About the Program
What is Contemplative Psychotherapy & Buddhist Psychology?
Contemplative Psychotherapy & Buddhist Psychology may be said to have two parents: the 2,500-year-old wisdom tradition of Buddhism and the clinical traditions of Psychology, especially the Humanistic school. Like all offspring it has much in common with both of its parents and yet is uniquely itself at the same time. From Buddhism comes the practice of mindfulness/ awareness meditation, together with a highly sophisticated understanding of the functioning of the mind in sanity and in confusion. From the clinical traditions come the investigation of the stages of human development, a precise language for discussing mental disturbance and the intimate method of working with others known as “psychotherapy.”
The root teaching of the Contemplative Psychotherapy & Buddhist Psychology concentration is the notion of “brilliant sanity.” This means that we all have within us a natural dignity and wisdom. Our basic nature is characterized by clarity, openness and compassion. This wisdom may be temporarily covered over, but nonetheless, it is there and may be cultivated. Practitioners of Contemplative Psychotherapy & Buddhist Psychology become experts at recognizing sanity within even the most confused and distorted states of mind and are trained to nurture this sanity in themselves and in their clients.
Clinical Training Program
The MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling: Contemplative Psychotherapy & Buddhist Psychology concentration prepares students to meet the demands of the clinical world. Students are thoroughly trained in clinical skills and theoretical understanding, and in both individual and group psychotherapy techniques.
The nine-month internship in the third year of study provides the opportunity for students to work in specialized areas and is vital to a student’s preparation. During the internship year, students participate in weekly tutorial groups made up of three students and two clinical faculty members.
Using a uniquely designed contemplative practice called “Body, Speech and Mind,” students foster the ability to fearlessly and gently touch another’s pain. When combined with ongoing meditation practice, these groups cultivate compassion and the ability to be present with others in genuine relationship.
Upon completion of the program, graduates are trained to be able to foster health in themselves and in their clients. They have developed confidence in themselves and in their clinical abilities and are ready to make a meaningful contribution to the well-being of others.
Community
Going through the program together with classmates provides students the opportunity to develop their interpersonal skills, helps them identify their own relational patterns and gives them the opportunity to offer and receive support as well as encouragement. Being a member of the community requires one to relate on an ongoing basis with the same support group of people for nearly three years.
This can be delightful: Students find that they can relax and be accepted for who they truly are. It can also be very irritating: Those same people are there again and again and they know all about us.
The program places great emphasis on each student coming to find their own unique resources and style. Paradoxically, this is achieved by having everyone follow the same course of study.
Within the context of community and meditation practice, students discover who they most fundamentally are and are encouraged to develop “maitri” or unconditional friendliness toward themselves. Over the years, our graduates have been recognized for their self-confidence and their ability to be with clients without demanding that the clients change to meet the therapists’ private needs and agendas.

Connect
with your counselor
Matt Powers
Interview with Karen Kissel Wegela
Excerpt from: Psychotherapy in Australia (1998), Volume 4, Number 3, pp. 10-14
Michael Green: To some extent Buddhism and psychotherapy come from different directions. Do you find it uncomfortable bringing these two together?
KW: Buddhism is much more interested in being fully alive, being a whole person, being liberated from suffering and understanding that the obstacle to being liberated is this belief in a false ego, clinging to an idea of permanence, clinging to an idea that we can be happy, that there’s a way to avoid pain. The irony is, of course, that when you stop struggling with the pain in your life it becomes very workable. Western psychology still has a training in getting rid of symptoms rather than seeing some sanity in them.
MG: The notion of brilliant sanity seems to be a core part of your approach?
KW: Brilliant sanity is understood to be our very nature. It is understood to be who we already are in that, when we relax, that’s what we experience. When we stop trying to be somebody else, it’s already there, we don’t have to go and find it. In fact from a Buddhist point of view it’s constantly coming through, it’s constantly showing up anyway. It’s more a question of uncovering than developing.
