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The Ethics of Caring: Finding Right Relationship with Clients (Ethics 105)

The Ethics of Caring: Finding Right Relationship with Clients (Ethics 105)

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Psychedelic Support has enrolled over 15,000 students in our free and paid courses! All proceeds from our paid courses have gone into funding more education and resources for the public around safe and ethical use of psychedelics in therapy and harm reduction.

Course Description

Ethics 105 is a 6-hour continuing education home-study course based on the required reading The Ethics of Caring: Finding Right Relationship with Clients (2017 book) by Kylea Taylor. This course offers an in-depth exploration of ethics as a lived, relational practice, complementing traditional ethics education by focusing on legal and ethical guidelines. Participants are invited to examine how ethical caring, presence, boundaries, power, responsibility, and professional self-awareness shape the therapeutic relationship.

Rather than focusing solely on prohibitions or risk management, this course emphasizes ethical discernment, right relationship, and the practitioner’s ongoing responsibility to engage in self-reflection, humility, and accountability. The text addresses complex clinical realities such as professional love, boundary crossings, vulnerability, dependency, misuse of power, and the emotional and relational impact of therapeutic work on both client and practitioner.

This course is particularly relevant for professionals who work relationally, experientially, or in depth-oriented modalities, including those working with clients in emotionally vulnerable, regressed, or non-ordinary states of consciousness. Through careful reading and examination of ethical dilemmas, participants deepen their capacity to recognize subtle ethical risks, respond with integrity, and maintain client welfare as the central guiding principle.

Prior courses in this series include Ethics 101, Ethics 102, Ethics 103, and Ethics 104. Buy two or more of these Ethics courses to receive 20% off!

Who is this course for?

Ethics 105 is designed for professionals who work in contexts where relationship, trust, and altered or profound states of consciousness are central to the work.
This course is especially well-suited for:

Licensed mental health professionals (psychologists, social workers, counselors, marriage and family therapists) seeking ethics Continuing Education (CE) credits that are directly relevant to their clinical practice
Psychedelic-assisted therapy practitioners and trainees, including therapists, sitters, guides, and facilitators working in legal, clinical, research, or spiritual contexts
Clinicians working with extraordinary or non-ordinary states of consciousness, including deep trauma work, grief, spiritual emergence, breathwork, and intensive somatic or depth-oriented modalities
Clergy, spiritual leaders, and ministers whose roles inherently involve overlapping professional, spiritual, and community relationships
Experienced professionals who want ethics education that goes beyond rule-based prohibitions and instead supports discernment, self-reflection, and ethical maturity

This Ethics 105 course is appropriate for both seasoned practitioners and those in training who want to build strong ethical discernment skills before complex relational situations arise.

If you are in a position of trust with people in vulnerable, intensified, or transformative states—and you want ethics training that reflects the realities of that work while also providing CE credit—this course was designed with you in mind.

Course Curriculum

This is a self-paced home study course consisting of:

Independent reading of the required text, Taylor, K. (2017). The Ethics of Caring: Finding Right Relationship With Clients. Hanford Mead. (PDF provided in the course)
Self-reflection on ethical concepts and clinical examples
Completion of a multiple-choice post-test

There is no required participation in live instruction or group discussion.

Learning Objectives

After this course, you will be able to:

Describe the core principles of therapeutic ethics and explain how “right relationship” functions as a foundation for caring, clinical practice.
Identify common ethical vulnerabilities that arise from professional caring, including boundary confusion, misuse of power, and unexamined professional motivations.
Differentiate between ethical caring and unethical boundary crossings, including how professional love may be ethically held without exploitation.
Apply ethical decision-making grounded in self-reflection, relational awareness, and responsibility for client welfare.
Recognize early warning signs of ethical drift, burnout, entitlement, countertransference, or rationalization within therapeutic relationships.
Demonstrate an understanding of the practitioner’s responsibility for managing transference, countertransference, dependency, and emotional intensity in clinical work, all of which are amplified when working with clients in extraordinary states.

Professional Continuing Education

In support of improving patient care, Psychedelic Support offers continuing education for health providers through the the American Psychological Association (APA).

