LA-CAMFT Diversity Committee

presents

White Therapists Fighting Racism (WTFR)

Third Sunday of Every Month

Next Meeting:
Sunday, April 19, 2026
3:00pm-5:00pm (PT)

Online Via Zoom

The goal of White Therapists Fighting Racism (WTFR) is for white-identified therapists to become effective allies in support of decolonization and racial justice in our clinical practice, therapy association, and community. Recognizing that racism is maintained when whiteness is invisible to white people, WTFR provides a forum for white-identified therapists to explore what it means to be white. While this process includes learning about structural racism and deconstructing the false narrative about race, a primary focus in the group is on doing inner work.

How Do I Join? To join this group, please click here to complete our online submission form. Once submitted, a group facilitator will reach out to you for next steps.

Open to LA-CAMFT Members and Non-Members.

For more information or if you have additional questions, please send all inquiries to the facilitators WTFR@lacamft.org.

Event Details:

For: Licensed Therapists, Associates, and Students

When: Sunday, April 19, 2026 from 3:00pm-5:00pm (PT)

Where: Online Via Zoom (Once you complete the online submission process, you will be emailed a monthly Zoom link.)

Cost: No charge

Facilitator(s): Estelle, Randi, Hazel, and Stephen

*Registration is open and available until the group begins.*

Member Article

Dreams of the Rescuer

How the unconscious sends saving images before the mind can ask for help.

Joanna Poppink, LMFT

When the Night Speaks First

A woman who cannot yet speak her truth during the day may begin to cry out in her dreams. She dreams she is drowning, trapped or fleeing shadows. She dreams of searching for a child who keeps slipping from sight. Another dreamer finds a small girl in a burning house and carries her to safety or rescues her from an assault. These dreams are not random. They are the psyche’s first honest language after years of silence. They arrive when the woman is finally able to hear and begin to understand. The images energize her even as they unsettle her.

Often, the woman has no daytime permission to feel endangered. If such feelings begin to surface, she may drink alcohol, binge or purge, laugh too hard, or move into obsessive behaviors. She tells herself she should be grateful. She tells herself nothing is wrong. In the dream, she can no longer pretend. Something precious within her is at risk. Something within her is watching and responding.

Dreams of the rescuer appear when the unconscious must speak because the conscious mind is near ready. They bypass her practiced strength and signal the beginning of psychological truth. Bringing the dream into the therapy room becomes the first act of claiming the lost self.

The Symbolic Meaning of Rescue

Rescue dreams often portray real danger within the dream world. The threat feels immediate and frightening because the psyche uses powerful imagery to reveal what the conscious mind has not yet allowed itself to face. The dream presents a scene in which action is necessary. It does not command her to act. It shows her what she does and what she cannot yet do.

Sometimes she wakes suddenly, relieved to escape the scene. Sometimes she freezes and watches helplessly. Sometimes she runs from danger. Sometimes she tries to help and cannot. And sometimes she manages to rescue the endangered child or figure. Each version shows her relationship to her own vulnerability, fear, and instinctive strength.

The danger is symbolic, but the emotions are real. The dream reveals her truth in a way waking life often cannot. Psychologically, it translates inner movement into a story. Spiritually, it brings a sense of presence and possibility. Even when consciousness feels abandoned, the deeper psyche has not forgotten her.

3. Meeting the Rescuer Within

Before therapy, many women hope someone outside them will finally provide the safety they lost early in life. Rescue dreams gently correct this expectation. The figure who saves often disappears at the end. The dreamer is left standing alone, steady and alert. This is not abandonment. It is a revelation.

She is the rescuer. It is the part of her that endured. It is the courage she believed had been extinguished.

She may wake shaken yet more self-assured than before. Something within her acted. Something within her reached toward life. When she recognizes this inner figure as part of herself, she begins to reclaim her authority from the patterns that once demanded her obedience.

This recognition marks a quiet revolution in depth psychotherapy. She discovers she is not empty. She was unclaimed.

When Rescue Dreams Show Old Survival Patterns

Not every rescue dream signals readiness for transformation. Some reveal that the false map of love still governs her reactions. She dreams she saves others at great cost. She dreams that she attempts to help someone unreachable. She dreams she waits for a rescuer who never comes.

