Additional Information

• • Target audience

    • This course is intended for psychologists, counselors, social workers, marriage and family therapists, and other mental health and related professionals. 

  • Instruction level - Intermediate

    • It is expected that participants will have basic knowledge of the topic. Less than 25% of the presentation will review knowledge provided in an introductory workshop in this topic area. The remaining time will focus on advanced topics such as new research, specialty topics not typically covered in graduate education, or specific clinical applications. 

  • Recommended Prior Course 

    • Consent as Foundation - Understanding Sexual, Gender & Relationship Diversity

      • This course serves as a foundation for all the courses in this series on GSRD. 

    • If you have taken a course with Dr. Kieran from at any time, you may have most of the basics already.  
      
      

  • Full description

    • Most mental health clinicians would describe themselves as affirming. They do not endorse conversion practices; they try not to pathologize; they believe in client autonomy and human dignity. And yet research consistently documents that clients from sexual, gender, and relational minority communities encounter clinical harm — not primarily at the hands of practitioners who identify as hostile, but at the hands of practitioners who did not know what they did not know, who fell silent when they should have spoken, who allowed unexamined assumptions to shape the care they provided. The problem, in other words, is not that clinicians hold the wrong beliefs. The problem is the widespread assumption that holding the right beliefs is sufficient.

Professional ethics codes across mental health disciplines — APA, ACA, NASW, AAMFT, CAMFT, NAADAC — do not locate affirming care in a clinician’s belief system. They locate it in a clinician’s practice. Affirming care is codified as a competency: a set of professionally definable, professionally evaluable obligations that must be built through training, supervision, consultation, and sustained self-reflection. This workshop takes that claim seriously and makes it actionable.

This workshop occupies the Awareness pillar of the multicultural competence tripartite — the dimension most often skipped, most resistant to continuing education alone, and most consequential for the SGRD clients in any caseload. Where Knowledge asks what clinicians need to learn and Skills asks what they need to practice, Awareness asks what they need to see in themselves. Beginning with the empirical case for affirming care as a clinical necessity (therapeutic alliance research; documented harm in SGRD therapy experiences; minority stress and its service-provider correlates), the workshop then examines two of the most under addressed mechanisms of clinical harm: the ethics of omission — how silence, avoidance, and non-response communicate to SGRD clients — and values leakage across both negative and positive valence, including over-identification, projection of resilience, and assumption of shared experience. Throughout, relevant ethics code standards from all major mental health disciplines are integrated as the evidentiary foundation, not as a backdrop.

The workshop closes with the applied infrastructure of ethical practice: consultation and supervision as professional obligations rather than optional enhancements; the referral decision and its ethical limits; and concrete tools for creating affirming clinical environments. Case-based application across SGRD presentations — including gender identity, sexual orientation, consensual non-monogamy, kink and consensual power exchange, and the ace spectrum — grounds every segment in the realities of clinical work. Participants leave not having been told to believe differently, but having examined what ethical practice actually requires of them — and what it will take to build it.

• • Presenter 

    • Dr. Rachel Anne Kieran (Psy.D.) is a psychologist, writer, and educator, and the founder of StorieBrook Therapy & Consulting, LLC, an affirming therapy practice rooted in justice, community, and cultural humility. Her clinical work focuses on sexual, gender, and relational diversity (including kink and consensual non-monogamy), neurodiversity, fat and disability justice, and clients from non-majority spiritual and pagan paths.

Dr. Kieran’s practice model emphasizes accessible, bespoke collaboration with clients, including sliding-scale options and a community space designed to be welcoming, trauma-aware, and identity-affirming. Through StorieTree Professional Education, she creates continuing education programs for mental health and allied professionals that center ethics, intersectionality, and dismantling systemic barriers to care.

Her current writing projects include a book on finding and crafting mental healthcare for diverse spiritualities, and related work on “rainbow sheep” identities—those who never fully fit either mainstream or countercultural norms. Across her roles as therapist, educator, and author, Dr. Kieran is committed to the belief that affirming care is a right, not a privilege.

• • Learning objectives

    • After completing this workshop, participants will be able to:

      • Identify affirming care as an ethically required clinical competency, grounding this identification in specific standards from at least three mental health ethics codes across disciplines.

      • Describe how clinician silence and omission function as ethical risks in clinical work with SGRD clients, with reference to relevant ethical principles and guidelines.

      • Distinguish personal values from professional ethical obligations as defined in mental health codes of ethics across disciplines, and identify the professional standard governing clinical behavior when the two are in conflict.

      • Identify at least two mechanisms by which personal beliefs and values — across both negative and positive valence — enter the therapeutic relationship without explicit clinician disclosure.

      • Apply consultation and referral standards from relevant professional ethics codes to clinical scenarios involving SGRD populations, including identification of the limits of referral as an ethical response.

      • Articulate the Awareness pillar of the multicultural competence tripartite as a distinct and ongoing ethical practice, differentiating it from Knowledge acquisition and Skills development.
        
        

  • Agenda / structure

    • • Block I — The Claim: Framing the Workshop and Its Argument   (10 min)

      • Block II — The Research Case for Affirming Care   (30 min)

      • Block III — Silence is Not Neutral: The Ethics of Omission   (30 min)

      • Block IV — Ethics as a Learnable Skill: The Awareness Pillar   (25 min)

      • Block V — When Your Beliefs Show Up in the Room   (35 min)

      • Block VI — Consultation, Supervision & Referral as Ethical Infrastructure   (20 min)

      • Block VII — Putting It to Work: Application and Skill Consolidation   (20 min)

      • Block VIII — Synthesis, Resources & Series Overview   (10 min)
        
        

  • CE information

    • • This program has been submitted for approval for CE by the Georgia Psychological Association.  

        • Acceptance of continuing education credit is determined by individual licensing boards. 

          • The Georgia State Board of Examiners of Psychologists accepts GPA-approved CEs for license renewal under Area III for renewal of their licensees. For information on the board requirements in other states, please consult your state licensing rules.

          • The Georgia Board of Professional Counselors, Social Workers, and Marriage & Family Therapists accepts GPA-approved CEs for license renewal as related hours for renewal of their licensees (Rule 135-9-.01(2)(f)(1)).  For information on the board requirements in other states, please consult your state licensing rules.  

      • StorieTree Professional Education has submitted an application for APA Sponsor Approval and is currently in the review process. All StorieTree programs are developed in alignment with the APA Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct and the APA Standards for Continuing Education Sponsors.
        
        

  • Pricing & accessibility notes

    • Standard Price - $90

    • For more information on equity pricing for accessibility, please read the StorieTree Pricing & Equity Policy

    • For more information on StorieTree's ongoing accessibility efforts, please visit our Accessibility page.  

  • Cancellation/refunds - please see the StorieTree Attendance, Participation & Refunds Policy

  • Disclosures - please read the StorieTree Disclosure Policies for more information