Member Highlight — Shelley Horner, LMFT

Carole Field, LMFT

During this time when we are sheltering in place due to the coronavirus, I had the pleasure of getting to know Carole Field, LMFT, by phone. Her engaging personality comes across through her voice. Carole expressed concern for people feeling alone and anxious during this time of isolation. “I think in this crisis, psychotherapists are angels,” she said. Carole has a passion to help others through psychotherapy and her performance art.

Carole grew up in Detroit, Michigan. She was the youngest of three from a nice family. Her mother was a musical genius who influenced Carole in the arts. Carole went to Wayne State University in Detroit for her Bachelor of Arts degree. Then, she moved to New York and lived there for five years. Carole performed in musicals. She is a trained ballet dancer and has four vocal octaves. She even had her own club act. Afterwards, she came out here to Los Angeles. Carole did many commercials plus other creative endeavors including going to Phillips Graduate School to study Marriage and Family Therapy. Her passion to deeply help others has been realized by her private practice and books that help clients navigate relationships.

Carole is a multi-talented woman, to say the least. She is a writer, international lecturer, and licensed psychotherapist. She has lectured throughout the U.S., including Hawaii, and internationally at the London Institute of Psychiatry in England and the University of Greece in Athens, and is published in the Netherlands.

Carole has written a book, Dating Down . . And Those of Us Who Do It, that analyzes the dating and romance issues of eight clients. She defines dating down as consistently being involved with a significant other, who is below your satisfaction and integrity level, who refuses to change and who slowly degrades your self-love. “The many years I have been a psychotherapist and of the multitude of patients I have seen, I am consistently staggered at the horrific phenomenon of women dating down to men,” she says on her website. “I could no longer stand by and watch.”

She has also published a novel, New York Guns, Kansas Nuns, and Birth Control, about a young Latina woman who was a teenage drug runner in the streets of New York, became a psychologist and faces many challenges at the birth control clinic she runs in rural (conservative) Kansas.

Carole is working with clients through teletherapy or phone for now. She has an office in Toluca Lake where she hopes to be able to meet in-person again with clients, someday. In a poem about the coronavirus pandemic, she writes:

I Am Grateful for (as a response to Covid-19)
by Carole H. Field

My electricity works.
My water flows.
The air is clean.
I have thoughts.
I have feelings.
I breathe wonderfully.
I have friends.
I have beautiful patients.
I have an outrageous family.
I have memories.
I have had pets.
I feel love.
I receive love from so many.
I am safe.
I am in the United States.
I am within your brilliance.

Carole enjoys attending workshops at San Fernando Valley CAMFT. “It’s deliciously non- competitive and the chapter is organized with integrity and focus,” she tells me. Carole also appreciates our usual setting, The Woodland Hills Country Club, which she feels is so elegant.

Carole returned to her theatrical roots in February, starring in a play that she wrote along with two fellow actors. The play was performed as part of the second annual “Theater of the Mind,” a show produced in partnership with SFV-CAMFT, LACPA, and CSUN. Carole’s witty play, “The Year 2060,” is about dating in the future. I am so honored that I was able to see her humor and wit in the show. Soon after that we had to stay home due to the coronavirus scare, so the timing of the production was fortuitous. Hopefully, we will see Carole’s thespian talents again soon.

If you would like to reach Carole or to know more about her books you can look at her website http://datingdownbook.com/ or call her at 323.964.2247 or email chf12@att.net.