These dreams are not failures. They are accurate maps of where she stands. They reveal her loyalty to early roles: caretaker, protector, or silent child who hopes to be noticed.

Depth psychotherapy helps her see the ethical dimension of these dreams. Who is being rescued? What is the cost? What does she believe she must endure to remain safe? These questions open the doorway to inner change.

Working with Dreams of the Rescuer in Therapy

Dreams are not decoded in therapy. They are accepted as lived expressions of her psyche. The woman slowly retells the dream, or parts of it. She notices where her breath tightens or where warmth spreads through her chest. She pays attention to gestures, tension, color, and emotional response. These subtle shifts reveal the dream’s living energy.

The therapist listens not only to the story but to the tone beneath it. Together they explore what the dream reveals about danger, agency, longing, and possibility. The aim is not interpretation. The aim is a relationship with the unconscious.

Sometimes the work includes guided imagery or active imagination. She reenters the dream in waking life. She speaks with its figures. She lets them respond. She discovers that the rescuer responds to her because it is she. Pathways in the psyche that were once shut down begin to open.

Through this work, she learns that she is not passive in her healing. She participates in her own rescue.

The Spiritual Meaning of Rescue

Every true rescue carries a spiritual movement. Something larger than the thinking mind participates. The rescuer symbolizes the deeper intelligence that has quietly sustained her life as she survived.

To receive a rescue dream is to glimpse the mystery of accompaniment. Even during the years she felt alone, her psyche did not forsake her. The dream is not meant to comfort her. It invites a relationship. As she responds, she meets the lost self. The inner relationship that was once fragile becomes trustworthy.

Joanna Poppink, LMFT, psychotherapist, speaker, and author of Healing Your Hungry Heart: Recovering from Your Eating Disorder, is in private practice and specializes in Eating Disorder Recovery for adult women and with an emphasis on building a fulfilling life beyond recovery. She is licensed in California, Florida, Oregon, and Utah. All appointments are virtual. Website: EatingDisorderRecovery.net

Member Article

Diversity and Inclusion: A Healing or A Recipe For Division?

Leila Aboohamad, LMFT

I grew up in a totally different time and space. Toledo, Ohio, a midwestern city of around 300,00 people, was my birthplace. My parents’ families had emigrated to Detroit and Toledo from Lebanon in the early 1900’s. I wondered why men and women who had grown up in the land of milk and honey would choose two cities in the midwest so far removed from what they knew. A visit to Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan in 2010 gave me some of the answers I had been looking for.

Henry Ford had created this most magical village on the site of the farm on which he had grown up, but chose not to join the family farm business. In 1891, he became an engineer with the Edison Illuminating company of Detroit. After his promotion to chief Engineer in 1893, he began his experiments with gasoline engines which culminated in 1896 with the completion of a self-propelled automobile. The end result was the Ford Motor company, the Model T and the assembly line which brought affordable motor cars to the middle class.

When I visited the Ford Museum and Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan, I saw the beautiful results of ingenuity, hard work, willingness to trust the small seed of an idea and the many minds of people like Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers, Abraham Lincoln who brought us innovations which have made our lives so much easier. I saw Abraham Lincoln’s Springfield, Illinois courthouse where he had practiced for 8 years, Thomas Edison’s lab where so many experiments were conducted some of which culminated in the phonograph, the motion picture camera and early versions of the light bulb. 

Why am I writing about this?  Why did my grandparents leave their beautiful homeland to come to America? Because it was and is the Land of Opportunity!

So many talented people have come to our country where anything is possible if you are willing to work for it.

When I visited the Ford farmhouse, a guide dressed in a mid-19th century costume answered my question. Henry Ford loved the work ethic of the Lebanese people. 

So, my Dad and his brothers left their homeland after their parents starved to death after the war, settled in Detroit, opened a restaurant and worked in the Ford factories. And… they were legal immigrants who entered at Ellis Island.