MG: Is the notion of brilliant sanity something that one would assume of oneself, others in the world and clients also?
KW: Well, I don’t know about assume. I would say investigate. Buddhism has long had a tradition of saying, don’t accept anything on faith, look into your experiences and see if it is true. If not, then discard it.
MG: Language is very important to you in not making something too concrete…?
KW: Buddhism is quite wonderful in that, whatever concepts it presents, it also presents a practice that recognizes that concepts are only concepts. The practice actually cuts through the thing that we learned. It keeps going back to experience.
MG: And the practice of sitting is a core part of the experience of Buddhism?
KW: Sitting is part of the training in Contemplative Psychotherapy & Buddhist Psychology, not just the training but the ongoing practice. If I miss practicing for a time then I find myself relying on concept, rather than a direct experience of what’s going on for the client. A unique feature of the Contemplative Psychotherapy & Buddhist Psychology program is the Maitri space awareness practice. Part of what they do is to go away as a group to a residential site and live together as a community.
MG: And Maitri means?
KW: Unconditional friendliness. It’s a product of meditation and it’s also there the first time you’re willing to sit down with yourself. It’s an expression of your urge to be with your experience. Friendliness doesn’t necessarily mean you like it. It’s that you’re willing to be with and see yourself as you are. That’s very friendly, the opposite of self-aggression.
MG: As you talk there is a sense of some shared approaches with psychodynamic psychotherapy in terms of dealing with what is there in the moment with someone.
KW: There’s a lot of emphasis in my work, certainly, on what’s going on in relationship in the room between me and the client. I’m not likely to have preconceptions about various theories about what it’s going to be like. The whole point of meditating is to keep dropping those preconceptions. At the same time I have an expectation that people will try to run habitual patterns, they’ll tend to do that with me. I don’t particularly present people with a blank slate. I’m more interested in a genuine relationship, so there is some variation there. The idea of Contemplative Psychotherapy & Buddhist Psychology, of unconditional friendliness to who you are, and by extension to who your client is, and to whom everybody else is, the idea is that you are also trying to discover what your style of working is. There’s no one way to do Contemplative Psychotherapy & Buddhist Psychology so some people use a psychoanalytic model, and some people do Gestalt.
MG: So you don’t have to be or become a Buddhist to do this training?
KW: There’s a lot of dissatisfaction for a lot of people with the Western approach that is often to ignore your own experience as a therapist. I almost find it incomprehensible that there is training that could be based on starting to work with the client, rather than starting with what you are bringing to the relationship, what are you filtering your observations through, what preconceptions, what expectations, what unfinished issues, all of the countertransference kind of things. It’s not enough just to talk about those; you have to experience them.
It’s shocking to me. I’ve had clients in therapy who’ve been students at other institutions. One client had some pretty severe problems and they sent her out on an internship. There was nothing in that training program that required that she look at her own mind. She dropped out. But I don’t think that was a particularly kind way to treat her, and if she had not dropped out…?
The psychoanalytic tradition has always had this idea of looking at oneself through one’s own analysis. I know some people continue doing their own self-analysis, and that seems important to me. Sitting is a really good way of recognizing what you have solidified and how you have solidified it and then letting it go again. We also have a particular style of case presentation that identifies obstacles, particularly in relation to the client and your own obstacles.
MG: How do you understand change and healing taking place for the client?
KW: For me it translates into helping clients become mindful. Virtually every good therapy teaches mindfulness. First, people develop the capacity to be mindful. Then they use that capacity to examine their own experience, and they start to see how patterns work, how cause and effect works. Often what happens next can have a quality of revulsion, discovering how what they are doing is harming themselves and others, and then taking some responsibility, exploring what arises in those moments and then experimenting with doing things differently, refraining from those same habits, perhaps replacing them with what might traditionally be called virtuous activities. At the same time as they refrain from whatever the negative thing is, they replace it with something less harmful, and we talk about a shift in allegiance, a shift away from neurosis towards sanity, more of a mutual collaborative relationship at that point. We work at helping people find some kind of path, some discipline of mindfulness that they can continue on their own. And along with that, and very important, is the development of maitri. Often when people reach that point of revulsion, a lot of self-aggression can come up. It is the job of the therapist to help them with that, to recognize that, and to point out that there is an alternative.
