New Data on How the 2024 Election Has Affected LGBTQ Utahns' Mental Health
The 2024 election has had profound and measurable effects on the mental health and daily lives of LGBTQ individuals and their families — and clinicians are on the front lines of supporting people still struggling to adjust to a changed and newly hostile world. This one-hour live training presents brand new data from a national survey assessing how LGBTQ individuals and their family members have been affected by the upheaval of the 2024 election, offering clinicians timely, evidence-based insight into what their clients may be experiencing and what actually helps.
Fix My Teen… But Keep Me in the Loop
This training provides a practical introduction to sex therapy with teens, focusing on how to navigate the often-complex triangle between therapist, parent, and adolescent. Participants will explore how to balance confidentiality and consent, establish trust with teens, and communicate effectively with caregivers who may have strong fears or expectations. Attendees will leave with concrete frameworks, phrases, and strategies they can immediately apply in clinical work.
Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy When Porn Is the Presenting Concern, part 2
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT, pronounced “act”) is a well-established therapeutic modality for a variety of presenting concerns. Recent research has shown promising results for the application of ACT when the presenting concern in individual psychotherapy is distress about a client’s viewing of sexual media and/or masturbation. This training provides a basic primer on ACT and its application for clients presenting with distress about sexual media use and/or masturbation.
Listening for Soul in Symptoms of Menstrual-Sexual Experience: A Depth Psychological Approach to Practicing Bodysoul Awareness with Clients, Part 1
This training offers a systemic, bodysoul-centered approach to understanding and working with menstrually related experience. Participants will be introduced to a depth psychological lens and explore why menstrual content matters as part of female-bodied embodiment and psycho-sexual-spiritual individuation. Extending the concept of sexual panics to include menstrual panic, the training examines archetypes of cultural bias around menstrual experience and offers ways to identify and work with this bias personally and with clients.
When Worry Takes Over: Supporting Clients with Perinatal Anxiety
This training equips clinical mental health providers with a clear understanding of the clinical presentation of perinatal anxiety and foundational strategies for supporting clients through it. Participants will explore evidence-based approaches to assessment, case conceptualization, and treatment, with the goal of increasing attendees' confidence, knowledge, and competence in identifying, assessing, differentiating, and treating perinatal anxiety. Clinicians will leave with an increased ability to provide competent, compassionate care to individuals during the perinatal period.
Understanding and Working with Racial Trauma, Part 1
Part 1 of this training focuses on defining racial trauma and its impact on mental and physical health. The training is designed to help clinicians better identify diverse experiences of racism-based trauma and stress, understand how this type of trauma may manifest in individuals and communities, and gain insight into its impact on both mental and physical health.
Queering the gender binary: Evidence-based recommendations for gender-affirming care with youth and their families
This event is hosted by The LGBTQ Therapist's Guild, not The Healing Group Institute.
A Guild membership is required to attend any Guild event. Sign up here: https://www.lgbtqtherapists.com/
Trick or Treat: What Couples Reveal (and Conceal) in Early Sessions
This training gives new and experienced clinicians a practical framework for the earliest stages of couples work: assessment, rapport-building, and uncovering the relational history that shapes what's happening in the room today. Participants will learn how to gather relational history and identify presenting concerns within the first three sessions, while building a therapeutic alliance with both partners at once.
Demonstrate Clinical Curiosity and Competence When Working with Partners Impacted by Out-of-Control Sexual Behavior, part 2
The purpose of this training is to provide healthcare professionals with a dynamic, real-time experience to learn about sexual health conversations by actively engaging in them. This interactive approach enhances providers' comfort and proficiency in understanding what sexual health conversations are, how to initiate them, and how to lead these discussions with curiosity, empathy, and confidence, building skills to create inclusive, client-centered spaces for meaningful dialogue about sexual health.
How Are YOU Doing? The Effects of the 2024 Election on Health Providers Working with the LGBTQ Community
Much of the conversation about the mental health effects of the 2024 election has focused on LGBTQ clients — but what about the providers supporting them? This one-hour live training turns the lens toward the clinicians themselves, presenting findings from the only existing national study to assess how the 2024 election has affected health providers working with LGBTQ individuals and their families, including providers of gender-affirming care.