I grew up in Toledo, Ohio in a multi-cultural neighborhood of barely middle class families. There was no welfare, no participation trophies in elementary and high school. In fact, Scott High School was evenly divided between blacks and whites, with all the same courses and trades education. You earned your grades through hard work, being responsible for your behavior and interacting with friends from so many different cultures and ethnicities. We were grateful to be living in America, the land of opportunity.

All of my closest friends were in college prep courses, planning where we would attend college and keeping up with excellent grades so we could earn scholarships. I was treated with respect from all my teachers from kindergarten through 12th grade and beyond. It didn’t matter that I was a female with a middle eastern name. It was a beautiful time to grow up in an America which was praised in our schools, where we saluted the flag every morning with our Pledge of Allegiance and there were no “diversity and inclusion” clubs which have sprung up in our country in the 21st century.

Why have we separated ourselves from one another? One of my best friends is Chinese American, one of 10 children of immigrants who escaped Communist China with the help of missionaries. I met John in high school when we were 14. He was the only Chinese person in our high school which was a feeder school for several elementary schools in the area. John was uneasy as he knew no one at Scott High. Well, Ted said hi to him in Orientation class, welcomed him into the school and we formed a great group of friends who still keep in touch after 50 years. Incidentally, John was elected president of his sophomore and junior class, has three degrees: an engineering degree from UT, an MBA from Pitt and a law degree from LMU. He had grown up with 10 siblings in a one bathroom home. All of his siblings have advanced degrees and John just endowed a $1.1 million scholarship to LMU.

No diversity, no inclusion, no welfare, no division. Just proud Americans who were and are grateful for the wonderful life here if we want to work for it!!

Let’s rethink this divisive mind set which has caused so many problems. Why can’t we talk calmly with one another? Why do some people not talk to me if they know for whom I voted? We are all the same. We are all spiritual beings in a material world which is a schoolroom for spiritual growth. We need to honor and respect one another no matter what color, ethnicity or religion we practice, or none at all. I am not privileged because I am white. I am privileged to be alive, living in a free country with so many opportunities for success. I put myself through graduate school working 6 nights a week as a waitress. In 1988, as an intern, I had $40 to my name after paying my bills. By 1995, I had a full psychotherapy practice and bought a beautiful condo in Brentwood. I succeeded because of faith, hard work and using my gifts from my Higher Power to become an excellent psychotherapist.

Leila Aboohamad, LMFT, helps gifted, talented and creative adult individuals and couples heal the trauma experienced in childhood in order to create successful, rewarding personal and business relationships. She has been in private practice in Brentwood for 30 years. Website: www.leilalmft.com

LA-CAMFT Diversity Committee
presents

Middle Eastern North African (MENA) Therapists Community Group

First Monday of Every Month

Next Meeting:
Monday, April 6, 2026
9:00am-10:00am

Online Via Zoom

The MENA Therapists Community Group is a safe place across the Middle Eastern and North African therapist diaspora to build community and a sense of belonging. We hold an inclusive space to process the impact of cultural biases experienced by people of MENA descent and the effect it may have on our work as mental health professionals. Within the process, we will strive to create healing, support, and empowerment. We will collaboratively exchange ideas, experiences and resources while acknowledging cultural differences and shared similarities. As the poet Khalil Gibran states — “The reality of the other person lies not in what he reveals to you, but what he cannot reveal to you.” — our community will create a place to be seen, heard, and understood.

Special Note: MENA Therapists Community Group meetings are intended as a place for MENA-identifying therapists to have a safe place amongst others in the same ethnic and cultural community to share and process their personal and professional experiences. Therapists from similar cultural backgrounds (e.g., South Asian, mixed identities that include MENA, etc.) are also welcome. If you are not MENA-identifying or from a similar cultural background and instead wish to join these meetings for the purpose of learning about the MENA population, we offer consultations separately. You are more than welcome to schedule a one-on-one consultation by emailing us.

Open to LA-CAMFT Members and Non-Members.

For more information, contact the facilitators at mena@lacamft.org.

Event Details:

For: Licensed Therapists, Associates, and Students

When: Monday, April 6, 2026 from 9:00am-10:00am

Where: Online Via Zoom (Upon registration for the presentation, you will receive a confirmation email that includes a link to our Zoom meeting.)

