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Complete the coursework required for the LMFT.
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Gain much-needed direct client contact hours for experience and licensure.
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Work with a dedicated, passionate faculty that is second to none in the area.
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Know the central importance of relationship in all clinical work.
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Mature and grow as a strength-based, systemic therapist.
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Gain the competencies necessary to be successful.
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Move beyond a singular focus on treating disease to empowering clients to resolve their pressing life problems (which might include a DSM diagnosis).
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Expand as a clinician to having a “self of many possibilities.”
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Learn to join with a diverse array of families, couples and individuals.
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Bring your diversity to the program to add to the mix, and strengthen your appreciation of diversity in clients, other clinicians and communities.
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Facilitate change in the therapy session.
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Create therapeutic relationships with clients most likely to generate change.
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Maintain therapeutic maneuverability, especially with court-ordered cases, and other reluctant or resistant family systems.
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Gain a foundational knowledge of the major family therapy and couples counseling theories.
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Apply theories in practical ways in your clinical work.
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Gain solid systemic assessment skills.
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Be able to formulate useful systemic hypotheses from those theories.
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Understand of your own family-of-origin role, experiences, cultural identity and heritage to strengthen your therapeutic presence.
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Value your own cultural, gender and sexual identity, and those of your clients.
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Develop an optimistic, hopeful approach to working with difficult cases.
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Join a warm, supportive, diverse therapeutic community.
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Work with diverse clients in the DFI clinic.
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Team up with fellow students in mutually supportive, enriching relationships.
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Integrate your strengths, experiences and knowledge in to your therapy.
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Receive direct feedback, expansive experiences and team support in DFI’s live supervision format.
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Further your journey to becoming the best therapist you can be for your clients.
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Foster connections with other professionals in the family-therapy field.
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Cultivate a deep sense of ethics and integrity in your work, not from fear, but from integrating relational ethics as the foundational element in good therapy.
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Have fun while learning and stretching with other motivated, dynamic students.
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Accept challenges to your comfort zone as needed so you can supervise yourself as an independent licensed clinician.
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Nurture your sense of self as a clinician and your use of self in your work.
