1st Edition
A Clinician’s Guide to Gender Actualization An Approach to Gender Affirming Therapy
A Clinician’s Guide to Gender Actualization provides an essential guide for mental health professionals working with gender diverse clients, delivering material that challenges clinicians to provide affirming specialized care for their clients.
Gender actualization is the social, expressive, and existential process of becoming and integrating one’s authentic self through the context of gender identity, and this book introduces an effective clinical model for competent gender therapy care. Building upon the reader’s foundational knowledge, chapters provide useful assessment tools, interventions, and treatment strategies to implement in their clinical practice, with accompanying personal narratives and client experiences woven throughout.
Challenging readers to explore intersectionality and the crucial awareness of their own privileges, this book is a critical read for providers working with or seeking to educate themselves regarding gender diverse clients.
1. Tales of the Well-Intended Gatekeeper 2. Cultural Humility 3. Affirmative Therapy: Expanding Beyond the Gender Binary 4. Unique Challenges to Consider 5. Transition 6. Assessing Adult Clients 7. Treating Adults in Gender Therapy 8. Assessment and Treatment of Gender Diverse Children and Teens 9. Transitioning Families, co-authored by Dr. Butch Losey, EdD, LPCC-S 10. Transitioning Couples.
Biography
Caitlin Yilmazer, LPCC-S, is a practicing counselor and the chief operating officer of Waybridge Counseling, a private practice in Cincinnati, Ohio. She has over 12 years of combined educational and clinical experience with LGBTQ+ populations.
"A Clinician’s Guide to Gender Actualization: An Approach to Gender Affirming Therapy centers the individual’s gender journey and prepares clinicians to assist gender diverse persons in actualizing their most authentic selves. This is a needed resource that all mental health professionals working with transgender and gender diverse persons should utilize for their professional development."
Sarah Pickle, MD, Family Medicine and Transgender Health physician"A Clinician’s Guide to Gender Actualization: An Approach to Gender Affirming Therapy is an essential read for any mental health clinician working with transgender, nonbinary, or gender nonconforming individuals. Yilmazer’s approach transcends traditional symptom-based methods for treating gender dysphoria by focusing on the transformative power of helping clients discover their authentic selves."
Evelyn Heflin, clinical social worker and community leader"Highly recommended! Caitlin Yilmazer’s work is founded on principles of reclaiming an authenticity lost to most transgender clients as they grow up unsupported in their identity. Using a self-actualization model, Yilmazer helps clients embrace their identity, shedding cultural baggage rooted in deep-seated transphobia."
Reid Vanderburgh, retired trans therapist