American Psychological Association Education Sponsor

Testimonials

The Ethics of Caring is an extraordinarily helpful and groundbreaking new book for healers, clergy, therapists, and bodyworkers that illuminates what is necessary to offer wise and trustworthy relations to their clients. Kylea has grounded her work in the spiritual principle of reverence for life that underlies all the world’s great religions and healing systems. She elaborates upon the basic principles of non-harming as they are needed for the vast terrain of healing realms, including crisis of trauma, loss, and grief work, spiritual counseling, expanded consciousness, and energetic and shamanic openings. The Ethics of Caring alerts healers not to underestimate the power of energies that arise in extraordinary states through transference and countertransference.

Jack Kornfield, PhD, author of A Wise Heart, A Lamp in the Darkness, The Art of Forgiveness and Lovingkindness, A Path with Heart, and After the Ecstasy the Laundry

This is a wonderful resource book that can be an invaluable professional guide for maintaining ethics and integrity within the helping professions.

Angeles Arrien, PhD, cultural anthropologist, author of The Four-Fold Way, Signs of Life, and The Second Half of Life.

I want to highly recommend Kylea’s book, The Ethics of Caring. It is truly in a class by itself in the literature on ethics in therapy. I’ve read many books in this area and have been on a Board responsible for reviewing and approving the code of ethics for a large professional association, the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapists (AAMFT), and, to my knowledge, Kylea’s book is unique in the field. It combines the rigors of professionalism with a deep and complex understanding of the human heart, soul, and mind. It really is an important book. If you are a professor or teacher, you might want to consider it as required reading.

Sara Wright, PhD, Licensed Psychologist, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Board Member, American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT), Past-President, Minnesota Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (MAMFT)

The work with extraordinary states of consciousness brings specific new challenges and problems that go beyond those encountered in traditional verbal and experiential approaches. Kylea Taylor’s book is a pioneering venture into these new territories, providing important guidelines for practitioners and students.

Stanislav Grof, MD, author of Psychology of the Future, The Ultimate Journey, Realms of the Human Unconscious, and The Adventure of Self Discovery, and The Way of the Psychonaut

The Ethics of Caring is a must-have for practitioners of all kinds, and most especially those working with regressed or altered states. Kylea Taylor’s model provides the scaffolding for practitioners to self-examine where they are particularly vulnerable to ethical digression. Her work is required reading for educators in prenatal and perinatal psychology and health; it has helped us form a container for our professionals to self-reflect and create awareness about appropriate behavior and responses in our field. This model also has a way for ethics to make sense beyond the usual mode of “do no harm.” Many professionals think of ethics as common sense. The Ethics of Caring allows professionals to go deeper into their own material and embrace how their mistakes are gifts. Kylea Taylor also includes spirituality, extraordinary states of consciousness, and other special conditions for transpersonal work. I highly recommend this book.

Kate White, MA, LMT, RCST,® CEIM, SEP, Director of Education and Administrator, Prenatal and Perinatal Educator Certificate Program, The Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health

The Ethics of Caring is a book that students and professionals actually read! Kylea Taylor’s book is uniquely situated to assist anyone involved in depth psychology, pastoral care, traditional counseling, or human services. Any helping professional will find it both intriguing and insightful. Kylea Taylor’s assessment of the vulnerabilities inherent in the therapeutic process and the effects of the work on the therapist are brilliant and useful. Kylea Taylor reveals the myriad of personal and collective, conscious and unconscious dynamics present in the room. Invaluable and vital for anyone who takes inner psychological or spiritual work seriously, this text is both instructive and illuminating and is often eagerly and voluntarily read by students and professionals alike. No other book articulates the personal, professional, and relational issues involved with extraordinary states of consciousness as well as the intense and profound experiences encountered in traditional therapy work.

Dr Jane Steinhauser, DMin, Licensed Professional Counselor, counselor, educator, and spiritual direction trainer

[It’s] … important to think about how to go beyond what is proper or legal to what is best. Taylor’s approach does this. She’s not satisfied with just avoiding preventable problems. Her goal, instead, is to help her readers create and maintain “right relationship” with their clients. She’s also concerned to help practitioners develop an internal locus of control, a strong personal sense of wise, kind, and helpful ways to work with people, and an ethic of care instead of rules. Because of this, you won’t find dogmatic judgmental statements in this book. Instead, Taylor takes a nuanced and compassionate approach. By understanding how good people become confused about what they should or should not do, we are both warned and strengthened. Her chapters on money, sex, and power contain some of the most insightful discussions of these complex issues that I have ever seen.

