Mutual accompaniment means free consultation and other services. This valuable phrase offered by colleague and friend, Mary Watkins, PhD, a leading voice in liberation psychology, describes intentional efforts to listen, learn, ally, and offer assistance. In offering mutual accompaniment to interested circles and communities, David brings heart, spirit, and abilities to such offerings on behalf of his Baha’i faith and Indigenous teachings. Mutual accompaniment might entail (but need not be limited to) such possibilities as:

• Joining a community circle to listen, learn, and provide knowledge or suggestions
• Co-facilitating a community circle toward promoting creativity or proactive decision-making
• Researching and providing information or opinions on a particular topic of interest to a community’s wellbeing
• Offering an original song or poem

Mutual Accompaniment services are always free.

“Then there will be truthfulness, and they will uphold hope and charity, so that it is peace that will unite all of the people, indeed, it will be as though they have but one mind, and they are a single person with only one body and one head and one life, which means that there will be unity… “
~ Deganawida, Iroquois prophet, circa 1450 CE

True trauma-informed education means creating deep knowledge, awareness and strategies for circles of people to maximize learning and thriving against the tragedy of individual, family, community, and generational violence and oppression. Such an important goal cannot be achieved through one-size-fits-all training programs or reading books. As a lifelong educator and psychologist, highly experienced in both special education and working with educators and their allies, David brings a process-oriented approach to helping colleagues safely reflect and learn about traumatized experience while planning custom strategies and solutions capable of engaging learners and shifting with emerging needs. Such a process often involves community members first looking within and among one another – in safe ways – and then collaborating toward build trusting, compassionate relationships that can be turned toward supporting the challenges facing those they serve.

David’s alliance, consultation, and facilitation with your circle of wellness providers will help inspire new heartfelt visioning, deeper thinking, improved strategies, better outreach and engagement, and exceptional outcomes. Over the course of his career, David has designed and managed multi-targeted behavioral health programming for hospitals, clinics, agencies, and schools. His breadth of expertise extends across neurorehabilitation, psychotherapy, foster care, education, youth, elders, and culture-centered services. He’s also a recognized national authority on the checkered history of and critical needs for improving so-called “mental health” services in Native America.

David’s consultation skillset includes helping circles of colleagues in social and wellness services to surface and safely resolve competing or opposing demands, miscommunication and conflict, problems with cohesion and disunity, burnout and commitment difficulties, and other work-relationship issues. Working together in circle, David can help others to heal and reengage with renewed focus and mutual support.

David consults carefully first with educators, administrators, counselors, and behavioral health colleagues before designing and delivering a custom experiential learning event that empowers and reinvigorates as much as it informs and teaches. Break the mold of training as “checking a box,” and bring renewed purpose to everyone on your team by retaining David to deliver what you and your colleagues want and need to learn in order to thrive in your work.

David can come to your program or group practice or meet virtually to offer psychotherapy and youth support services consultation to your circle of colleagues. Your clients are human beings, not “cases,” and your role as therapist and helper can be isolating and overwhelming. David’s extensive background as an insightful and caring psychotherapy mentor and youth services helper combine with his commitment to ally closely with you as you seek to understand, support, and assist the psychosocial wellbeing of people you serve. Additionally, David can help you restore your own balance, work proactively with secondary grief and traumatic stress, and better manage your own care and wellbeing.

In addition to the above services, David maintains a part-time, virtual private practice in individual psychotherapy for adults you can read more about.

Download David’s Curriculum Vitae