Drawing from this timely research, Dr. Diamond will explore the double burden facing many providers right now: managing significant changes in their own mental health since the election while simultaneously holding space for the distress of LGBTQ clients. The data reveal elevated rates of burnout among health providers in this space — and also point toward meaningful protective strategies. Social support and connection emerge as key moderating factors, both in overall life and specifically within the workplace, offering clinicians concrete and actionable pathways toward greater resilience and sustainability.
Suicide Risk Prevention
This training provides licensed mental health clinicians with current, evidence-based frameworks for suicide risk assessment, intervention, and clinical documentation. The session covers the epidemiology of suicidal behavior and structured assessment practice using validated instruments, including the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS), the Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality (CAMS) Suicide Status Form, and the SAFE-T protocol.
Participants will leave with practical, evidence-based tools for assessing and documenting suicide risk in a way that supports both clinical care and legal defensibility.
Expanding the Clinical Lens with Perinatal Loss Clients: Postpartum Care, Matrescence, and Moral Injury
Perinatal loss is frequently conceptualized through the lenses of grief and trauma. While these frameworks are foundational, they often do not fully encompass the clinical complexities clients experience following pregnancy or infant loss. This presentation expands clinicians’ conceptualization of perinatal loss by examining three often-overlooked considerations: postpartum care, matrescence, and moral injury. Participants will examine how these considerations can inform assessment, case conceptualization, and treatment planning. The primary goal of this training is for attendees to gain an expanded framework for providing comprehensive, evidence-informed care to clients experiencing perinatal loss.
Listening for Soul in Symptoms of Menstrual-Sexual Experience: A Depth Psychological Approach to Practicing Bodysoul Awareness with Clients, Part 2
This training offers a systemic, bodysoul-centered approach to understanding and working with menstrually related experience. Participants will be introduced to a depth psychological lens and explore why menstrual content matters as part of female-bodied embodiment and psycho-sexual-spiritual individuation. Extending the concept of sexual panics to include menstrual panic, the training examines archetypes of cultural bias around menstrual experience and offers ways to identify and work with this bias personally and with clients.
Therapeutic Adaptations for Aphantasia
This training introduces clinicians to aphantasia, a neurocognitive difference marked by little or no voluntary mental imagery, and how it can impact clients in therapy. Participants will review current scientific understanding of the aphantasic spectrum and explore how common therapeutic techniques such as guided imagery, visualization exercises, and imagery-based trauma processing may unintentionally exclude or frustrate clients who experience little or no mental imagery.
Through lecture, live demonstration, and structured role-play, attendees will build skills to assess clients for aphantasia and identify specific, practical adaptations to their clinical approach that support improved therapeutic outcomes for clients on the aphantasic spectrum.
Rapport Building Skills
The therapeutic relationship is one of the strongest predictors of positive treatment outcomes, making rapport-building an essential clinical skill for therapists at every stage of their careers. This training explores practical, evidence-informed strategies for establishing trust, fostering safety, and developing authentic therapeutic relationships with clients from diverse backgrounds. Participants will examine the foundational elements of rapport, common barriers that can interfere with connection, and techniques for strengthening engagement throughout the therapeutic process. Attendees will leave with practical tools they can immediately apply in their clinical work to enhance the quality and effectiveness of the therapeutic alliance.
Demonstrate Clinical Curiosity and Competence When Working with Partners Impacted by Out-of-Control Sexual Behavior, part 3
The purpose of this training is to provide healthcare professionals with a dynamic, real-time experience to learn about sexual health conversations by actively engaging in them. This interactive approach enhances providers' comfort and proficiency in understanding what sexual health conversations are, how to initiate them, and how to lead these discussions with curiosity, empathy, and confidence, building skills to create inclusive, client-centered spaces for meaningful dialogue about sexual health.
We’re Not Okay: New Data on post-election declines in mental health among LGBTQIA+ individuals, their family members, and their health care providers
This event is hosted by The LGBTQ Therapist's Guild, not The Healing Group Institute.
