The Loneliness Epidemic: How to Support Clients Who Feel Unseen, Unheard, & Devalued

Course overview

Are you unintentionally causing harm to your LGBTQ clients with well-meaning but misguided approaches? Encouraging them to disclose their sexual identity without a nuanced understanding can lead to unintended trauma. I've been there early in my career, I made the mistake of pushing clients to declare their sexual orientation without the proper sensitivity. In this presentation, Dr. Joe Kort will provide you with the essential tools and current insights necessary for effectively counseling lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning clients, as well as couples, in this ever-evolving landscape. Learn targeted strategies to address the unique challenges your clients might be encountering, including issues of self-acceptance, internalized homophobia, non-heteronormative sexual behaviors, trauma arising from LGBTQ experiences, and the intricate process of coming out. The United States Surgeon General has referred to loneliness as a silent epidemic, affecting close to 50% of the US population and negatively impacting people's mental and physical health. In fact, in the US, more than 25% of emergency room visits are said to be related to loneliness. Loneliness does not refer to being physically alone in a particular environment. Rather, loneliness is related to feeling alone in our hearts - it is the feeling of being emotionally disconnected from others. As human beings, we all know how devastating the effects of loneliness on mental health can be. And as mental health professionals, we've seen clients in the throes of this painful emotion. We've all had a client who enters sessions closed-off and unreachable no matter how hard we try to break through. When clients are combating feelings of loneliness (and often, shame), sharing intimate details about these painful experiences with a stranger can feel impossible. Many clients have simply never learned the vocabulary to describe their emotions and explain what they're going through. In this presentation, Dr. Janina Scarlet will focus on breaking down loneliness into its subcomponents -feeling unseen, unheard, and devalued, as well as offer practical steps clinicians can implement to help their clients to identify feelings of loneliness, reduce the stigma they may be carrying about experiencing this universal emotion, and learn ways to cultivate their feelings of belonging.