Monthly Archives: January 2019

A career-changing point: Summer School 2015

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At the beginning of 2015, I had started to look for a course on Gender, Sexuality and Relationship Diversities (GSRD) as this material was not covered in my three-years Foundation Degree in Psychodynamic Counselling and CBT (FD) with a degree level. I found oon the internet Pink Therapy and its courses. I identified myself with the program. I thought it was a bit expensive for my student pocket but I could afford it if I save for the next six months to pay for it. I spoke proudly to my peers about the Summer School as it would be my next career move.

By July 2015, I had finished the FD and I felt fresh and empowered to start a new endeavour. The next career move would be specialising in what was more important for me and I felt not only my personal needs for a tailored LGBTIQ+ psychotherapy but also to work with my clients.

I read with enthusiasm the pre-reading texts and I found in them part of myself which I was still figuring out. I was taken by surprise by the structure of the course.  I was expecting a lecture/slide structure which I could hide behind. However, it had an experiential part that freaked me out me out. I felt out of my comfort zone and challenged when we had our experiential exercises. My defence mechanisms started to act out in such a way that I resisted in accepting the process. I wanted to rebel against it but I allowed myself to be challenged. I did not give up. 

I met a bunch of lovely people at the Summer School and each one of us brought something unique to shape our cohort. We were six people from Italy, Ireland, New Zealand, England, Spain and Brazil. We were avid to learn more about ourselves and the others. We formed a nice bond. It was not only the learning but also the experience of friendship which we formed. We met our trainers with enthusiasm but I would like to highlight the kindness and dedication of Olivier Cormier-Otaño and Pamela Gawler-Wright who had just come back from her honeymoon. Since then, I have more contact with Dominic who has also inspired me.

I left the Summer School with one aim: find a placement where I could practise those theories and have a better understanding of my clients. I applied straight away for placements on GSRD org and I secured a placement in two LGBTI+ organisations. The East London Out Project (ELOP) which is a holistic lesbian and gay centre that offers a range of social, emotional and support services to LGBT communities, and our core services include counselling and young people’s services and the Albany Trust which is one of the few specialist counselling and psychotherapy services based within South London that provides high quality professional support around gender, sexuality and relationship issues. 

I have recently finished an MSc in Psychodynamic Counselling and Psychotherapy which had a psychosocial focus and I have used and developed further my knowledge acquired at the Summer School.  I have been developing my private practice. 

Milton Sattler
Brief Psychodynamic Therapy, Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, CBT & Gender Sexuality and Relationship Diversities (GSRD) Therapy [MBACP Reg.] – Pronouns ‘he’, ‘him’, ‘his’ at Milton Sattler Therapy 
M +44 (0)7936898707  
E Info.sattherapy@gmail.com

Intersecting Identities – March 30th 2019

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Our Annual Spring Conference this year is looking at how identities are not singular, but instead multiple and overlapping.
Intersectionality explores the interconnected nature of social categorisations such as race, gender, faith and disability/health as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of privilege and disadvantage. The term was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 although the dynamics she described, of course, predate this. The majority of the conference will comprise a series of panels which will explore some of the implicit and explicit intersectional issues inside and outside of the therapy room.   .

The conference will look at how both as therapists, and as individuals who ourselves have intersectional identities we navigate the world, and our client relationships. The vital importance of understanding the context within which clients and therapists present, not as a single issue but as complex, multifaceted human beings is woven throughout the day.

Olukemi Amala

We are excited to have Olukemi Amala as our keynote speaker. Olukemi has been a psychotherapist in private practice for over 18 years. She says that “Being a black, queer, disabled wheelchair using feminist”, offers her a view from multiple othered social positions which informs her personal and professional practices. and as you can see from the programme below we will be looking in depth at intersections of race, faith, disability, and gender.

This year we have partnered with OnlineEvents who have agreed to undertake the event administration and who will video the event for their extensive CPD library.  You can book your tickets here for what we hope will be a challenging and ground breaking day..  We are using our usual venue – Resources for London, which is very close to Holloway Road Tube and is fully accessible.

The conference is open to counsellors and psychotherapists, clinical sexologists and psychosexual therapists, counselling and clinical psychologists, and those trained in somatic sexological bodywork and sex coaches.

Programme 
09.00       Registration
09.30       Welcome and Announcements – Dominic Davies CEO Pink Therapy
10.00       Keynote: Intersectionality: Olukemi Amala
10.30       Q&A/Discussion
10.45       Coffee
11:15       Panel: Intersections of Faith 
                Kathy Spooner Chair Association of Christian Counsellors
                Khakan Qureshi  Birmingham South Asians LGBT
                Joel Korn              Judaism
12.15      Panel: Intersections of Disability and Health/Wellness
                Rich Knight                
                Lou Futcher
                Liz Day
13.15       Lunch
14.15       Panel: Intersections of Race & Ethnicity
                Zayna Ratty
                Sabah Choudrey
                Joel Simpson
15.15       Break
15:45       Panel: Intersections of Gender            
                MJ Barker                
                Ellis Johnson
                Leah Davidson
16.45       Conference Closing – and feedback 
17.00       End

Click here to book your tickets for the conference, via Eventbrite. There is an early bird discount until 31 January, when the tickets will rise from £120 to £140.