MG: So maitri is also about friendliness towards one’s own experience?
KW: Yes, it’s an antidote to self-aggression, which I think is rampant in our culture. And then people can continue on their own.
MG: As you talk, it all sounds remarkably simple!
KW: It is, but it is also difficult. The point is to really be there, to not push away your experience when you are with the client, that’s the difficulty. To be with the direct experience of someone else, that’s really what we have to offer. It’s not complicated, just difficult. To be willing to experience pain, to experience not knowing, to be willing to experience wanting to take someone’s pain away, but knowing that that might not be useful. We’re more interested in exploring what is happening than in getting rid of it. The conviction in basic sanity is quite important. If you stay with the experience, some sanity will usually come.
Interview with MacAndrew Jack
MacAndrew Jack, PhD, Director of the Graduate School of Psychology, Shares His Thoughts on Two Frequently Asked Questions
What do you look for in a prospective student?
The Admissions process involves meeting a lot of interesting and wonderful people at a critical juncture in their lives. We get to see all this intelligence, heart, and tenderness in the applicants, many of whom are drawn to the program for very personal reasons. In this process, I love seeing people’s sense of humor. It is just fun that way. And it can really show an individual’s light touch with the world.
I guess I also look for people who are drawn somehow to understanding the nature of awareness. This usually involves a great deal of curiosity and openness, as that kind of exploration can bring uncertainty and groundlessness. While often this is found in individuals with some life experience, in a few instances individuals closer to their undergraduate education have had a dawning sense that this inquiry is important to them.
So we have the curiosity about the nature of awareness, which cuts under the illusions we usually carry, leading us to encountering the world as it is, as opposed to simply the way that we try to pretend it is. By this I mean that individuals in this program come more face to face with the heartbreaking parts of life, like we are going to die, our bodies fail us and register physical pain, and the suffering of others is also our suffering. This takes courage and commitment.
But I don’t want to give the sense that we look for people who are demoralized and stuck in attachment to pain and loss either. Because there is of course so much more to our lives too. So the capacity to experience joy and upliftedness is also important.
Then there is the part about training in the particular path of psychotherapy. I look to see that a prospective student is really interested in working directly with the suffering of others. I see this as coming out of egoless heart, beyond actions designed to solidify and consolidate the individual self. So there is an ability to trust and rest in one’s interdependent nature.
In the MACP, we often see prospective students who have experienced significant suffering in their lives, through the loss of a loved one, their own life threatening disease, or simply awareness of their own restless mind, etc. Many times this seems to have opened them to a direct experience of something larger, of interdependence maybe and the natural arising of their interest in relieving suffering in themselves and others.
Lastly, I would say that I look for prospective students who are interested in learning about themselves in community. That is, while we learn a lot on the cushion in meditation and on retreat, we also learn a lot through our relationships with each other. In the MACP, we establish a particular kind of space in which the students go through the program together with their group of classmates. This brings a richness, sometimes irritation, and ongoing relatedness which is very helpful to learning how to counsel other human beings in the intimate relationship of psychotherapy.
So there is so much brilliance and sanity that is really pretty easy to see in prospective students.
In your opinion, how does the program prepare students for clinical work?
At the most basic, the program teaches students how to be in human relationship. The research on therapeutic effectiveness repeatedly finds that the quality of the relationship, beyond the specific orientation of the therapist or specific interventions used, is the biggest factor in outcome. But how does a student of psychotherapy learn to attend to the relationship?
