Category Archives: Training Issues

APAGS-CSOGD Chair Julia Benjamin reacts to receiving "Proud and Prepared."

APAGS Releases a Brand New Guide for LGBT Graduate Students

“Proud and Prepared: A Guide for LGBT Students Navigating Graduate Training” was printed in limited release last month, and is now available to all members and affiliates of APA for free download!

APAGS-CSOGD Chair Julia Benjamin reacts to receiving "Proud and Prepared."

APAGS-CSOGD Chair Julia Benjamin reacts to receiving a copy of “Proud and Prepared,” which her committee worked on tirelessly for several months.

This exclusive resource guide was produced by the APAGS Committee on Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity (CSOGD). Despite the popularity of the committee’s first edition — it had been downloaded and shared thousands of times — it was nine years old. The new guide places emphasis on more subgroups of the LGBT community and offers  broader discussion of this community’s modern training concerns. It also embeds dozens of in-depth quotes, pictures and candid perspectives from real students on a multitude of topics.

Authored by current graduate students from a diversity of backgrounds, training programs and viewpoints, “Proud and Prepared” aims to capture the energy and vitality of LGBT graduate students to the profession. Artistically, the guide was designed in-house by talented APA staff and showcases our dynamic content in a colorful 67-page package.

Go ahead and take a sneak peak! 

Check out some of Proud and Prepared’s awesome new sections:

  • Assessing Your Program’s Climate
  • Self-Disclosure in Graduate School
  • The Importance of Social Support
  • Mentorship and LGBT Students
  • Tips for Transgender or Gender Variant Students
  • Tips for Bisexual Graduate Students
  • LGBT Advocacy and Confronting Discrimination
  • Conducting LGBT Research
  • Resources for LGBT Students
  • APA’s Ethical Codes of Interest to LGBT Students

If you are looking for relevant information related to climate, mentorship, self-disclosure, research implications and much more, download the full guide (PDF, 3.3MB)  for further reading. Your APA Member login is required. If you are not a member, consider joining today.

A resolution for a new academic year

happy-new-year-scrabble-tilesApproaching a new academic year is a lot like New Year’s Eve: It offers much of the same excitement, anticipation and hopes of good fortune that a new calendar year has come to symbolize. It’s also a time when we develop resolutions, consciously or not. We want to do well in our programs, we want the best for our clients and students, we want successful (and publishable) research and we want to be part of a thriving profession.

There’s one resolution that I think could benefit all of us in graduate school, whether student or teacher: being more open to receiving and delivering thoughtful, meaningful and constructive feedback. I am continuously struck by the stories I hear in which feedback is simply omitted or is delivered in a way that hurts rather than helps students. But such feedback is critical to our individual growth and development. After all, we are in school to learn and what better way to learn than through constructive feedback?

How can we as graduate students foster a culture shift in how feedback is delivered and utilized within psychology graduate training? Here are a few suggestions:

Listen like you believe. Obviously, not everything that is said to us throughout our training is going to fit with personal goals, values, and the way we operate as individuals.  However, it is amazing what might be discovered when we are open to suggestions and areas of growth. You might just discover something that helps advance your career in incredible, unexpected ways! Listening as thought you believe, opens your mind to exploring alternatives and ultimately deciding what pieces fit for you and what does not. And on the flip side, when you provide feedback to others, whether they are peers, students or faculty members, deliver a message you believe. Be honest and genuine. If necessary, use the classic feedback sandwich structure: positive, constructive, positive.

Be concrete in your feedback and anchor it with behavior. We have all had experiences with vague feedback. For example, “You need to work on your professionalism.” There is no way to know what that means or how to improve it without concrete, actionable steps. So while providing your honest genuine feedback, be sure to anchor it. This also helps in delivering feedback in a constructive and digestible way. When you are receiving feedback, be sure to ask for and clarify the behavioral anchor so you know what to work on.

Set a timeline and check back in. Whether you are providing or receiving the feedback, it is important to evaluate your progress. Write down how you are going to incorporate feedback and set timelines where necessary to keep yourself on track. Enlist support and accountability from others if needed. Thinking over feedback and talking it over with those you’ve given it to is essential to continued professional growth and development.

Celebrate Accomplishments. When you have reached a goal of successfully incorporating feedback, go celebrate! Too often we keep our nose to the grind tackling one task after another chasing a moving cart. It is okay to stop, breathe and take a moment to embrace life through celebrating your accomplishments. Don’t forget to celebrate the accomplishments of others to whom you have given feedback! Some of my favorite ways to celebrate include taking a day off from working, reading a book for pleasure, going out to dinner or hosting a potluck with friends, going to the movies or indulging in a guilt-free Netflix binge!

