Inside Out and Outside In
Sierra Community Counseling Center offers outdoor and art therapies to help families and individuals in crisis.
Counselor Theresa Danlin is describing her work with one of her many clients coming out of addiction. The young woman was at the mercy of methamphetamine, her young son taken from her and placed in foster care, her life in shambles. Danlin's large, soft brown eyes radiate kindly at the memories as she recalls the two years of hard work the two women did together, she the counselor and the client struggling to reclaim her own life.
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Theresa and Michael Danlin, owners of Sierra Community Counseling Center
in Silver City, with some framed art made by their clients hanging behind
them. (Photos by Donna Clayton Lawder) |
What was the key? What was the therapeutic method that enabled the woman to come out from under her addiction to one of the most heinous drugs around?
"We made pottery," Danlin says simply. "The spinning of the clay on the wheel puts you in a meditative trance. It works on the right side of the brain. It gets straight to the emotions and balances the body's positive and negative energies. It's generative and rewarding, too, because you're creating something out of nothing. This is why pottery works."
Of course, Danlin also counseled the woman while she worked. The client even had access to the key to the pottery studio so she could go throw a pot when she felt the tentacles of meth seeking to drag her back down.
"She's been off meth, totally clean, for a year now," Danlin says with a smile. "She's working part-time and she has custody of her son back. And she's learning how to be a parent."
Danlin is co-owner with her husband, Michael Danlin, of the Sierra Community Counseling Center, on Broadway in Silver City. The center offers art and experiential therapies to individuals and families. Michael holds bachelor's degrees in psychology and criminal justice and a master's in counseling. Theresa holds a bachelor's degree from the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as a master's in arts-therapy program development and another in counseling.
Three years ago, the two opened the Turtleback Center in Truth or Consequences. That facility has an elaborate rope-climbing experiential therapy course.
"Value Options manages Medicaid funds for behavioral health in T or C, so it was easy for us to start up there," Theresa explains. Word of mouth spread, and soon there were vanloads of kids coming to the center from the Silver City and Bayard areas, Michael adds.
So, in February of this year, the pair opened the Silver City facility. And, as if the two weren't busy enough raising their three young children and commuting several days a week between the two counseling centers, they soon will open a third counseling center in Deming.
The Danlins are used to functioning as a tag team, Theresa says with a laugh, combining their individual specialties to address the counseling needs of families and individuals, children and adults.
"I work with the kids," Michael says, then adds with a laugh of his own, "Well, I'm a big kid myself!" Getting kids to open up in the great outdoors — swinging on a rope course, hiking or camping in the mountains, shooting hoops on a basketball court — is his area of expertise. And his passion.
"You can talk to a kid for two hours in an office and not get very far, but I can take them out and shoot baskets, and they're talking to me in a matter of minutes," Michael says animatedly.
Theresa explains her piece of the therapeutic puzzle: "I focus on the parents. With families in crisis, if you can't change the parents, you can't reach the kids."
Many of her clients come to her through the state's Children, Youth and Families Department (CYFD), she says. Motivation is a key ingredient to successful therapy, she notes, and wanting to get their kids back from foster care and other custody arrangements will motivate a parent to get help with addiction problems or other issues.
The average child client is between 5 and 12 years of age, Theresa says, though the center also sees a few younger ones and a few teens. Adult clients run the gamut, she says, from 18 to 64 years old.
The Silver City practice is already the Danlins' largest, treating some 50 children weekly and around three-dozen families. Theresa walks through the center's high-ceilinged, sun-drenched rooms — the attractive historic building that now houses the center had won the New Mexico MainStreet's "Best Building Award" in 1998 — and points out the various therapeutic areas and tools.
There is a section for music, with a slew of varied instruments. Another area holds shelves full of art supplies. In another part of the huge room, rows of theater seats line up and face an open white wall — a ready-made movie screen. Tucked into a corner, a play-rug defines the youngest children's area, with a jumble of cheerful, primary-colored toys. And in the open, sunny hallway is the pottery area, Theresa's own pride and joy.
"Somebody was selling a whole private pottery studio, and I got three kilns, a wheel, all this shelving. A studio like this would cost thousands," she says. "I couldn't believe my luck!"
The counseling center also has a modest but full kitchen.
"Oh, the first thing I do is feed them!" Theresa says, chuckling. Kids arriving in the afternoon often are hungry, she notes. "Having a nutritious snack is important for them to be able to function and think and progress."
The Danlins describe the process of beginning to work with an individual or family. First comes the "intake packet" — more than a dozen pages to be gone over and completed. The packet also explains the counseling program and outlines clients' rights. Next is an assessment to define needs and issues. In children, this might mean identifying social or emotional delays. Then the counselors create a treatment plan with measurable goals and objectives.
These steps are important for treatment success, but also to ensure that the center gets paid for its efforts, Theresa points out. A substantial portion of the center's income comes through Medicaid. It also accepts private insurance plans and sliding-scale payments.
Dealing with the fundamental needs of life is key in helping families in crisis become whole again. Just as the kids get cantaloupe and crackers, Theresa says, helping families with the basics is a starting point for her work.
"It's the four legs of a table," she explains, ticking off the hierarchy of needs — food, shelter, childcare and community support. "Without these, the table doesn't stand.
"The first six months, we are just handling the basics. We're getting them food for their families and the bills paid," she says. Often she helps the parents she is counseling fill out paperwork for public assistance, like the Women Infants and Children (WIC) program.
Over the next six months of treatment, Theresa goes on, she helps her clients address basic mental-health issues. "They work toward becoming more functional. They often have to learn to deal with stress."
After a year, she says, clients usually are ready to look at "real traumas and underlying issues" that have broken them down in the first place, putting the family or individual into crisis.
The Danlins' practice has grown mostly through word of mouth, Theresa says, and their success is snowballing. It's often hard for individuals to realize they need help in the first place, she adds, and then it's difficult to get over the hurdle of seeking it out.
"But we're finding that one family will tell another family about how we helped them, and it grows from there," she says. "That's a real vote of confidence. That's rewarding."
— Donna Clayton Lawder
Sierra Community Counseling Center, 412 Broadway, Silver City, 313-3964. Open 9 a.m.-9 p.m. weekdays, weekends vary.