In the MACP, we offer an intensive approach to relationship. This begins with establishing an attentive and compassionate relationship with one’s self. Basically, the first year is devoted to space for the student’s introspection, self-understanding, and insight. But insight itself is precarious, as often we have reactions to what we find out about ourselves. We take care to help students to foster friendliness to what they find in themselves. That is called Maitri. So students go through a pretty rigorous process of developing self awareness and in that precarious space of discovery they also learn warmth, forgiveness, and softness for their own humanness.
The perspective of the MACP is that it is out of this awakened heart for oneself, that generosity and helping for others can spring. Students also develop a first hand understanding of the vulnerability of a person in pain, and a steadiness and trustworthiness with that vulnerability. So while we sit with another in pain, we have all kinds of reactions and discomfort ourselves as therapists. Training in non-impulsiveness at this point is essential, and quite subtle, in order to discern what of these impulses is likely to be helpful at any given point. We offer specific training in how to identify motivations that are geared solely toward the comfort of the therapist, and practice with not acting unconsciously on these impulses.
So I would say that we train the most fundamental ground of relationship, both with oneself and with others. The students have many, many opportunities to see disowned parts of the self, ways that they don’t like themselves or others, as they study and progress through the program as a community. There are supports from the program for this in the form of training in small and large group process, working with a personal Meditation Instructor for the three years of the program, and intensive retreat practice.
Of course, though, the program is not actually a therapeutic community, so we are not all here to work through every member’s issues or struggles. Many students find it an excellent time to be in personal therapy to really address the challenges that are stirred up by the program.
We also stress that graduate training is a beginning and not an end in professional development. We encourage students to seek additional specialized training in their areas of interest including Dialectical Behavior Therapy, EMDR, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, addictions counseling, and so on. Some of that they will get in the program, but in the scheme of things, three years of graduate study that is broad based can only be a beginning in any given area. All techniques rely on the sound judgment of the therapist, on the ability to discern what intervention to use when. The MACP provides this ground for whatever techniques one gravitates toward in their professional life.
So when a student graduates with a Masters in Contemplative Psychotherapy & Buddhist Psychology they are extremely well prepared to encounter the intensities of intimate therapeutic relationship, which is the space where real help and healing can take place. Agencies both locally and increasingly nationally, know this about our students and seek them out for positions where maturity, trustworthiness, and steadiness are called for. Sometimes this takes the specific form of working with people in extreme states, like psychosis or suicidality, but it is also helpful simply working directly with suffering in whatever form.
If I were to sum it up, I’d say our students learn to awaken the wisdom of their own open heart, and how to work with this in the everyday, grounded reality of human relationship. I’d say this is what psychotherapy is really about.
Suggested Reading List
Aronson, H. B. (2004). Buddhist practice on Western ground: Reconciling Eastern ideals and Western psychology. Shambhala.
Chödrön, P. (2001). Tonglen: The path of transformation (T. Ötro, Ed.). Vajradhatu.
Chödrön, P. (1991). Wisdom of no escape: And the path of loving-kindness. Shambhala.
Epstein, M. (1998). Going to pieces without falling apart: A Buddhist perspective on wholeness. Broadway Books.
Giles, C.A. & Yetinde, P. A. (Eds.) (2020). Black and Buddhist: What Buddhism can teach us about race, resilience, transformation, and freedom. Shambhala.
Kahn, M. (1997). Between client and therapist: The new relationship. Holt Paperbacks.
Kaklauskas, F. J., Nimanheminda, S., Hoffman, L., & Jack, M. S. (Eds.). (2021). Brilliant sanity: Buddhist approaches to psychotherapy. University Professors Press.
Manuel, Z. K. (2015). The way of tenderness: Awakening through race, sexuality, and gender. Wisdom Publications.
Menakem, R. (2017). My grandmother’s hands: Racialized trauma and the pathway to mending our hearts and bodies. Central Recovery Press.
