Hi, I’m Ashica (she/her/we)
I am here wholeheartedly for you and our co-liberation. I offer a clinical partnership that is collaborative and compassionate!
I believe in we all have the capacity for healing, awareness building, and practicing self-determination. We will partner together to meet your intentions.
You will work with a kind and patient clinician, that is culturally-responsive, and honors the uniqueness of the whole person.
Care is compassion-based, trauma- informed, strength-based, empowerment-focused, and emphasizes person-centered collaboration to meet your wellness.
We work together to build a plan for your wellness. Care can include various techniques that serve you best; to connect, ease, sooth, or sense the body and mind.
Your whole self is safe here. You will access a compassionate and safe space to process. Your individuality, knowledge, history, experience & culture will be honored.
Your clinician is skilled to affirm BIPOC and LGBTQIA2S+ identities, elders, caregivers, groups, care communities and healthcare centers. She is a Trauma-Sensitive HeartMath Certified Practitioner and pursues advance training in Mindful Self-Compassion. She is also a trained Intergroup Dialogue Facilitator, with practice facilitating diverse groups of participants for the intent of increased understanding and relationship building.
My commitment to you is expressed through my own personal healing and self-care. Through practicing mindfulness, lifelong learning, incorporating routine play & rest, and valuing cultural humility, I can best step forward to serve your wellness journey.
Certified Social Worker in Health Care (C-SWHC)
Social work in health care can be defined broadly as the professional continuum of services designed to help individuals, groups, and families improve or maintain optimal health functioning.
In addition to providing direct care services to patients and their families, as well as, leadership in health care organizations through the development of new resources, standards of practice, services, programs to meet patient needs, and ensure patients receive high quality social work services.
Social work activities are focused on the biopsychosocial components of health and/or mental health from a strengths perspective.
CORE FUNCTIONS
• Psychosocial Assessment - assessment, evaluation, intervention
• Resource Management - financial counseling, coordinating and developing community resources
• Continuity of Care - admission diversion, discharge planning, transitions
• Psychosocial Interventions - counseling, adaptation to illness/loss, support groups, end of life issues, advance directives
• Crisis Intervention - violence, neglect, trauma, life altering disease
• Health Education - patient/family, interdisciplinary training, community education
• Interdisciplinary Collaboration - advocacy, teamwork, leadership
CLINICAL SOCIAL WORKER IN GERONTOLOGY (CSW-G)
Older adults have distinct characteristics that can be differentiated from earlier stages of adulthood. Clinical social work with older adults requires advanced skill in the assessment and intervention of older client-specific issues.
The primary goal of the social worker is to address the specific challenges of the aging process by promoting independence, autonomy, and dignity in later life. Advocating and supporting both professional and informal caregivers.
Masters level clinical social workers specializing in gerontology possess a variety of knowledge and skills necessary for working with older adults including: assessment of older adult needs and functional capacity and expertise regarding physical and mental health issues, case and care management, long-term care, elder abuse, quality of life issues, service planning and advance care planning, clinical practice, and administration.
The CSW-G credential certifiers that the holder has met national standards of knowledge, skill, and clinical experience as a social worker in field of gerontology.
This certification specifies the following requisite competency:
• Comprehensive Bio-psychosocial Assessment
• Clinical Intervention
• Changes in Physiological and Neurological function
• Coordination with Care Providers
• Service Planning
• Maintaining appropriate records and documentation
Trauma-Sensitive HeartMath certified practitioner
“Love is when we care from the heart. It produces a measurable heart rhythm of coherence and hormonal and autonomic changes in the body. It does not have a behavior associated with it, but is simply a radiance of genuine compassion, concern and care that comes from the heart.”
– Sheva Carr
What is HeartMath?
HeartMath is a science-based, evidence-based system of techniques and heart rate variability (HRV) technology for self-regulation that helps to build resilience and bring the mind, body and emotions into better alignment.
According to over 400-peer-reviewed journal articles, people who practice with HeartMath’s HRV biofeedback to generate a state of coherence report improved attention and mental clarity, less pain, improved energy levels and better sleep.
What is Coherence and how can it help you?
Coherence is a physiological state that is important for us to build resilience and maintain our mental, emotional, and physical well-being. Coherence can be used to describe any system, including the human body, when there is orderly and harmonious connectedness between parts. Borrowing from physics, when we are in a coherent state, virtually no energy is wasted. This is because our systems are performing optimally and there is synchronization between the heart, lungs, nervous system, endocrine system, and immune system.
Our emotions affect our body more than our thoughts. We can generate a state of coherence by shifting to a positive emotional state. These include compassion, care, gratitude or appreciation. In contrast, we
can become incoherent when we experience negative attitudes or emotions, such as anger, fear or anxiety.
HeartMath techniques are meant to be used as an adjunct, to supplement therapy and trauma processing.
HeartMath is an effective method for self regulation, co-regulation, and energy renewal.
HeartMath builds resiliency and the capacity to prepare for, recover from, and adapt in the face of stress, challenge or adversity.
HeartMath helps support professional caregivers with minimizing empathy fatigue and over care.