Gender, Sexual and Relationship Diversity in modern therapy

GSRD is a crucial consideration for Psychosexual and Relationship therapists today. Therapists want all service users to feel understood and accepted and many may identify in a number of ways. Although these identities may be accepted, therapists may hold assumptions that haven’t been examined or there will be considerations they aren’t always aware of. In this conference, experts discuss some of the key issues in Gender, Sexual and Relationship Diversity and explore what it means for both therapists and their service users reflecting on their relationship with GSRD.

What is a GSRD Therapist?

Trainer – Dominic Davies

Over the last two decades, a new modality has emerged in mental health. The Gender, Sex and Relationship (GSRD) Therapist is someone who specialises in working with and beyond the LGBTIQA/GSRD communities. Some of these therapists work exclusively with the communities. Others will operate a more mixed practice, but almost all will need to have undergone additional training beyond their initial training. This opening presentation will outline what I, as one of the pioneers of this modality, consider to be some of the core requirements of the GSRD Therapist.

The affirmative exploration of sexuality: addressing the shame for optimum self-discovery and healing

Trainer – Silva Neves

Affirmative exploration is one of the basic principles of psychosexual and relationship therapy as it is with general psychotherapy. However, one of the biggest blocks within affirmative exploration that therapists and clients sometimes struggle to detect is shame.

Silva will explain how shame presents itself in specific ways in the exploration of a range of sexual orientations. When therapists can identify the insidious shame (of both the client and therapist), there is an opportunity to address it psychotherapeutically, making the affirmative exploration not only a space of self-discovery for the client, but one of healing too.

A trauma-sensitive approach to working across relationship diversity

Trainer – Meg-John Barker

This session explores how relationship difficulties can usefully be located at the nexus of cultural and developmental trauma. We examine how both cultural relationship norms, and lack of holding and hearing during our upbringings, tends to us overburdening romantic relationships, in particular, with a kind of cruel optimism, often with tragic consequences in terms of non-consensual dynamics, unbearable conflicts, and violent ruptures. We consider the possibilities that relationship diversity can open up in this area, as well as the implications for practitioners working with clients who will be diverse in both relational styles and trauma patterns.

What do psychologists ‘do’ in Gender identity Clinics?

Trainer – Igi Moon

Within Gender Identity Clinics (GIC’s) the role of clinical and counselling psychologists working with transgender clients is particularly important, offering psychological assessment, formulation and intervention as well as assessing readiness for medical interventions such as surgery and hormone treatment. How transgender clients experience psychological input is also highly relevant after an NHS listening exercise with people within the transgender communities and NHS staff in 2013-14 found inequalities existed, specifically about the role of psychology. The trans community felt that “psychologists have too much power around decisions of people within the trans community, both medically and legally”. To date there has been no audit of the role of psychology within GIC’s or about the experiences of those receiving psychological services. In effect, there has been nothing to show what it is psychologists ‘do’ in the services. This study aimed to address this gap.

Queer Relationships and Queer Therapy

Trainer – Amanda Middleton

Relationship therapy that serves the needs of LGBTQIA people requires a queering of our therapy practices and our ideas about what relationships are and can be. Sex, love and gender are all bound to cisnormative and heteronormative assumptions that template our interactions, especially our intimacies. This session will consider how we might use ideas from queer theory, narrative therapy, and post-modern therapies to offer relationship therapy that is relevant to current LGBTQIA life/lives. This includes exploring core theories about gender and sexuality shape our relationships, and in turn our therapies. As well as how we might utilise our ‘use of self’ practices as resources when working alongside queer couples, families and other polyphonic relationships.

About the Speakers