I hope these steps help you to engage in the feedback process in a meaningful way. If you have more tips or an experience to share, we would love to hear about it! Sign up to be a guest contributor to the blog and share your story. Happy “New Year”!

Starting Your First Practicum/Externship

This is the year! You finally get to move out of the classroom into your first real clinical experience. Congratulations! As you are heading out to your first practicum or externship site, here are a few helpful hints or tricks that may aid you in starting out the semester right. (Disclaimer- this advice is for general consumption and should not be taken in lieu of the practicum site’s rules, policies, and regulations. Always consult your supervisor and/or training director if in doubt.)

 

Balance your roles– One of the most difficult tasks that new practicum students face is the multiple “hats” they must wear or the different roles they must play. As a new practicum student, you are now wearing the hat of therapist, supervisee, group co-facilitator, employee- and that’s just at that one site! As well, you are also juggling the roles of a student, researcher, and/or teaching assistant. While multitasking may seem tempting (and unfortunately, sometimes necessary), it is better to be in the present moment and fully engaged in the role you are working. If you are co-facilitating group, don’t think about your the client you just saw. If you have free time at your practicum site, consider reading therapy books or researching clinical problems rather than working on schoolwork. Your classwork, treatment plans, and clients will still be there when you return.

 

Manage your anxiety– I was nervous in starting out with my first practicum, and I think this is a common emotion for first time practicum students. You have made it through the necessary coursework and now it is time to start the next step! Starting anything new can seem daunting; just give yourself some time for practice. Also, processing your emotions regarding therapy is a great topic to broach with your supervisor.

 

Venture out of your comfort zone– A colleague once told me that in therapy, there are only a few things you can do wrong, but a whole lot of things you can do right. Most students know what the “wrong” things are- just peruse the ethics codes! But there are many interventions that you can do “right” with the client. So be adventurous: do an empty chair technique or try a paradoxical intervention. As long as you stay within the ethics codes and consult your supervisor, this is the time to develop those new skills.

 

Start developing your theoretical orientation– It will come back to haunt you during internship applications, so start early! Most students don’t have a formulated theoretical orientation starting out; therefore, this is the time to experiment and try different conceptualizations and interventions. You might find that you gravitate towards the same orientation again and again, or you may conceptualize with a different theoretical orientation than the intervention you choose. The main point is to explore and see what feels right for you.

 

Most important: utilize your supervisor– You will be working under your supervisor’s license, so it is wise to establish a positive professional relationship with them. They have years of clinical experience and will be able to guide you when you get “stuck.” Don’t be shy to start conversations with them about clients and other professional development issues; that’s why they are there!

 

In conclusion, this is a wonderful and exciting time in your professional development. Although the prospect of starting practicum may be daunting at first, I have typically found that things click quickly. Hang in there, be bold, and consult if necessary.

 

*Again, this is general advice and should not be taken ahead of the policies and procedures of the practicum site and/or your clinical supervisor.

The Gift of They!

As a second-year practicum student in clinical psychology in San Francisco, California, I was honored to encounter people from diverse backgrounds. The location greatly enriched my experiences in multicultural counseling—but it only went so far. I very quickly became aware of the lack of onsite training and the failure of the English language in providing appropriate services to the transgender population in our clinic.

One particular incident with a client opened my eyes to the bias that not only exists in popular culture but also in the therapeutic world. During my last two months at the practicum, I received a referral for psychological assessment from a therapist who was working with a person who identified as genderqueer.

In our first session, the client told me that they prefer the neutral gender pronoun. The client told me that they don’t like to be referred to as “he” or ”she.” After our initial interview, I went to see my supervisor to ask her for guidance regarding creating a proper battery of assessments and writing a report with gender-neutral pronouns. My supervisor looked at me with surprise and told me she needed to consult with her mentor.

I was surprised that this lack of clear guidelines related to language had not come up before in her experience with clients. I consulted further by talking with an assessment professor who informed me that she, too, had never experienced a client who preferred gender neutral pronouns. This made me feel lost and in a very ambiguous, uncomfortable situation.

I deeply believe that clients are the masters of their experience. I realized that the field of psychology has largely ignored the needs of gender-variant and gender-nonconforming clients, and that, like homosexuality, the biases that exist in pop culture dominate our clinical work.

“The biases that exist in pop culture dominate our clinical work.”