Cost: No charge

Facilitator(s): Perla and Susan

*Registration is open and available until the group begins.*

Member Highlight

Christina “Tina” Cacho Sakai, LMFT, SEP (she/her)

What inspired you to become a therapist?

My path to becoming a therapist began early in life. As a child growing up in Los Angeles, I noticed that people naturally came to me to share their stories and struggles. I felt deeply drawn to listening, understanding, and helping others make sense of their experiences. Over time, this intuitive calling evolved into a professional mission, one grounded in social justice, cultural responsiveness, and healing from trauma.

As a Mexican-American therapist, I was especially inspired by the unmet mental health needs within BIPOC communities. I recognized a profound longing for spaces where people of color could feel seen, heard, affirmed, and empowered. This awareness ultimately shaped my decision to pursue psychotherapy and later to open a private practice dedicated to serving BIPOC folx.

What areas of practice are you most passionate about today?

Today, I am most passionate about trauma healing, identity exploration, and supporting clients in embodying their full, intersectional selves. My work centers on helping clients navigate racial trauma, historical and intergenerational trauma, anxiety, grief and loss, and the complexities of living “in-between” cultures.

I am deeply committed to integrating culturally meaningful and creative elements into therapy; such as, storytelling, art, music, movement, food, and language of origin, because healing is not only psychological, but relational, cultural, and embodied. What kinds of clients are you most interested in working with?

My practice primarily serves BIPOC adults, as well as couples and families, who are seeking culturally responsive, LGBTQIA+ affirming, and social justice-oriented therapy. I am especially drawn to working with clients who are ready to engage in deeper, process-oriented work, those who want to explore identity, heal trauma, build resilience, and reconnect with their creativity and inner wisdom.

What modalities and approaches guide your work?

I integrate Somatic Experiencing®, psychodynamic therapy, and strength-based approaches, with a strong emphasis on body-based awareness and nervous system regulation. I believe the body holds both trauma and wisdom, and that healing happens when clients learn to track sensations, emotions, and meaning across past, present, and future experiences. My goal is to help clients build safety, set boundaries, release what no longer serves them and cultivate resilience and trust.

LA-CAMFT Involvement

In addition to my clinical work, I am deeply involved with LA-CAMFT. I have served as a founding member of the Diversity Committee, Diversity Committee Chair, Therapists of Color Mentorship Program Chair, President-Elect, President, Past-President and currently Board Member-At-Large. My involvement reflects my ongoing commitment to equity, representation, mentorship, and systemic change within our profession. When I joined LA-CAMFT’s Diversity Committee in 2017, I didn’t yet realize how deeply this community would shape both my professional path and my commitment to social justice. What began as a shared desire among therapists of color to increase representation and equity grew into meaningful, relationship-centered work that continues to inspire me today.

Together, we have created spaces of belonging and empowerment, including the Therapists of Color Support Group, culturally responsive trainings, and expanded resources for therapists across Los Angeles. What started as an idea became infrastructure. What started as concern became sustained action.

In 2020, the Diversity Committee hosted its first of three “Anti-Racism as a Movement, Not a Moment,” a call to move beyond performative allyship and into structural change. From that community togetherness emerged the Black Therapists Support Group, the Therapists of Color Mentorship Program, the TOC Grant Award, and additional affinity spaces to provide a safe space for our members to be in community. We currently have the following affinity spaces: Black Therapists Support Group, Middle Eastern North African (MENA) Community Group and White Therapists Fighting Racism Group (WTFR).

My involvement with LA-CAMFT has given me so much including a source of purpose, connection, and community impact. My hope is that other members feel encouraged to step forward, to build what doesn’t yet exist, to serve with heart, and to discover how their unique voice can help shape the future of LA-CAMFT and our profession.

