Seeing The Blindspots - Exploring How You Think About and Experience Gender Diversity 

We are all on a gender journey, whether we are aware of it or not.  Recognizing our experiences and cultural narratives around gender helps us understand how we think about gender diversity and better understand the influences of our own gender privilege and marginalization. 
 
In this training, Dr. Shawn V Giammattei will help you navigate an experiential personal journey involving the key person-of-the-therapist exploration that is necessary for gender affirmative work. The exercises in this training will help you unpack and deconstruct your own gender identity, gender development, and cultural narratives around gender and uncover potential areas of privilege you may hold.

When you explore these constructs for yourself, you come to an understanding around gender and sexuality that makes it much more difficult to treat gender diverse people like the “other,” and helps you meet your transgender & nonbinary clients and their families in a socioculturally attuned and collaborative way. You will walk away from this training with a better understanding not only of yourself, but also of the experience of your gender diverse clients and the impact of the questions you ask.

Shawn V. Giammattei, PhD is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Northern California and the founder and director of the Gender Health Training Institute and the TransFamily Alliance. He has a doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology and has over 20 years of experience working with individuals, couples, and families around a wide variety of issues.  He specializes in working with LGBTQ couples and families with a particular focus on the specific issues that arise for transgender/gender expansive (TGE) couples and TGE youth and their families.
 
Dr. Giammattei is certified by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health as a gender specialist, mentor, and is on faculty for their Global Education Initiative. He is an affiliated researcher, adjunct professor, and past Coordinator of Training for the Rockway Institute: A national center for LGBT psychology research, education, and public policy, at the California School of Professional Psychology at Alliant International University. He co-created the Rockway Certificate in LGBT Human Services, which includes the first semester long graduate course in transgender mental health and currently teaches graduate level courses in LGBT psychology, transgender mental health, and couples & family therapy. He is a research consultant to Kaiser Permanente, Northern California and Emory University regarding their NIH and PCORI funded studies looking at health outcomes of transgender patients. He is the past president and current council member of the Association of Family Therapists of Northern California; past vice-president and board member of the American Family Therapy Academy; and a founding member of Mind the Gap, an organization affiliated with the University of California, Beniof, Child and Adolescent Gender Center focused on the needs of transgender youth and their families. He is also and the author of several articles and book chapters on gender, sexuality and family work.