With the help of my clinical supervisor and with my client’s generous offer to connect me with available resources on gender nonconformity, I was able to write my first psychological assessment, fully using the they, them, their pronouns as a singular neutral pronoun.

During my last session with the client, I gave the client their report. As part of my training in therapeutic assessment, I wrote the report using a format that non-clinicians and clinicians could understand. I saw tears on the face of the client as they read the report. They told me that it was the first time they had felt understood and respected regarding their gender identity by a clinician.

To this date, I remain very grateful for the client’s kind words, and for the wonderful insight I was given into the power of language, through the gift of they.

Editor’s Note: Khashayar Farhadi-Langroudi is a student at the American School of Professional Psychology at Argosy University – San Francisco Bay Area. Khashayar is also a member of the APAGS Committee on Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity.         

Become a mentor or a mentee this August. (Source: User John-Morgan on Flickr. Some rights reserved).

Addressing the Need for Mentoring Among LGBTQ Graduate Students

How are the mentoring needs of LGBTQ graduate students unique?

For LGBTQ graduate students, challenges such as program climate, coming out, establishing a support system, confronting microagressions and heterocentric attitudes in coursework, advocating for the inclusion of LGBTQ issues in ones program, and conducting LGBTQ-related research can uniquely influence the graduate school experience (“Proud and Prepared…”, 2015). Studies looking specifically at mentoring relationships and needs among LGBTQ graduate students highlight a plethora of societal, environmental, and contextual factors which influence LGBTQ graduate students’ academic and professional development, and emphasize the specific need for LGBTQ mentors (Matheney, 1998).

Become a mentor or a mentee this August. (Source: User John-Morgan on Flickr. Some rights reserved).

Become a mentor or a mentee this August. (Source: User John-Morgan on Flickr. Some rights reserved).

Social support, such as that found in a mentoring relationship, is one key factor shown to positively influence the career development of lesbian women and gay men (Morrow, Gore, & Campbell, 1996). Lin (2001) found that gay and lesbian protégés found more perceived support from gay or lesbian mentors than heterosexual mentors. Nearly all of the LGBTQ+ graduate student participants in a study by Lark and Croteau (1998) reported pursuing a LGB-affirming mentoring relationship but having difficulty finding one, which participants expressed as a serious disappointment. Participants cited wanting the expertise of mentors concerning LGB perspectives in clinic work, LGB research strategies, LGB professional advocacy, LGB career planning concerns such as identity management and disclosure on resumes or in interviews, providing models of successful out LGB professionals, and having someone with similar experiences with whom to disclose situations of discrimination (Lark & Croteau, 1998). Although these needs can, and certainly should, be addressed by faculty and practitioners of any sexual orientation or gender identity, the need for LGBTQ graduate students to have a mentor who also identifies as LGBTQ—and the tendency to seek mentors of similar sexual orientation or gender identity—shouldn’t be overlooked (Nauta, Saucier, & Woodard, 2001; Russell & Horne, 2009).

How does APAGS help address the needs of LGBTQ graduate students?

The APAGS LGBT Graduate Student Mentoring Program is designed to address the needs of LGBTQ graduate students in psychology by matching them with an LGBTQ-identified advanced graduate student or professor who shares similar interests, experiences, and goals. Mentors and mentees are provided monthly discussion prompts, a closed listserv to create a venue for dialogue, access to resources (such as webinars) relevant to LGBTQ graduate students, and opportunities to connect at APA Convention. As one mentor in the program reported:

“…I have felt very grateful to be part of the APAGS LGBT mentoring program. My PhD program has no open or out faculty members and I am one of two openly gay students. As a result, the sense of aloneness and isolation as an LGBTQ student and practitioner has periodically overshadowed my training and education process. Through this mentoring program, I was able to receive professional guidance and genuine relational support from a seasoned LGBTQ psychologist…who could also relate very personally to the social pressures and professional challenges of being a minority graduate student, as well as working as an openly gay psychologist.” –Brian

Interested in becoming a member of the 2015-2016 APAGS LGBT mentoring program—either as a mentee or mentor? Applications for the program are now available through the APAGS Committee on Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity website, and should be submitted electronically by August 15, 2015. Pairs will be formed on or around September 1, 2015.

Editor’s Note: This post was written by Mary T. Guerrant, M.S., a doctoral student at North Carolina State University and member of the APAGS Committee on Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity. It originally appeared in “Perspectives on Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Concerns,” a newsletter publication of APA Division 35 (Psychology of Women) Section IV (LBT Concerns). It is reposted here with generous permission.