Christina “Tina” Cacho Sakai, LMFT, SEP (she/her) is a Mexican-American psychotherapist and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner with over 20 years of experience providing trauma-informed and culturally responsive psychotherapy. Drawing on her background in community mental health, clinical supervision, and academia, Tina now focuses on her private practice serving BIPOC individuals, couples, and families. Her work centers on trauma healing, anxiety, grief, creativity, and affirming full intersectional identities within an LGBTQIA+ and social justice-oriented framework. Website: ChristinaCachoSakai.com

Guest Article

Robots Replacing Therapists Is No Longer Science Fiction

Alejandro Pina, LMFT

If you thought cars couldn’t drive without humans, have I got bad news for you!  If you thought robots couldn’t roll down a sidewalk to deliver food, I’ve got more bad news. And if you thought people wouldn’t divulge all their pain and problems to a ChatBot, seeking the same kind of therapy therapists are advertising, I’ve got even more bad news.

This article is going to be a lot of bad Mental Health Industry news. But I promise in the end, there will be a very tangible and simple solution that will be 100% effective.

First, let’s try to connect the dots of all the bad news. 

The Billionaire Class has blatantly taken control of our current Administration. They funded Silicon Valley’s efforts to produce those driver-less cars, ChatBots, and Delivery Robots I mentioned. The Billionaire Class gains profits by devaluing and erasing workers.

The Department of Education no longer wants to call Social Work a Professional Degree, or consider Counseling Programs as Professional Programs.

Unfortunately, Mental Health Workers don’t have a national union. Associations like, CAMFT try to help, but there’s only so many rights the worker can obtain without a general strike. 

The fractured state of our industry is evident in the success of The Billionaire Class Health Insurance Industry’s terms that have been easily forced unto The Mental Health Industry. Our most prevalent option to respond to their terms has been to avoid accepting insurance, which hasn’t solved anything.

The Billionaire Class destroys so they can heroically save, and their Silicon Valley puppet is wearing a cape. 

First, they implemented, “therapy” platforms like, Headspace and Alma to take control of their own Health Insurance terms as the middle-man, working directly with the population that uses their Health Insurance while also, “hiring” the therapists themselves. 

And now, Big Tech knows; less people use insurance, out-of-pocket costs are high, and Mental Health coverage is limited. The perfect opportunity to sell AI Therapy.

The number one use of ChatGPT is, “therapy.” And that’s free. Here are the AI Therapy Companies looking for profit: 

Abby - Your AI Therapist, Ash - AI for Mental Health, TherapyWithAI - Free AI Therapy, EarKick - Personal AI Chat Bot for Self-Care, Freudly: AI Therapy Sessions

BetterHelp, a Tech Company that is the Uber of our industry, advertising on Spotify, Podcasts, Tik-Tok, etc., are selling a suspiciously low, monthly-subscription fee for, “therapy.” They have as much interest in Human-Therapists as Uber has in drivers. 

The most successful of the AI Therapy Bots mentioned above will be bought by BetterHelp to replace their hired therapists, following the same game plan Uber has with the winning driver-less car systems currently being tested.

Some of you might know that California and Illinois have passed forms of legislation in hopes to limit AI use in the Mental Health Industry. 

Unfortunately, the legal system in America has not been at its’ best in serving the needs of the people. A woman’s right to choose has already been stripped away, and other human rights in the LGBT community have been decimated. 

In 2023, the Federal Trade Commission fined BetterHelp 7.8 Million Dollars for selling customer’s sensitive data. But don’t worry, BetterHelp is fine, currently operating here, and in Canada, Australia, Germany, France, The UK, The Netherlands, and intends to reach 200 countries.

Silicon Valley has no limits. All the legislation in America will not stop them from continuing their behavior in the rest of the world. The Billionaire Class prepares budgets for class action lawsuits; being fined is part of their trade.         

So where’s the hopeful solution I promised? We’re getting there. Most of the dots have been connected, here’s the last one:

Silicon Valley does not have a product that can replace us. They have Yes-Bots.

Artificial Intelligence is still Science Fiction. Yes-Bots sound better sold as, “Intelligent.” A “search engine” can’t make a train move because it isn’t actually an, “engine,” it just scans data. This is all a marketing ploy. The same way “CocaCola” sounds better than, “corn syrup in water.”

We can’t stop Silicon Valley from selling their Yes-Bots, but we can hold them accountable for the dangerous idea they’re selling.

Silicon Valley is promoting a new definition of, “therapy” where The Therapeutic Relationship doesn’t exist and the Human-Therapist isn’t involved. 

They are redefining what “therapy” is, and what they are selling isn’t therapy.