For those not familiar with Intersectional approaches, here is a great cartoon! 

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Pink Therapy is (almost) Global

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When you see the reach of Pink Therapy, we are almost global. This map shows the location of people who have either attended our Summer School or engaged in a deeper year or two-year-long training programme.

I was in Warsaw last November. Over the three days, I was there, I had a significant epiphany about the profound impact the International Summer Schools we used to run has had on many people’s lives.

Class of 2012

The International Summer School was a five-day not-for-profit intense training and an idea suggested by our Clinical Associate Olivier Cormier-Otaño when he was involved in Pink Therapy’s administration. Olivier was a co-facilitator on each of the events and indeed, along with fellow Clinical Associate, Pamela Gawler-Wright (graduate of the class of 2012), took on the major facilitation roles of the School from 2013-2016 when I decided to launch a more substantive online training which itself has a week-long residential component.

The night I arrived in Warsaw, I had dinner with Dr Daniel Bąk (Daniel attended the second of our Summer Schools in 2011) he is a Gestalt psychologist and involved internationally with other LGBTQ+ Gestalt psychologists and along with my other dinner companion Dr Bartosz Grabski they are co-editors of the first Polish textbook on LGBT psychology. Bartosz attended the Summer School in 2014. He is a consultant psychiatrist and recently became a fellow of the European Society for Sexual Medicine. Bartosz’s primary area of particular interest is in working with trans people in Krakow. He also wrote the Mental Health modules for our online teaching programme.

Graduates of the first European Sexual Diversity Training
Warsaw, November 2018

I was in Warsaw to deliver a pioneering new training – the European Sexual Diversity Training (ESDT) – a three-day intensive course to help psychologists and clinical sexologists understand more about the sexual difficulties of gender, sexuality and relationship diverse populations. It’s a course that Bartosz, I and Dr Agata Loewe co-conceived and wrote. Agata is a graduate of the Class of 2013 and works as a psychologist, clinical sexologist, and she co-founded the Sex Positive Institute in Warsaw. The ESDT was one of my proudest achievements of 2018. To bring together a medically trained sexologist alongside two clinical sexologists working at the cutting edge of alternative and diverse sexualities was an incredible achievement. I think the course is a profoundly life-changing programme with a significant experiential component and the end of course evaluations was incredibly heartening.

One of ESDT participants, Marco Pilia, had travelled from London where he has a private practice and works for a Mental Health charity. Marco is also graduate of the class of 2013 and has gone onto pioneer the development of GSRD therapy for counsellors and hypnotherapists in Rome and is currently putting together a Master’s programme, the first of it’s kind in the world.

Memorandum of Understanding
Version 2

On the second morning in Warsaw, I received an email from Anita Furlong (graduate of the class of 2012). Anita brought a variety of Pink Therapy faculty over to Dublin to deliver some training locally and has subsequently gone on to provide a fair amount of training herself. Anita is currently holding the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (IACP) to account and ‘encouraging’ them to adopt the recently updated Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy. This document has been signed by virtually all the leading British Psy/Therapy bodies

Earlier in the Summer, I had the pleasure of travelling to Edinburgh at the invitation of Jo Russell (class of 2013) who has now just graduated from our Diploma programme and joined the Faculty as one of our Clinical Case Discussion tutors (alongside, Daniel, Agata and Olivier). Jo had invited me to deliver a workshop for the ‘Rainbow Therapists’ a group she has set up for people north of the border. They will be hosting their first National Conference in May 2019.

One of the other participants in Warsaw is the partner of Aleksi Jalava (Class of 2013), and you can read about how his career has developed here. Aleksi was the first of our graduates to respond to my invitation to share their lives since the Summer School with us and an enthusiastic supporter of Pink Therapy, having travelled from Finland for many of our training courses and conferences.

More blogs will be forthcoming from other Summer School Graduates.

When I think about what has been so profoundly inspiring about the International Summer Schools, I believe is the opportunity to share our life stories in a safe space where the whole person can be present, where the majority of the people attending identify as GSRD. Also the opportunity to meet and learn from people across the globe and who remain in touch with each other as part of an international support network is another important factor. Indeed, I’ve harnessed some of this incredible knowledge and energy by having some of the graduates join the faculty of our international online training courses.

Dominic Davies
CEO – Pink Therapy
January 1st 2019