FIGT Counseling & Coaching Affiliate

Virtual Coffee with Melissa Parks

Date: Tuesday, December 10, 2019 

Time: 11:00 am EST

Location: Online (using Zoom)

Cost: FREE. Open to all.

Our December Virtual coffee will be with Melissa Parks, PhD. from Intentional Expat Coaching & Consulting. We look forward to hear Melissa talk about her work and her focus on self-compassion in the field of counseling and coaching. You don’t want to miss it! Please read on to learn more about Melissa.

Melissa Parks PhD,  is a mental and emotional wellness coach for her company, Intentional Expat Coaching & Consulting. She is a Teacher-in-training for Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC). Below, Melissa shares with us a little more about herself and MSC:


  “After several years of providing therapy to the expat community (as well as non-expat clinical populations, primarily clients with eating disorders), I realized that the underlying problem for most of my clients was their tendency to be hard on themselves when going through difficult times. This motivated me to pursue training as an MSC teacher. "Mindful Self-Compassion" is an evidence-based course developed by the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion in the US. but taught worldwide (also available online and there's a workbook too). There is a great deal of research to support the positive effects of self-compassion on our mental and physical health.

MSC was developed in part by Dr Christopher Germer, a psychotherapist, in response to needing tools that he could give his clients to use outside of session to maintain the compassionate attitude towards their suffering that he was able to show them in the session. After seeing success with his clients (and in his own personal life) he joined together with Dr Kristin Neff, a psychologist/researcher to develop the MSC program. In my own teacher training one of the trainers (also a psychotherapist) commented that she now believes that the real problem in mental health is not the diagnosis, but the way that patients interact with their symptoms. MSC can help patients learn to turn towards their pain with acceptance and soothing, in the same way they might turn towards a friend in a difficult moment.    Some topics for discussion could be…

• Why I was motivated to pursue specific training in order to teach about self-compassion
• What self-compassion is and what the common misconceptions about it are
• Why it's so important to help our clients to cultivate self-compassion
• The importance of cultivating self-compassion as professionals and how it can prevent compassion fatigue
• Why I’ve found self-compassion to be a particularly helpful tool for international clients
• Some exercises and tools to use with your own clients
• Resources to look into if you want to learn more about the Mindful Self-Compassion course and or the more general topic of self-compassion”

For more information on how to join the call and our mailing list for future events please email counseling@figt.org.