Ormont, L. (1992). The group therapy experience: From theory to practice. St. Martin’s Press.
Owens, L. R. (2020). Love and rage: The path of liberation through anger. North Atlantic Books.
Podvoll, E. M. (2003). Recovering sanity: A compassionate approach to understanding and treating psychosis. Shambhala.
Safran, J. D. (Ed.). (2003). Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: An unfolding dialogue. Wisdom.
Trungpa, C. (1984). Shambhala: The sacred path of the warrior. Shambhala.
Trungpa, C. (2005). The sanity we are born with: A Buddhist approach to psychology (C. R. Gimian, Ed.). Shambhala.
Watson, G. (2008). Beyond happiness: Deepening the dialogue between Buddhism, psychotherapy and the mind sciences. Karnac Books.
Wegela, K.K. (2014). Contemplative psychotherapy essentials: Enriching your practice with Buddhist psychology. Norton.
Wegela, K.K. (2011). What really helps: Using mindfulness & compassionate presence to help, support, and encourage others. Shambhala.
Wegela, K. K. (2009). The courage to be present: Buddhism, psychotherapy, and the awakening of natural wisdom. Shambhala.
Welwood, J. (1983). Awakening the heart: East/West approaches to psychotherapy and the healing relationship. Shambhala.
williams, a. K. transcribed and edited by Kaklauskas, F. J (2016). Beyond Buddhism: what we need to lose to save what we love. In F. J. Kaklauskas, C. J. Clements, D. Hocoy, & L. Hoffman (Eds.), Shadows & Light: Theory, research, and practice in transpersonal psychology (Vol. 2: Talks & Reflections pp. 17-24). University Professors Press.
williams, a. K., Owens, L. R., & Syedullah, J. (2016). Radical dharma: Talking race, love, and liberation. North Atlantic Books.
Yalom, I. (1995). The theory and practice of group psychotherapy. Basic Books.
The Journal of Contemplative Psychotherapy, which was produced by Naropa University’s Buddhist Psychology and Contemplative Psychotherapy program is also a thorough introduction to the field.
Meditation
Many psychologists have identified the ability to truly “be with” one another as the most important gift a psychotherapist has to offer to a client in psychological pain. The ability to be with others comes from being able to be with oneself no matter what state of mind one may be experiencing: vivid emotions, confusing thoughts, or quiet peacefulness.
Since the ground of working with others is taken to be familiarity with one’s own experience, the program places great emphasis on meditation practice and body/mind awareness disciplines. Each semester of the program students enroll in a Buddhist Psychology class. The sequence begins with an introduction to Buddhist Psychology as well as an introduction to the practice of mindfulness-awareness sitting meditation. Each semester of the sequence provides formal support for the students’ sitting practices as well as providing teachings of the Buddhist understanding of the mind and linking those teachings to clinical work.
Students are encouraged to develop a daily sitting practice and are required to sit at least five hours a week. They may work up to this gradually during the first semester. Each semester the program conducts an intensive practice week during which students practice sitting and walking meditation during their class times. In the second and third years an additional three-hour block of sitting is required each month. The emphasis on contemplative practice is further strengthened by the Maitri retreats.
Students are required to do the basic meditation practice presented in the program. Students who come to the program with a contemplative discipline are encouraged to maintain their practice, but must additionally do the specific practice taught in the program.
Students are also strongly encouraged to engage in body awareness practices such as t’ai chi, yoga, aikido, and other mind-body synchronization practices.
Each student works with an individual meditation instructor throughout the program. Applicants who are new to meditation practice are encouraged to try it out before making a commitment to the program.
Maitri Retreats
“Maitri can be translated as ‘love.’ It means a warm, friendly attitude. In making friends with someone, it means accepting their neurosis as well as their sanity. Maitri is an all-encompassing friendship that relates with the destructiveness of nature as well as with its creativity. But the first step is trust in ourselves. Such trust can only come about when there is no categorizing, no judgment, but a simple and direct relationship with our being.”
—Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
A key component of the MA Contemplative Psychotherapy & Buddhist Psychology program are the Maitri retreats. The residential retreats are currently held at Shambhala Mountain Center, a retreat center located in Red Feather Lakes, Colorado, high in the Rocky Mountains.
During the three-year program, students spend a total of about nine weeks participating in intensive community practice at Maitri retreats. In each fall and spring semester of the first two years, students have a two-week long Maitri program. In the third year, while the students are in internship, the Maitri program is one week in length. The Maitri retreats are a mix of intensive meditation practice, meditation instructions and talks, walking meditation, some days of silence, and community work practice.
During the program, students are supported by an experienced staff of directors and meditation instructors. In the first year, special emphasis is placed on deepening one’s meditation practice and relationship with one’s own mind. In the second year, an increasing emphasis is placed on integrating meditation practice with clinical perspectives. In the final year of the program, students examine the teachings on the bardo (the time between death and rebirth) from The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which provide a powerful metaphor for the ending of their Naropa journey.
A key element of the Maitri retreats is the practice of maitri space awareness. Space awareness practice is done in five differently colored rooms that intensify different emotional and psychological states, both their “wisdom” aspects and their “confused” aspects. By doing maitri space awareness practice in the context of both personal awareness meditation and of community, students come to recognize their own patterns to become friendly toward themselves in different states of mind and to develop genuine humor and compassion. This often leads to relaxation and fearlessness in working with others.
At the start of the first year, each student will be assigned to a Small Group Process section. The students assigned to each small group section often maintain the same group composition with the same group leader for the entire three years of the program. In addition to small group process that happens every semester, in the spring semester of the first and second years students participate in Large Group Process classes.
The general purpose of the small and large group process classes is to give students a place to discuss issues and feelings that arise for them as they progress through the program and to serve as an experiential laboratory for group process and group leadership. In these classes, students develop mindfulness-awareness of the present moment in the context of group, develop mindfulness of speech, learn to articulate inner experience and give and receive feedback in a skillful way, as well as learn basic principles of group dynamics as preparation for leading groups.
Our program has gained a national reputation for training group leaders. Almost all of our group process leaders have been long-time, highly regarded presenters at the American Group Psychotherapy Association annual meeting. The Contemplative Psychotherapy & Buddhist Psychology program always sends a large contingent of students to the conference who continually impress the senior membership with their sophistication, presence and ability to engage in here-and-now interaction in the group context.
Students demonstrate knowledge of core counseling curriculum.
Students demonstrate proficiency in clinical counseling skills.
Students demonstrate professional competence in counseling.
Students recognize and point to moments of brilliant sanity in themselves and others.
Students articulate core Buddhist teachings.
Students integrate their understanding of Buddhist teachings with other counseling and psychology approaches and apply them in their clinical work.
Students know how to practice the meditation methods drawn from the Buddhist Meditation tradition and use them as a foundation for their work with themselves and others.
Students articulate their theoretical and experiential understanding of dynamics that arise in relationships including but not limited to transference, countertransference and exchange.
The third year of study centers around the nine-month, 700-hour clinical internship. As interns in community agencies, students receive on-site supervision while working in a specialized area. During this year, students join with classmates to practice weekly meditation. In addition, students participate in small tutorial groups of three students and two clinical faculty members weekly.
Graduates leave the program with a strong foundation in the principles and practices of promoting health in themselves and in others. They are qualified to work as counselors and psychotherapists in a variety of settings including community mental health centers, residential treatment facilities and social service agencies.
The following is a small sampling of the agencies in the Boulder-Denver area currently participating in the field placement program.