Judy Harrow, excerpted review in the New Jersey Association for Spiritual, Ethical & Religious Values in Counseling Newsletter

Especially important for the practitioner are Taylor’s chapters on vulnerabilities to unethical behavior and keys to professional ethical behavior.

Brendan Reed, Lac, in Book Review from The Library Letter, Bastyr University

Too often, ethical questions are considered dreary subjects best left to a committee. This book helps us see ethics as integrally related to how we do our work, and to our own personal growth... The Ethics of Caring will be especially valuable for trainee caregivers, supervisors, clients looking for the appropriate therapist, and any professionals who find themselves, as we all do from time to time, out of our depth. Comprehensive and visionary.

Martin Boroson, author of Becoming Me and One Moment

The Ethics of Caring alerts healers to not underestimate… the palpable physical, emotional, and psychic vulnerabilities that come in these states and provides tools for navigating these deep and often confusing relationship elements. Only by understanding their own vulnerabilities can caregivers hope to enter more fully into truly healing relationships with their clients.

Mid-West Book Review

The Ethics of Caring is a state-of-the-art approach to dealing with relationship issues, and in particular, body contact arising in therapy. Her courage will inspire others to tackle issues that break open the boundary between politics and individual experience.

Arnold Mindell, PhD, author of The Quantum Mind and Healing, Working with the Dream Body, and Sitting in the Fire

This is a unique book addressing in an honest and humble way the dangers and pitfalls that all therapists face daily in their practices. It offers a conceptual framework that is widely accepted outside our culture, but has not been previously discussed in any standard texts on either ethics or therapeutic interpersonal dynamics.

Robert R. Newport, MD

Meet your Course Instructors, Contributors, & Peer Reviewers:

Kylea Taylor, MS, LMFT

Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist

InnerEthics®

Extra Info

Online platform access: 1 year.
After 1 year, renew your account for an additional year by purchasing any of our on-demand courses. All previously purchased courses will be accessible in your dashboard.
100% student satisfaction or money-back guarantee.
For the best experience, we recommend taking the course on a tablet or computer.
Course FAQ can be found here.

Self-paced course includes:

Downloadable Course Syllabus
Course materials include:
- A PDF of The Ethics of Caring manuscript for screen reading
- Downloadable Handout: Chart of Professional Vulnerabilities to Ethical Misconduct
Downloadable References & Resources
Discussion forum to engage with other learners and instructors
Knowledge checks
1-year access to our online learning platform
Access to videos from our past speaker series events
Official Psychedelic Support Certificate
Optional 6-hour continuing education (CE) credit for licensed professionals, including psychologists, therapists, social workers, etc.

Choose the Continuing Education (CE) option for:

6 hours of continuing education (CE) credits
CE Certificate for licensed professionals, including psychologists, therapists, nurses, social workers, etc.
See below for more information about continuing education

Certificate Information

Interested in the different certificate options for our courses? Read on to learn more:

Learn more about Completion Certificate

Once you complete the course, you will receive a Psychedelic Support Certificate of Completion. Choose this option if you are not a licensed health provider and do not need continuing education credit for your professional degree.

Learn more about CE Credit Certificate

Once you complete the course, you will receive a Psychedelic Support CE Certificate. Choose this option if you are a licensed health provider seeking continuing education credit for your professional degree.

Be sure to select the CE credit option when purchasing the course.
Upon completion of the course, you will receive a Certificate of Attendance for your credits.
CE credits for psychologists are provided by Psychedelic Support, an APA-approved CE sponsor.
Psychedelic Support is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Psychedelic Support maintains responsibility for this program and its content.
The California Board of Behavioral Sciences accepts CE credits for LCSW, LPCC, LEP, and LMFT license renewal for programs offered by approved sponsors of CE by the American Psychological Association.
LCSW, LPCC, LEP, and LMFTs, and other mental health professionals from states other than California need to check with their state licensing board as to whether or not they accept programs offered by approved sponsors of CE by the American Psychological Association.
FFor questions about receiving your Certificate of Attendance, to request special accommodations, or report a grievance contact Psychedelic Support info@psychedelic.support.