughter, time with family and friends.
As a part of our series about Mental Health Champions helping to promote mental wellness, I had the pleasure to interviewColleen Clark, the clinical social worker who brought Accelerated Resolution Therapy to Canada.
As a healer, game-changer, and therapist, Colleen Clark (MSW, RCSW, BCETS, BCBT, BCFT, BCSA), is a Master ART Practitioner, Clinical ART Specialist, ACSW Clinical Supervisor, and RCRR Lead Certified ART Trainer who brought Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) to Canada. Come Passion: The Soulful ART of Healing Trauma is her first book. It addresses the rationale and steps of psychoeducation and assessment in readiness to begin delivering ART — put simply: what do to before you deliver ART.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about how you grew up?
A curious child, raised in Edmonton, Alberta, my growing up years informed my further education and career. I was adopted as a baby — an adoption which was less than ideal on many levels. However, the beauty within my childhood was the sense of wonder I carried everywhere with me; it was not unusual to find me asking the universe, God, or the sky for answers. That I would be a healer was predetermined by my inner-strength around my personal/adoptive family, my birth family, and that inner-feeling that there is so much more to life than that which was visible to me. My childhood even determined the first position I took as a social worker — child protection. A switch in my master’s project, which became a ‘healing model’ called ‘Coming Home To Self’, led me to create a program for reunification of adult adoptees with birth families, and addressed the whole family system: birth family/adoptive family/adoptee.
You are currently leading an initiative that is helping to promote mental wellness. Can you tell us a bit more specifically about what you are trying to address?
I have been sharing that healing begins with understanding practicing from a trauma- informed lens. Specifically, as far as Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) is involved, that:
ART is a paradigm shift in clinical practice.
The model I’ve developed — and share in my book — is from a career of practicing from a trauma-informed lens, and is a roadmap which thoroughly outlines what therapists can do before they deliver ART, so that their clients will have every advantage to be able to reset in short-timelines, have the space to address their deficit of skill building, then catch up and live the life they deserve.
As more therapists are certified in ART — those individuals being primary care doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and other clinical healers — more clients (first responders, refugees, Indigenous individuals, victims of violence, and other specialized groups) will be helped.
I introduced ART to Canada. For a long time, I was the only certified practitioner of ART in Canada who could train others to deliver ART. Later I was credentialed to train ART therapists to become ‘trainers’. I wholeheartedly support the continuity of the model, and am passionate about ensuring ART practitioners become certified in ‘training fellow ART therapists to become trainers themselves.
Ultimately, my initiative continues as a teacher who passes on wisdom and knowledge — I’ve done so at the University of Calgary, having created the first ever trauma-informed course in the faculty of social work for graduate and undergraduate students. A large part of my ongoing initiative includes speaking about Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) to leaders at large institutions and government bodies related to the penal system and the military, and addressing Indigenous leaders of First Nations regarding Truth and Reconciliation and generational Trauma.
Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?
My colleagues and I were seeing long timelines involved with the healing journey’s of our our clients at the operational stress injury (OSI) clinic where we worked. Having been trained to work via a trauma-informed lens, with evidence-based therapies, the modalities my colleagues and I used were leading-edge, and yielded some positive results… but those timelines… they sometimes exhausted the clients (and the therapists), and that meant some clients would give up. Time factored heavily in cases when the trauma injury had not been recognized until long after the symptoms of it had caused severe behavioral issues.
One day, less than a week before I was to vacation to Florida, a memo about Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) came across my desk. What got my attention was the bottom-up system of approach — deal with the amygdala first — and the component of somatic processing. Essentially, the amygdala would be reset first. For me, that was the missing piece and reflected that ‘the body keeps score’.
After I’d read, and was impressed by, the article, I saw there was soon to be training, in Florida, not far from where I was going to be vacationing. I modified the holiday to include attending training.
Impressed by ART’s founder, and eager to return to Canada with my newly acquired accreditation, my excitement level rose. When I did return, we started a pilot project. This changed everything. The results were incredible. Clients who were not in the pilot project demanded they receive the same therapy as some of their peers. What grew from that was an incredible movement whereby we used it in-house, and I obtained trainer status.
Because I AM trained in evidence based trauma — in the field close to forty years as a clinical social worker, having a private practice, and being an instructor at a university — I began to build a ‘before’ component into my practicing ART.
