MEETING AGENDA:
8:30-9 a.m. - Networking and Registration
9 a.m. - Announcements and Introductions
9:30 - 10:30 a.m. - Speaker
SPEAKER: Judith Moyer, LMHC, CAP
TOPIC: Counseling Transgender People
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
1. Attendees will be able to identify the challenges of working with a transgender client. What is the therapist role?
2. Attendees will be introduce to the Theory of Psychotherapy I found to be most helpful in counseling a transgender client.
3. Attendees will be introduced to the tasks of the mental health professional according to the applicable standard of care.
4. Attendees will identify the States of Emergence that a transgender client experiences.
Often times clients feel shame and struggle with self-hatred when dealing with feelings of gender dysphoria or gender variance. They are often depressed and not functioning well in society or in the workplace. Relationships are difficult. Sometimes they engage in dangerous or unhealthy behaviors. Some have been bullied all their life and often ostracized from their families. The clinician must create a “holding environment” (Winnicott, D.W. (1957). Mother and child). It is our job as clinicians to provide a safe harbor for these clients to be able to relax and trust us enough that they can tell their story without shame and/or guilt and without feeling as if they are mentally ill. It is a journey we are both on together. We develop a relationship with the client that is extremely important.
Judith is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and Certified Addictions Professional. Prior to entering the counseling profession, Judith was a successful piano teacher for 13 years in Allentown, PA. In 1983 she was a co-founder of the Community Music School, a not for profit Music School which continues to this date to provide music lessons to children of low socio-economic backgrounds for a nominal fee.
She started her career as an Addiction Counselor in 1988, working in the Breaking Free Program at Orlando General Hospital where she did all the group therapy work for clients who were enrolled in the Continuing Care Program. She worked there for five years. She had the opportunity of studying at Rutgers University in their Summer School of Alcohol Studies which is world renown. She became certified as an addiction counselor in 1989 and later went back to school for her Masters in Counseling at Rollins in 1990. She became licensed in 1998. She has worked in diversified settings including: schools, psychiatric hospitals, jail, outpatient partial hospitalization programs, intensive outpatient substance abuse program, outpatient clinic working with children and families and a long term residential treatment facility for adolescent boys in crisis. In 1998 she opened her Private Practice and has been practicing ever since. Her office is in Maitland.
MEETING LOCATION:
