Accepting Gender: An ACT model for Self-Acceptance

This event will be recorded for all those who are registered on the day. Recording is available for three weeks. Please note that all registrations have to be paid in full before the event takes place - otherwise you will miss out on receiving the Zoom link. 

For many clients, gender exploration is loaded with all kinds of emotions, from excited curiosity, to anxious doubt, to self-hatred, to even a sense of grief and loss. Some may even suppress their feelings with avoidance tactics reinforced by internalized transphobia. So how can mental health practitioners help clients accept themselves when external oppression generates internal resistance? By unifying Affirmative Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), we can provide a gentle route to self-awareness, creating room for emotional understanding, self-exploration, and ultimately? Self-acceptance. In this course, we will zoom in on the nature of acceptance, to understand and troubleshoot the obstacles gender-diverse people contend with during their growth process.  

Learning Objectives:

• Participants will review the principles of Affirmative Therapy and ACT’s Hexaflex Model
• Participants will learn about the models of Transgender Identity Development
• Participants will be introduced to a new Hexaflex Model of Self-Acceptance
• Participants will conceptualize how to apply ACT techniques with case examples.
• Participants will have the opportunity to ask specific questions pertaining to a gender-affirmative ACT approach.

PRESENTER: ALEX STITT

Alex Stitt, LMHC, is a psychotherapist, ally trainer, and LGBTQ+ advocate on the Big Island of Hawai’i. They are genderfluid and use they/them pronouns. As a non-binary person, they incorporate Affirmative Therapy and Queer Theory into their practice to empower their LGBTQ+ clients. Alex’s peer-reviewed articles in the American Counseling Association’s (ACA) Journal of LGBTQ Issues in Counseling were the first to apply Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to transgender and non-binary mental health and social well-being. Alex is the author of ACT For Gender Identity: The Comprehensive Guide, and Accepting Gender: An ACT Workbook for Trans and Non-binary People. They also maintain the Queer Counselor blog on Psychology Today and continue to write for Counseling Schools.