While I gained experience as an ART practitioner, presented findings at several conferences, and continued to see the positive effects, I developed the ‘what to do before’. From that point, my work at the clinic and in my private practice was positively changed by the use of ART; I was able to speak to institutionalized segments such as the prison system, the military, and Indigenous Peoples about it.
We so often look at treating the symptoms of a client, and miss that those symptoms are pointing us to the root — so often, it is the symptoms and/or behaviours that get the attention. Therapists will then focus on handling the symptoms which, in reality, cannot be effectively handled until there is healing at the root of what caused those symptoms.
ART allows therapists to go straight to the root and apply the therapy in a short time, after which the client will be in much better mindset to deal with the resulting symptoms and behavior of their trauma. And, being a therapy which is processed from the bottomup and without repeated storytelling, the client and the therapist do not experience the burnout or burden of reliving events.
Many of us have ideas, dreams, and passions, but never manifest them. They don’t get up and just do it. But you did. Was there an “Aha Moment” that made you decide that you were actually going to step up and do it? What was that final trigger?
My Aha! moment met me thirty-minutes into the ART training in Florida. I immediately knew ART had everything about best practice and met my high standards of delivering therapy, and it could be done at an accelerated pace to have clients respond instead of tire and drop out.
The next was related to the pilot project at the OSI clinic in which I practiced. It changed the way my colleagues and saw the world of trauma therapy. Following the pilot project, there was more enthusiasm as we catalogued results and hosted ART’s founder to train more of our staff. I continued adding to my experience and, eventually, was able to take the training to become a trainer. During this time, there was the opportunity to initiate projects with marginalized groups, segments of the government and in the private sector where ‘the carers’ were dealing with tens of thousands of work-place-trauma injuries.
Later, as a certified trainer, I became accredited to teach others who were already certified in ART to become trainers of others, so that they could run training sessions as I had been doing as Canada’s only trainer Later, I returned to the USA again and became qualified to train colleagues to become trainers of teachers themselves — as I was.
My experience has taught me that there is room for both science and spirituality and, if I travel back through my heart-led time when, years before, I’d been in Peru, another Aha! moment occurred by way of an affirmation — one of many I experienced on my travels.
Outside of my professional designation, I had been assured through a number of incredible signposts (including people) that I was a healer and, from that, people came to know me, and I came to know myself as having the wisdom of such a healer and, through Indigenous symbolism, a white owl.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company or organization?
Just one? I’ve delivered ART in more than 7,000 sessions, and trained over a thousand therapists. For every one of those individuals there is an interesting story. For each of them, their trauma and their healing is the most significant story and, by virtue of being theirs, it becomes mine.
Still, on the topic of what made all those stories possible is essentially how ART was ‘seeded’ in Canada, and that is through the pilot project at the OSI clinic where I worked when I found out about ART training, and returned to after the training. In short, that allowed us to create an evidence-based study to demonstrate ART’s efficacy. It also allowed us to look ‘off the paper report’ and hear the clients who demanded they receive the same treatment that their peers were receiving (because they saw the improvements).
Not only were we, and still are, treating complex trauma and demystifying complex trauma, but were and still are seeing how, with ART, first responders including firefighters, soldiers, frontline workers, paramedics, police, doctors, nurses, therapists, refugees, victims of violence, prison populations, and so many others heal in a short time, without quitting therapy, and with minimal impact on the therapist.
Another interesting story would be having present the results at the National Conference of the Canadian Institute for Military and Veteran Health Research (CIMVR). Again, this was ‘seeding’ for so much healing that would happen in the future.
The writing of my first book, Come Passion: The Soulful ART of Healing Trauma, has been the most interesting news of late, especially since I had coined the word-phrase ‘come passion’ years ago, having written healing words associated with the concept of compassion and self-compassion years before ‘a book’ was even an idea. Acting on the requests for such a book, the writing of the book has been a long, yet rewarding, process which will allow for ART to take the spotlight, and ultimately heal more people by virtue of the printed word and passionate message. The book and its unique, interactive format, will comport itself to becoming an evolving collective and collaborative for all therapists who use it.
Finally, a current Canadian military study, that I have recently been involved with, continues as ART finds its place within a much larger delivery system with the potential to be used — by therapists who will know what to do before they deliver ART — within a national and global initiative.
None of us can be successful without some help along the way. Did you have mentors or cheerleaders who helped you to succeed? Can you tell us a story about their influence?
