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Love is Medicine Keynote with Monique Gray Smith
In this dynamic and inspiring session, Monique will share her personal journey, offer readings from her various books and provide stories of hope and resilience.
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Integrating Geek Culture Into Your Practice with Sawah Danniels
An interactive discussion on how we can harness elements of geek culture to connect with our clients and build supportive structures for increasing their capacity.
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Becoming Whole: Healing Our Attachment Disruptions through Radical Resilience with Tera Greene
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could find a way to end the bounce-back cycle of resilience and begin the process of spiralling upwards?
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Bridging the Gaps in Accessing Remote Service Provisions for 2SLGBTQ+ Older Adults during the Global Pandemic with LeZlie Lee Kam and Stephanie Jonsson
This workshop will focus on the barriers 2SLGBTQ+ Canadian’s experience when accessing remote service provisions in Ontario. The global pandemic has forced Canadians to be more reliant on virtual spaces to host meetings, social gatherings, and access medical services. Access to digital spaces is a basic human necessity these days, just like water and hydro are a basic need. Without this access individuals become disconnected from their communities, pushing them further into isolation and increasing feelings of loneliness.
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Beyond Gender Neutral Bathrooms: Serving Our Trans Clients with Care and Competency
Many helping organizations and professionals that claim to be LGBT+ -friendly are really only LGB-friendly. The folks who make up the T part of the acronym (our trans, non-binary, and other non-cisgender clients – abbreviated to “trans” going forward) are often overlooked. Ironically, these are some of the folks who need our support most, as they face disproportionate marginalization and violence, leading to negative mental health outcomes.
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Considerations for Coaching and Counselling for Consensual Non-Monogamy with Mel Cassidy
Open relationships? Polyamory? Relationship Anarchy? For many people, consensual non monogamy promises freedom to love who you want, when you want, in whatever way feels authentic for everyone in the relationship. But what's the reality? In this session we will cover an overview of what consensual non-monogamous relationships can include, dispel misconceptions, explore considerations for creating poly-affirming care, and discover tools for understanding how to engage in trauma-informed ways with those exploring open relationships.
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Silent Violence: Barriers to Recognition and Reduction of Same Sex Intimate Partner Violence with Kim McCullough
Despite rates of violence comparable to heterosexual intimate partner relationships, Same Sex Intimate Partner Violence (SSIPV) remains under-studied and under-discussed. Participants in this workshop will first discuss standard terms used to describe SSIPV and review reported rates of occurrence. Next, participants will explore themes related to the lack of research on and discussion of SSIPV, including fear of stigmatization, the influence of masculine and feminine stereotypes, feminist resistance, and fear of reporting SSIPV to authorities. Finally, participants will discuss more broadly the mental health impact of SSIPV within the LGBTQ2+ community.
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Queer Wellbeing and the Psychedelic Renaissance with Carmen Ostrander
Psychedelics and entheogens are garnering unprecedented attention and momentum. As above ground speculation, underground knowledge and traditional wisdom jostle for position in this emerging field, what promise do these compounds hold for disrupting entrenched approaches to mental health and wellness for us and other marginalised communities?
Can we challenge the supremacy of current pharmaceutical treatments and pathologising therapies through our own practices of collective care, radical imagining, DIY medicating and justice doing?
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Queerness, Religion, and Spirituality: Navigating Difficult Intersections with Hannah Maitland
This workshop will be an opportunity to explore best practices and share resources for discussing the intersections of queerness and faith. Many 2SLGBTQ+ people have experienced trauma and rejection from their faith communities, and this can lead to significant mental health consequences. At the same time, many queer people still feel strong connections to certain faith traditions but struggle to find either worship or queer communities that are open to affirming the co-existence of queerness, religion, and spirituality.
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Bringing You (Yes, YOU! The Counsellor!) Into the Session with Tia Larkin
Traditional forms of theoretical based psychotherapy (as is understood through a European, settler lens) has been developed through the 20th century with an emotional chasm required between professional and patient. With the aid of Carl Rogers who recognized that the relationship between the people in the room was paramount to client wellness and ability to engage in the process, modern therapy includes much more immediacy, transparency, and authenticity. Therapists often bring their own history with mental health challenges and choose to work with clients with whom they have similar experiences, which more and more clients are beginning to appreciate (i.e., queer counsellors for queer clients).
