Jenny Pascal, MFT

Psychotherapy

Education and Training

I hold a BA in Philosophy and an MA in Educational Psychology from University of California Los Angeles, and an MA Counseling Psychology from Antioch University.

Southern California Counseling Center School-Based Mental Health Program Coordinator

Most of my counseling training took place at SCCC. I did a yearlong family training and spent two years counseling at Fairfax High School, John Burroughs Middle School and Crescent Heights Elementary. Presently, I am involved at the Counseling Center as the Training Coordinator of the school program. (www.sccc-la.org).

TEEN LINE, Training Director

TEEN LINE is a teen-to-teen crisis hotline at Cedars Sinai Hospital (www.teenlineonline.org). TEEN LINE is based on the premise that when teenagers encounter problems, they usually turn first to their peers for advice. Each year nearly 9,000 young people call the hotline. As the Director of Training, I work extensively with teens to prepare them to answer calls, emails and texts from their fellow peers in distress.

EMDR

EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, (www.emdria.org) is an integrative psychotherapy approach that has proven effective for the treatment of trauma. It can be thought of as a physiologically based therapy that helps a person see disturbing material in a new and less distressing way. When a person is traumatized, their brain cannot process information as it does ordinarily. One moment becomes frozen in time, and remembering a trauma can feel as bad as going through it the first time because the images, sounds, smells and feelings are still present. Such memories have a lasting negative effect on the way a person sees the world and relates to other people, interfering with his or her life. EMDR seems to have a direct effect on the way that the brain functions. Normal information processing is resumed, and following a successful EMDR session; the images, sounds, and feelings no longer are relived when the event is brought to mind. What happened is still remembered, but is less upsetting.

Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) Training

MBCT (www.mbct.com) combines the ideas of cognitive therapy with meditative practices and attitudes based on the cultivation of mindfulness. Based on Jon Kabat Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program, MBCT is designed to help people who suffer repeated bouts of depression and chronic unhappiness. The heart of this work lies in becoming acquainted with the modes of the mind that often characterize mood disorders while simultaneously learning to develop a new relationship to them.

Play and Art Therapy Training with Robin Walker

I studied in a yearlong workshop with Robin Walker, a leader in the field of child and family therapy.