QUALIFICATIONS
Sheffa has 20+ years of experience working as a licensed psychotherapist in private practice with individuals, couples, and groups. She specializes in relationships outside of traditional paradigms, including polyamory, consensual power dynamics, mixed-orientation marriages, platonic parenting, and cross-cultural relationships.
She is a professional member of MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) and loves helping clients with psychedelic integration. She cannot lead guided experiences with entheogens until they are approved for legal use, nor can she acquire such medicine for clients.
She has been a group facilitator for 25+ years, working with therapy groups, women's spirituality circles, and expressive movement groups, including groups for infertility grief and growth, and circles centered on Judaism, paganism, and pantheic study.
Sheffa is licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist in both North Carolina (LMFT #1647) and California (BBS MFT #47600). She graduated with a Master's degree in Counseling Psychology in 2004, with specializations in somatic psychology and group process, from John F. Kennedy University in California. She completed five years of post-graduate internship in the somatic psychotherapy practice of Kim McCourt, MFT. She has also worked as a counselor in a public school, as a therapist and group leader in a low-fee clinical setting, and as an HIV Counselor and Health Educator within the women's health clinic of the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinics in San Francisco.
She completed 2.5 years of training in trauma work with the Somatic Experiencing® Institute and continues to engage in trainings in polyvagal theory, complex PTSD, and regulation strategies.
Sheffa and Gillian Corzine are the co-founders of the Triangle Poly- and Kink- Friendly Therapist group, which offers education, social networking, and a referral network for licensed therapists.
Sheffa has completed numerous trainings and participated in group supervision to increase her skills around issues unique to transgender individuals. She also loves a multitude of trans-identified people in her personal life, and is deeply committed to the cause of gender liberation.
She is also committed to doing her own work around being a white person benefiting from white supremacy in this country. She strives to continually challenge herself to examine and dismantle the structures that oppress and endanger BIPOC.
Before becoming a therapist, she worked for eight years in the start-up bioscience technology world in the Bay Area during the dot-com boom within marketing and human resources, while maintaining a small side business as a Certified Massage Therapist and attending births as a Certified Doula, primarily within the volunteer program of San Francisco General Hospital with low-income women and families. She moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to Durham, North Carolina, in 2012.
Sheffa identifies as a queer, pansexual, cis-gendered, kinky woman, and a post-nonmonogamous ambiamorous relationship anarchist. She is also the mother of an amazing 19-year old human. In her free time, she has a regular yoga and dance practice and is active in the Southeast Regional Burn community.
Specialties
non-monogamy and polyamory
sexuality and kink exploration
gender exploration and transitioning
GLBTIQQA+ issues
Buddhist, pagan, and earth-based spiritualities
conflict resolution within intentional communities
somatic psychotherapy
trauma healing
self-assertiveness
parenting
divorce and conscious uncoupling
grief and learning to let go
InterviewS
Listen to Sheffa’s podcast interview with Kitty Chambliss on Loving Without Boundaries:
Loving Without Boundaries podcast interview
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