Hey everyone.
I am working on my masters in clinical mental health counseling, and I want to be multiculturally sensitive, including regarding the LGBTQ+ community.
I am a straight, cisgender male, and I have only had a handful of gay and trans friends/acquaintances. Multicultural awareness is certainly part of my education, but I don’t believe it is close to enough. I want to hear from communities themselves, not just textbooks.
If you feel comfortable, I would really appreciate your feedback to make me a more effective counselor working with people in your demographic.
How can I best serve you?
What have you wished a past counselor could have understood?
What really pissed you off in a therapy session?
What is the most important thing for me to try to understand?
I hope this is received well. I genuinely want to be able to effectively serve all people.
I maybe got a little carried away in this comment.
TL,DR: lack of privacy, security, communication, and respect
I’m not going to discuss the conservative “therapist” I had. I did eventually get an LGBTQ-friendly therapist.
I discovered that my therapist was typing up her notes on a Windows computer with a keylogger enabled by default, sending the data to Microsoft. The notes were also stored unencrypted on a server accessible by the entire IT department of the clinic.
She didn’t understand the issue. This clearly voids patient-doctor confidentiality, and it destroyed my trust in the clinic.
I’ve experienced another issue while searching for a new therapist.
I found a therapist on the psychology today site that listed a full address. I showed up to make an appointment for a first session just to learn that she doesn’t accept new clients without a phone call or email.
The only reason I had considered her was that she listed a full address, implying that phone and email weren’t needed.
So I would recommend clearly communicating things like this, be privacy-conscious, and respect patient-doctor confidentiality. Without these fundamentals, there is no foundation of trust and respect.
I think the most important thing to understand for trans patients is that everyone’s transition is unique, including the personal story.
So for instance, some trans girls/women say they were always a girl/woman, while others say they became a girl/woman.
It’s important to listen and understand the individual and not get ahead of yourself.
I hope this is helpful, or at least interesting.
I don’t think you got carried away at all in your comment! I appreciate your feedback.
I plan on being trauma-informed and operating through a person-centered lens, because I believe everyone’s story is unique. A counselor I interviewed said “We must have an insatiable curiosity for the individual’s unique story” and I really liked how she put that.
I definitely hear you with the privacy concerns. What I did as an adult caseworker was have my notes coded in a shorthand that wouldn’t make sense to anyone else. I plan on doing this as a counselor (as well as other measures), that way even if my notes were subpoenaed, it would require my testimony. This would allow me to choose what to say in order to advocate for my client, and insulate them from their progress notes being used against them.