That’s where we come in. 

The Therapeutic Relationship is the number one predictor of positive outcomes in treatment. 

We know that. 

The public doesn’t. 

And the Billionaire Class, along with their Silicon Valley puppet, doesn’t want this information getting around.

There is no Therapy without Human-Therapists providing the Therapeutic Relationship. 

We are irreplaceable, as long as the public believes in The Therapeutic Relationship.

Promoting the Therapeutic Relationship will be 100% effective in devaluing Silicon Valley Yes-Bots, because their Yes-Bots aren’t Human.

But the solution only works if each of us, and all our associations, and everyone in the Health Care Industry, Internationally, actively re-educates the public on what The Therapeutic Relationship is, and why therapy with a Human-Therapist is their best option.

And if we all can’t unite to do that, I’ve got a feeling I’m gonna have more bad news for you.

Alejandro Pina, LMFT, is an EFT-Trained Couples Therapist with a master’s of science in counseling psychology. He is in private practice online, Feeling Understood Couples Counseling, and specializes in teaching couples how to enhance support within a relationship and learn effective communication to build mutual understanding and care. Alejandro is an Inclusive Therapist providing LGBTQ Affirming and Latinx Therapy, and works with interracial couples who may struggle with cultural differences. Websites: Human-Therapist.org FeelUnderstood.com

LA-CAMFT’s Declaration
of Inclusion, Diversity, and Anti-Racism

Psychotherapy can be transformative in a democratic society, and can open intellectual inquiry that, at its best, influences and results in lasting positive change. In recognition of our shared humanity and concern for our community and world, LA-CAMFT loudly and overtly disavows all racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, classism, ableism, ageism, and hate speech or actions that attempt to silence, threaten, and degrade others. We in LA-CAMFT leadership hereby affirm our solidarity with those individuals and groups most at risk and further declare that embracing diversity and fostering inclusivity are central to the mission of our organization.

As mental health professionals, we value critical reasoning, evidence-based arguments, self-reflection, and the imagination. We hope to inspire empathy, advocate for social and environmental justice, and provide an ethical framework for our clients, our community, and ourselves.

We in LA-CAMFT leadership are committed to:

(1) the recognition, respect, and affirmation of differences among peoples

(2) challenging oppression and structural and procedural inequities that exist in society, generally, and in local therapeutic, agency, and academic settings

(3) offering diverse programming content and presenters throughout our networking event calendar, as well as in our workshops, trainings, and special events

While we traverse the turbulent seas of the important and necessary changes taking place in our country, in order to form a “more perfect union.” we wish to convey our belief that within our community exists an immense capacity for hope. We believe in and have seen how psychotherapy, therapeutic relationships, and mental health professions can be agents of positive change, without ignoring or denying that the practice and business of psychiatry, psychology, and psychotherapy have historically been the cause of great harm, trauma, and emotional toll, particularly for people of color and other marginalized groups. We are committed to doing our part to help remedy that which we have the position, privilege, and/or resources to do so.

At LA-CAMFT events, all members are welcome regardless of race/ethnicity, gender identities, gender expressions, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, disabilities, religion, regional background, Veteran status, citizenship, status, nationality and other diverse identities that we each bring to our professions. We expect that leadership and members will promote an atmosphere of respect for all members of our community.

In a diverse community, the goal of inclusiveness encourages and appreciates expressions of different ideas, opinions, and beliefs, so that potentially divisive conversations and interactions become opportunities for intellectual and personal growth. LA-CAMFT leadership wants to embrace this opportunity to create and maintain inclusive and safe spaces for all of our members, free of bias, discrimination, and harassment, where people will be treated with respect and dignity and where all individuals are provided equitable opportunity to participate, contribute, and succeed.

We value your voice in this process. If you feel that our leadership or programming falls short of this commitment, we encourage you to get involved, and to begin a dialogue with those in leadership. It is undeniable that the success of LA-CAMFT relies on the participation, support, and understanding of all its members.

Wishing good health to you and yours, may you find yourself centered in feelings of abundance, safety, belonging, and peace.

Standing together,
The LA-CAMFT Board of Directors and Diversity Committee