It might sound a little unconventional, but those whom I’ve not yet met are as much my cheerleaders as anyone else. They offer promise and hope for the future of all.
My past, present, and future clients are my mentors and cheerleaders. Others include the leaders who have invited or who will invite me to share about ART, the professionals who become students of ART, and those therapists who become trainers. The first ART conference I attended hosted fewer than sixty people, the most current one will host over 600.
Mentorship is, in my opinion, a reciprocal relationship. There is a duality within it: as I mentor others, they mentor me, and vice versa. As professionals we are inter-systemic, and we work on/with the micro, macro, and mezzo levels of society… mentors appear — within the perspective of training — from the justice system and a penal organization’s whole mental health team to the individual, unique inmate and their trauma.
As well, those who have mentored me consistently and generously include: Dr. Stephen Boucher — a brilliant psychiatrist, beside me from the beginning, who has envisioned the work with me; Dr. Kevin Kip — researcher extraordinaire and inspiration and visionary; Laney Rosenzweig, Founder of ART and CEO of the Rosenzweig Center for Rapid Recovery.
According to Mental Health America’s report, over 44 million Americans have a mental health condition. Yet there’s still a stigma about mental illness. Can you share a few reasons you think this is so?
There are so many Americans — and people worldwide — who experience what might be called severe and/or negative mental health conditions because we haven’t learned to normalize neurobiological responses to trauma, and because — through not talking about what is a normal response to trauma and stress — we have lost our compassionate way and ways.
To see positive change, we must remove the stigma, and that involves the way we refer to mental illness — as an illness, and the misconception that it is ‘illness’ versus ‘a normal response to trauma’.
Here’s what I mean: The definition of mental health includes the statement, ‘What is wrong with me?’.
The paradigm shift we need in order to remove the stigma is that we need to NORMALIZE that a person should be having certain symptoms based on what they have experienced in their life.
When we do that — when we acknowledge that it is normal for the brain to respond certain ways to stress and trauma, as in when people exhibit certain symptoms — then we are moving toward removing the stigma. That conversation needs to include what we are avoiding… and it has to include psychoeducation so that we can understand the
neurobiology of us as human beings. Forty years of experience leads me to a place of confidence and competence in the advice and perspective I offer: if we can move away from the language and attitude of believing people are broken, and come from an educational perspective, we can begin compassionate relationships with that and those who we have stigmatized — and become fearful of.
Psychoeducation is a critical first step. Information is necessary, and its delivery needs to come from a compassionate source.
I would add that, with ART, the psychoeducation component in ‘what to do before ART’ is an example of solution to and elimination of stigma, and therefore in reduction of mental health issues.
Trauma therapy has an exposure component, and, with some therapies, a client may need, say, fifteen sessions, just to get through one incident. With ART, because it works from the Amygdala up, resetting the amygdala, the timeframe for therapy involves fewer sessions to complete ‘all’ incidents — research states an average of three sessions; my experience has been four or five, depending on types of traumas (for example: complex childhood trauma and first responder traumas. ART’s short timeline means that fewer people remain in a negative cycle of ‘I’m broken’ because they have received psychoeducation and the therapy in tandem; financial cost is reduced due to not having as many appointments, and therapists do not burn out as often as other therapies because of the timeline and the nature of ART itself (and it not requiring re-telling of events).
In your experience, what should a) individuals b) society, and c) the government do to better support people suffering from mental illness?
My experience — that forty years intimately involved with those whose lives are affected by trauma brings me to the word psychoeducation. There is no other part of a solution
than to include and build a solution from a foundation of psychoeducation. I may sound like a broken record but, from a professional point of view, the most impactful support would be psychoeducation. Psychoeducation for society, for institutions, for professionals whether medical practitioners in primary care, psychiatrists, mental health counselors, or clinical social workers — professionals need to be educated in trauma-informed practice.
And leaders of large organizations and institutions require the information too.
Society needs to be educated. For example, the Covid pandemic has been a trauma for everyone — some recognize that, others don’t — but what we need is to talk about it. We need to speak with each other about disenfranchised grief: so many people have not been able to grieve their loved ones. Let’s talk about how each person, as an individual, was impacted by the life changes around a global pandemic.
We need all members of the public to understand what trauma is, to recognize symptoms, and to normalize those symptoms as a biological response to stress.
We need to look at the suicide rates and mass shootings and ask ourselves — without agenda — what do people need to be supported? How has society become so fearful?