A Guild membership is required to attend any Guild event. Sign up here: https://www.lgbtqtherapists.com/
First 3 Sessions Series for Spooky Season: Adolescents
This training provides a practical introduction to sex therapy with teens, with a focus on the first three sessions and how to structure them. The session explores how to navigate the often-complex triangle between therapist, parent, and adolescent while building rapport from the outset. Attendees will learn how to balance confidentiality and consent, establish trust with teens, and communicate effectively with caregivers who may have strong fears or expectations. The training addresses parental engagement, topics that may arise in session, confidentiality boundaries, and managing important disclosures from parents and teens alike. Participants will leave with concrete frameworks, phrases, and strategies they can immediately apply in their intake practices.
State of the Science: Neurodiversity and Gender Diversity
Many clinicians have noticed — or fielded questions from clients about — higher rates of neurodiversity in gender diverse populations. These perceptions are accurate. We now have more reliable evidence than ever before showing significant associations between neurodiversity and gender diversity, and this training brings clinicians up to speed on what the research actually shows, what remains unknown, and what it means for clinical practice.
Sexual Health Series for Mental Health Professionals: Case Studies
This live case consultation session brings together participants from the Sexual Health Series for Mental Health Professionals to apply what they have learned to real clinical material. Led by Douglas Braun-Harvey, the session invites attendees to bring a case involving out-of-control sexual behavior, sex/drug-linked behavior, or the partner experience of these presentations for group discussion. Through guided case review, participants will practice translating sexual health principles into clinical formulation and intervention planning, with direct feedback from an expert in the field.
Artificial Intelligence: Friend or Foe: The impact of AI on Mental Health Care
This event is hosted by The LGBTQ Therapist's Guild, not The Healing Group Institute.
A Guild membership is required to attend any Guild event. Sign up here: https://www.lgbtqtherapists.com/
State of the Science: Do We Have Sexual Orientations, or Sexual Configurations?
Most of us are familiar with sexual orientation as a predisposition toward a particular gender — but a growing body of research suggests this framework captures only a fraction of the complexity of human sexuality. This one-hour live training introduces Sexual Configurations Theory, a compelling new framework proposed by acclaimed scholar Sari van Anders that invites clinicians and clients alike to move beyond the simplistic model of sexual orientation toward a richer, more nuanced understanding of sexual desire.
Chronic Pain and LGBTQ+ Health: Addressing Disparities and Promoting Well-being
This event is hosted by The LGBTQ Therapist's Guild, not The Healing Group Institute.
A Guild membership is required to attend any Guild event. Sign up here: https://www.lgbtqtherapists.com/
Best practices in clinical supervision with LGBTQ+ supervisees
This event is hosted by The LGBTQ Therapist's Guild, not The Healing Group Institute.
A Guild membership is required to attend any Guild event. Sign up here: https://www.lgbtqtherapists.com/
Legislative and Legal Update
This event is hosted by The LGBTQ Therapist's Guild, not The Healing Group Institute.
A Guild membership is required to attend any Guild event. Sign up here: https://www.lgbtqtherapists.com/
Working with Intersex Individuals
This event is hosted by The LGBTQ Therapist's Guild, not The Healing Group Institute.
A Guild membership is required to attend any Guild event. Sign up here: https://www.lgbtqtherapists.com/
Family Acceptance Project
This event is hosted by The LGBTQ Therapist's Guild, not The Healing Group Institute.
A Guild membership is required to attend any Guild event. Sign up here: https://www.lgbtqtherapists.com/
Conversion Therapy Survivor Network
This event is hosted by The LGBTQ Therapist's Guild, not The Healing Group Institute.
A Guild membership is required to attend any Guild event. Sign up here: https://www.lgbtqtherapists.com/
"Yes, but...,” "I tried that, and it didn't work,” and "I hate that idea”: Working Through Therapeutic Impasses
This training validates and demystifies one of the most frustrating and isolating experiences in advanced clinical practice: the stuck treatment dynamic. Clinicians regularly encounter the “empty clinical hour”—sessions where a client consistently attends but claims to have nothing to talk about, while systematically dismantling every clinical intervention, resource, or solution offered. This training moves beyond basic theories of client resistance to examine the relational, linguistic, and systemic dynamics underlying therapeutic impasses.