- Alternatives to Family Violence
- Aurora Mental Health Center
- Boulder Alcohol Education Center
- Boulder College of Massage Therapy
- Boulder County Public Health
- Addiction Recovery Center (ARC)
- Community Health Division: Prevention & Intervention Program
- Catholic Charities of Denver
- Home-Based Program
- Center for Change
- Colorado AIDS Project (CAP)
- Denver Hospice
- Hospice of Boulder & Broomfield Counties
- Jefferson Center
- Jewish Family Services
- MDS Counseling Center
- Medicine Horse
- Mental Health Partners
- Various teams including Community Infant Program and Emergency Psychiatric Services
- Mental Health Center of Denver
- Namaste Hospice
- Naropa University On-Campus Counseling Center
- Noeticus Counseling Center and Training Institute
- RAAP (Rape Assistance and Awareness Program)
- Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence (SPAN)
- University of Colorado
- Faculty and Staff Assistance Program
- Veteran’s Center
“I know that this program places strong emphasis on the Buddhist understanding of the mind and on meditation practice. Do I have to be a Buddhist to do this program? Do you expect me to become one?”
Not at all! Of the students who have a contemplative practice, many different traditions are represented. Students from other spiritual traditions, and those who feel no special connection with any tradition, are part of our community. Applicants who do not have prior experience with sitting meditation are strongly encouraged to gain experience with meditation to help determine whether or not this program would be a good fit for them.
“Can I do this program part time?”
Unfortunately, no. One of the most powerful aspects of the program is the community of classmates who journey together for its three year course. One’s classmates provide support and challenge. They provide continuity and a reference point as one goes through the process of working with oneself and others. The curriculum has recently been re-visioned; visit the degree requirements page for details.
“What if I have children?”
Having a family and being a graduate student is often quite a balancing act. Students with younger children can find it especially challenging to balance their children’s needs with the demands of the program, especially around arrangements for the Maitri retreats. At the same time, the program tries to be responsive to the needs of parents and many parents have successfully completed the program. Some of the ways that have been arranged are for parents to visit their children at selected times during the retreats and, in rare cases, a parent is allowed to bring a child. The parent must then provide a full-time “nanny” for the time that the child is at the retreat.
“Are there prerequisites for this program? I haven’t studied psychology before.”
We do not have any specific prerequisites for the program. We have found that some of our most effective students have come from backgrounds other than psychology. Significant life experience seems to be the most valuable prior “work” one can have done. However, many internship placements will not accept students who have not had some experience in the field. For this reason, we strongly encourage those without such experience to do volunteer work either before they come or during the first two years of the program. A background or some reading in psychology can, of course, be very useful before entering the program.
“Can I get licensed after completing this program?”
Graduates of this program are qualified to work as counselors and psychotherapists in a wide variety of settings such as community mental health centers, residential treatment facilities and social service agencies. Graduates are eligible for licensure in Colorado pending completion of State Professional Counselor license requirements. In the United States, Licensure requirements vary from state to state. Please see the licensure page for further information and or contact the Graduate School of Psychology Licensing and Credentialing Coordinator for more information.
- Therapist, Rape Assistance and Awareness Program, Denver, CO
- Family attachment counselor, South Sound Attachment Clinic, Olympia, WA
- Child and family psychotherapist, Child Guidance Clinic, Springfield, MA
- Residential counselor, DePaul Treatment Center, Portland, OR
- Mobile and outpatient therapist, St. Anthony’s Point, Hermitage, PA
- Grief counselor, Denver Hospice, Denver, CO
- Contemplative psychotherapist, Qi Integrated Health, Vancouver, BC, Canada
- Psychotherapist, private practice, Burnsville, NC
- Family and youth psychotherapist, New York, NY
- Assistant program director, AIM House, Boulder, CO
- Team counselor, Windhorse Associates, Northampton, MA
- Therapist, Cooper-Riis Healing Farm Community, Mill Spring, NC
- Child crisis therapist, Boulder County Mental Health, Boulder, CO
- Substance abuse services coordinator, University of Colorado Counseling and Psychological Services, Boulder, CO