How can we bring compassion and self-compassion into daily life for all?
What are your 5 strategies you use to promote your own well-being and mental wellness? Can you please give a story or example for each?
1. I practice mindfulness Self-compassion for myself — that can include such things assound baths — yes, I’ve been guilty of neglecting my self-care; I find putting it on the calendar as a non-negotiable change is essential.
2. I Meditate daily and use stream of consciousness writing. Being present in the moment can bring great peace, and I build it into my day… even if it’s short-practice between appointments.
3. Nature… spending time in nature which activates my senses — mindfully walking, gardening, forest-bathing. My love of nature stretches to a favourite place on Vancouver
island, and one in the southern USA… trees, water, pathways through forests bring me to a place of peace.
4. Balance… being aware of what I need to retain balance and self-care such as eating well, sleep hygiene, laughter, time with family and friends.
5. Balance and participating in interests… time with my dogs, and knitting.
What are your favorite books, podcasts, or resources that inspire you to be a mental health champion?
These books are essential reading for anyone interested in the subject of healthy minds and healing in general:
Dr. Kristin Neff: Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself
Dr. Chris Germer: Self-Compassion: the path to self-compassion
Bessel van der Kolk: The Body Keeps the Score
Laney Rosenzweig (ART Developer): Too Good to be True
Harvey L. Schwartz The Alchemy of Wolves and Sheep: A Relational Approach to
Internalized Perpetration in Complex Trauma Survivors
Dr. Steven Porges: The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions,
Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation
Peter Levine: Waking the Tiger Healing Trauma
Babette Rothschild: The Body Remembers
Maureen Kitchur: EMDR Solutions: Pathways to Healing/Developmental Strategic
Genogram
Judith Hermann: Trauma and Recovery
Milton Erikson: The Wisdom of Milton Erickson-Complete
John Bolby: Trauma and Loss / A Secure Base / Attachment Theory
Mary Ainsworth: Patterns of Attachment
Victor Frankl: Man’s Search For Meaning
Erik Erikson: Identity and the Life Cycle
The music and lyrics of John Lennon
The works of Rumi
The writings of and about Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and Buddha
If you could tell other people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?
Because we are within a human community in which we are all connected. We nurture each other best in healthy groups. We operate as a thriving part of nature when we are filled with compassion, therefore have already experienced — as healers — self- compassion.
The title of my book says it all: Come Passion: The Soulful ART of Healing Trauma. This means invite compassion into your life, ‘come, passion, come’. For without self- compassion we cannot have it for others and, without compassion for others, we build fearful communities and risk losing our humanitarianism. When we are passionate about connection, we can find our way to compassion and heal ourselves and the world.
A statement of suffering which I’ve modified over time speaks to the overall impact and necessity that we work to help each other:
As human beings, we all have an amazing capacity: an ability to cope and survive through our own unique experiences until a door suddenly opens and the world is turned upside down. Terror, fear, confusion, desperation, powerlessness can invade our days; and even thoughts of suicide can occur. Memories we thought were tucked away are no longer blocked or hidden. Though we may have been able to evade issues for quite some time, we suddenly find ourselves incapable of avoidance. Unexpectedly, we become lost.
The human spirit seeks to live, but to heal we need to plumb the depths of remembering, regain understanding, and open ourselves for an integration of self to occur.
It is not easy to embark on this journey because the outcome is unknown. Each person faced with this life-situation knows they cannot live this way.
None of us know all the intricacies of the extent to which we suffer and all the whys — we only experience how we feel, and we come to know the symptoms and behaviours that surface during our suffering.
The magnificent news is that we can heal and self- actualize to the next journey in this lifetime, continually growing, developing, and evolving.
My own experience of counselling others — through a trauma-informed lens — has shown me, over and over, that people can and have gained life and fullness and completeness as they have recovered, restored, integrated the necessary healing work in trauma, complex trauma, and single incident trauma. The heart, mind, body, and soul have united, one of connection and present integration of the most beautiful complete self.
How can our readers follow you online?
https://ca.linkedin.com/in/colleen-clark
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!
About the Interviewer: Inspired by the father of PR, Edward Bernays (who was also Sigmund Freud’s nephew), Michelle Tennant Nicholson researches marketing, mental injury, and what it takes for optimal human development. An award-winning writer and publicist, she’s seen PR transition from typewriters to Twitter. Michelle co-founded WasabiPublicity.com