Participants will review current empirical research on treatment non-response, identify therapist missteps that can inadvertently fuel a rejection cycle, and examine the countertransference loops that contribute to clinical burnout. Attendees will leave with practical, experiential, and structural tools to confidently shift entrenched patterns, dissolve unproductive power struggles, and transform paralyzing silence into a meaningful, active therapeutic process.
Demonstrate Clinical Curiosity and Competence When Working with Partners Impacted by Out-of-Control Sexual Behavior, part 1
The purpose of this training is to provide healthcare professionals with a dynamic, real-time experience to learn about sexual health conversations by actively engaging in them. This interactive approach enhances providers' comfort and proficiency in understanding what sexual health conversations are, how to initiate them, and how to lead these discussions with curiosity, empathy, and confidence, building skills to create inclusive, client-centered spaces for meaningful dialogue about sexual health.
Perinatal OCD Treatment — Options Other Than ERP
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is the preferred, evidence-based treatment for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), but not every clinician working with perinatal clients is ERP-trained. This training explores what providers can do when ERP is not an option in the room. Attendees will learn what ERP is and why it remains the gold standard, review alternative modalities and interventions that can be used with clients experiencing OCD, and identify stabilizing supports and strategies for reducing maintaining factors in the perinatal population.
Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy When Porn Is the Presenting Concern, part 1
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT, pronounced “act”) is a well-established therapeutic modality for a variety of presenting concerns. Recent research has shown promising results for the application of ACT when the presenting concern in individual psychotherapy is distress about a client’s viewing of sexual media and/or masturbation. This training provides a basic primer on ACT and its application for clients presenting with distress about sexual media use and/or masturbation.
Mental Health Treatment with Individuals Who Sexually Offend
This presentation explores the role of mental health in the treatment and rehabilitation of individuals convicted of sexual offenses. Participants will examine the relationship between common mental health concerns, emotional regulation, cognitive functioning, and offense-specific treatment.
The session highlights how addressing mental health needs can enhance treatment engagement, support healthy coping strategies, and contribute to positive behavioral change and reduced risk of reoffending. Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of state-approved assessment and treatment approaches and the clinical distinctions that inform risk-appropriate care within this specialized population.
Staying Grounded: An Ethics Training Based on the NASW Code of Ethics
This one-hour ethics training gives clinicians a working refresher on the NASW Code of Ethics, with a focus on the areas most likely to come up in day-to-day practice: informed consent and client self-determination, boundaries and dual relationships, confidentiality (including its limits in a digital/telehealth environment), and the professional obligation to engage in self-care. Rather than reviewing the Code section by section, the session uses case examples and current research to help participants apply ethical standards to real situations they're likely to encounter, including emerging questions around technology and AI, and the systemic pressures that make ethical practice harder to sustain.
The State of Current Science on the Biology of Sexual Orientation
"Born that way" — it's a phrase that has shaped public discourse around sexual orientation for decades. But the scientific facts are a lot more complicated, and clinicians who rely on oversimplified explanations risk doing their clients a disservice. This one-hour live training offers a clear, accurate, and clinically empowering review of the current state of science on the biology of sexual orientation — equipping providers to give more honest, nuanced answers to clients who are curious about where their sexuality comes from.
Ethical Non-Monogamy Consultation
Ethical Non-Monogamy Consultation with Kelsey Eisenberg, CSW
From Sexual Trauma to Sexual Health: Healing, Pleasure, and Body Reconnection
This training offers therapists an evidence-based framework for supporting survivors beyond symptom reduction and toward embodied healing, erotic agency, and sexual wellbeing. Drawing on peer-reviewed research, participants will explore the neuroscience of somatic reconnection, consent as a body-based clinical skill, and pleasure-positive interventions including trauma-modified sensate focus, pleasure mapping, and Mindfulness-Based Sex Therapy.
Policing Pleasure: The Impacts of Cultural and Religious Perspectives on Pleasure
How did we learn to distrust pleasure — and what does that distrust cost us and our clients? This one-hour live training examines how Stoic and conservative Christian traditions have shaped cultural attitudes toward pleasure, and what hedonist philosophy offers in response. By questioning how we and our clients understand, control, pursue, and resist pleasure, clinicians can cultivate richer intimacy, deeper self-knowledge, and a more nuanced sense of self in both their personal and professional lives.
