The needs of couples change as our times are changing. Flexibility around sexuality, gender and betrayal are skills that we need to continue to incorporate. This panel will discuss issues of gender, identity shifts, sex and intimacy, and multiculturalism that modern couples encounter in their relationships. We will also discuss alternative and modern monogamy structures and how to create new monogamy agreements.
Learning Objectives:
Lilian Borges, MA, LPC, is a licensed professional counselor with more than 18 years of experience doing and teaching psychotherapy, Ericksonian hypnosis and brief therapy. She is an invited teacher at the Milton Erickson Foundation for their extensive hypnosis training programs. Lilian has been conducting seminars in the United States and internationally about couples therapy, and Ericksonian therapy.
Shawn V. Giammattei, PhD is a clinical psychologist licensed in the state of California and the founder of the newly developed Gender Health Training Institute. He has a doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology and has 19 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 and is on faculty for their Global Education Initiative. He is an affiliated researcher, adjunct professor, and recent 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 also 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 member of Mind the Gap, an organization affiliated with the University of California, Beniof, Child and Adolescent Gender Clinic focused on the needs of transgender youth and their families.
Rick Miller, MSW, is a clinical social worker in private practice in Boston and on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He is the author of Unwrapped: Integrative Therapy with Gay Men… the Gift of Presence (2015). Rick has served on numerous national and international faculties, including the International Society of Hypnosis, the Brief Therapy Conference, the American Group Psychotherapy Association, and Harvard Medical School.