Psychedelic Integration
Psychedelic experiences can open powerful doors — but lasting healing comes not from the experience itself, but from how it is understood, processed, and integrated into everyday life. This one-hour live training offers an introductory exploration of the essential role of integration and meaning-making in supporting clients after ketamine and other psychedelic journeys, equipping clinicians with a grounded, trustworthy framework for this emerging area of clinical practice.
"Meh" Teenage Sex Might Have Lasting Effects: A Provocative New Neurodevelopmental Model of Gender Differences in Sex Drive
Why do cisgender women typically report lower sex drive and lower sexual satisfaction than cisgender men — and what does adolescent brain development have to do with it? This one-hour live training introduces a provocative and clinically relevant new model that reframes this long-standing question through a developmental lens, offering fresh insight into the lasting effects of early sexual experience on adult sexuality.
The Intersection of Sexuality and Faith: Purity Culture 101
Purity culture — a movement that gained significant prominence in the 1990s within evangelical and conservative Christian communities — goes far beyond encouraging sexual abstinence before marriage. At its core, it ties a person's inherent worth to their sexual "purity," frames sexual curiosity and exploration as shameful, dangerous, or sinful, and enforces rigid gender roles that shape how individuals understand their bodies, their desires, and their relationships for years to come. For mental health professionals, clients recovering from purity culture present with a distinctive and often complex clinical picture — including deeply internalized sexual shame, religious trauma, sexual dysfunction such as vaginismus, erectile dysfunction, or low desire, and intense distress within intimate partnerships.
You Got Your Peanut Butter in My Chocolate!: Working with Complex Trauma in Relationships, Restoring Connection without Overwhelming the System
This one-hour live webinar equips licensed social workers and mental health clinicians with a neurobiologically informed framework for understanding and intervening in couples conflict. Drawing on current research in autonomic nervous system functioning and relational neuroscience, participants will explore how each partner's physiological stress responses are activated, expressed, and mutually influenced during interpersonal conflict.
Integrate Sexual Health Principles into Clinical Work with Clients Engaging in Sex/Drug-Linked Behaviors, part 3
This live webinar is the third in a three-part training series focused on sex- and drug-linked behaviors, offering healthcare professionals a dynamic, real-time experience in sexual health conversations by actively engaging in them. Drawing from a curriculum successfully implemented and evaluated at Stepping Stone, a substance use treatment program in San Diego, this training supports therapists in developing a foundational understanding of the relationship between substance use and sexual behavior.
Non-Monogamy 101: Safer Sex
Safer sex conversations are essential — and for individuals in non-monogamous relationships, they require a level of nuance, specificity, and practical knowledge that many providers and clients simply haven't been equipped with. This one-hour live training provides concrete sexual health information to help participants develop personal risk profiles, understand strategies for reducing STI transmission, and build practical skills for communicating about sexual health with others.
The 4D Wheel in a Menopause Escape Room
What happens when you combine the 4D Wheel framework with an escape room? A surprisingly powerful educational experience for individuals navigating perimenopause and menopause. This one-hour live training offers clinicians a creative, experiential approach to integrating the 4D Wheel into patient education and clinical practice related to menopause care — expanding applied understanding of this framework through an immersive, innovative educational model.
Don’t Freak Out: Normalizing Diversity in Sexual Interests and Practices (Including Kink)
Many clinicians encounter clients with diverse sexual interests and practices — including kink — yet feel underprepared, uncomfortable, or uncertain about how to respond in ways that are affirming, ethical, and clinically sound. This one-hour live webinar directly addresses the misconceptions, discomfort, and clinical bias that can get in the way of effective therapeutic work with clients who engage in kink or other non-normative sexual practices.
Exploring the Reconciliation and Growth Project Document: Clinical Common Ground for Gender, Sexual, and Faith Diversity, with an emphasis on working with Gender Diversity
IMPORTANT: THIS EVENT IS TAKING PLACE IN THE LGBTQ THERAPIST'S GUILD AND IS NOT HOSTED BY THE HEALING GROUP INSTITUTE.
In order to participate, please sign up for The LGBTQ Therapist’s Guild here: https://www.lgbtqtherapists.com/