Trainings | Workshops

Trainings and Workshops

I am excited to offer trainings and workshops designed specifically with the goal of maximizing socially-conscious inter-personal, professional, and community growth and wellness. All trainings are offered from a foundation of healing-centered engagement and are oppression and trauma-informed.

Dear Lovely Humans:

COVID-19, national uprisings due to long-time racial injustices, increasing economic inequities, and a critical presidential election are converging to make 2020 a very difficult – and important – year.  In these uncertain and surreal times, we must wisely prepare for the long haul – as individuals, as well as in unity with each other.

Being socially conscious people we have a drive and dedication to try to be the best version of ourselves we can be and to be active participants in making our world more just. Our current social-political climate may leave us feeling frightened, hopeless, triggered, fatigued, and isolated.

Simultaneously, it also has galvanized and inspired connection, resistance, and action in thousands of people across our state, the country, and around the globe.

An essential ingredient to keepin’ on with making personal and community change is meaningful healthy connection – with ourselves and with like-minded others.

Continue to be the strong, self-aware, and compassionate humans that you are. It takes us all…one at a time. (See below for a list of current offerings.)

Take good care,
Irene

Overview

Designing and presenting workshops, lectures, and trainings are some of the most satisfying and gratifying parts of the work that I do. Over the past thirty years, I have given hundreds of presentations. I offer workshops and Community Education Units (CEUs) trainings to mental health, social service and medical providers, educators, non-profit agencies, social justice, and community groups. 

I have a casual, relaxed, fun, personable, down-to-earth style, and am known to be organized, thorough, and well informed. When I present, I am cognoscente and inclusive of issues related to privilege, justice, oppression, access, race, class, ability, sexual and gender minorities, diverse family configurations, misogyny, transmisogyny, cissexism, and heterosexism. I incorporate these themes into each presentation. 

All of my workshops are three-pronged: (1) information-sharing, (2) interacting, and (3) developing personal takeaway action plans and strategies. Through discussion, lecture, and activities, participants will learn and share information about the topic, each other, and themselves. Additionally, everyone will leave with practical strategies and action steps to incorporate their learning into their daily personal and professional lives.

Training and consultation topics include white-body privilege and working to be an active anti-racist ally for white helping professionals; workplace stress, burnout, and resiliency; COVID-19 workplace and home self-care; vicarious trauma, oppression fatigue, moral injury, compassion fatigue, and burnout for helping professionals; and political trauma stress.

2020 – 2021

Anti-Racism Trainings for White Helping Professionals

(Irene’s specialized training in anti-racism work for white people and white helping professionals.)

Three anti-racism trainings for white helping professionals: Increase our racial literacy. Understand our whiteness. Examine the colonization of the mental health and social work fields. Develop our anti-racist and decolonizing perspectives into actual anti-racist practices. Depending on your board, up to 20 CEUs are possible. These trainings are open to anyone who lives anywhere. They take place on Zoom.

Training #1: For LGBTQPAI+  White Helping Professionals: Facing Our Whiteness, Unlearning Our (Queer) Racism, and Decolonizing Mental Health A 38-hour training designed for LGBTQPIA+ helping professionals. This weekend training occurred Friday, October 23 – Sunday, October 25, 2020. It was followed by twelve 1.5-hour White Affinity Action, Ally, and Accountability Groups on Thursdays, 5-630pm CST from October 2020 – February 2021. | SOLD OUT | This training will be offered again in early 2021.

Training #2: For White LGBTQPIA+ Helping Professionals: Facing Our Whiteness, Unlearning Racism, and Decolonizing Mental Health A 20-hour weekend training: Friday, December 4, 2020 (noon – 5p), Saturday, December 5 (9-5p), and Sunday, December 6 (9-430p) CST.

FREE / Pay what you can – An anti-racism training for white socially conscious LGBTQPIA+ mental health providers, social service workers, and related helpers

This 20-hour weekend training offers an intentional and serious dive into our anti-racism work.

• Understand our (Queer) whiteness in the context of our LGBTQPA2SI+ communities
• Increase our racial literacy
• Examine the colonization of the mental health and social work fields
• Develop our anti-racist perspectives into actual anti-racist practices

Training #3: For White Helping Professionals: Facing Our Whiteness, Unlearning Racism, and Decolonizing Mental Health A 20-hour weekend training on Friday, November 20, 2020 – Sunday, November 22, 2020 | SOLD OUT | This training will be offered again in early 2021.

Fee: Free. Donations accepted. | No one is turned away for inability to pay.

The MN LGBTQ+ Therapists’ Network will match each of its member’s registration towards a scholarship fund for QBIPOC students in the fields of mental health and social work.

Any profits will be donated to MN Indian Women’s Resource Center, 2300 15th Avenue South, Mpls, MN 55404work.

Beyond Self-Care & Work-Life Balance: Compassion Fatigue, Burnout, and Moral Injury for Socially Conscious Helping Professionals  February 2021: 830am-2p on Zoom

The following topics can be tailored to your group or organization:

Self-care, Vicarious Trauma, Burnout, Trauma, and Compassion Fatigue for Helping Professionals and Workplaces: 

When Our Personal Trauma and Oppression Fatigue Come to Work: Increasing Our Professional Self-Care and Workplace Dynamics to Reduce Burnout, Political Trauma Stress, Secondary Trauma, and Moral Injury (PDF)

Example of Compassion Fatigue and Self-Care of Helping Professionals Training (PDF)

Our Trauma and Oppression for Social Justice Organizers: Training (PDF)

Workplace Stress, Resiliency, and Burnout during COVID-19: 

• • COVID-19 Self-Care for Helping Professionals, Medical Workers, and Community Organizers
  • Organizational Resiliency & Wellness – COVID-19 (PDF) 
  • Self-Care, Wellness & Resiliency: Helping Professionals’ Online Wellness Groups (archived training outline)
  • Self-Care During COVID-19 and Beyond: General Issues Psycho-educational Groups
  • Use Your Words and Colors: A COVID-19 Resiliency & Trauma-Informed Creative Expression Support Group for LGBTQAI+ Health and Wellness Professionals. (Archived description)

Examples of Past Trainings:

These can be modified for your organization

Political Trauma Stress: Turn Anxiety and Fear into Resiliency and Resistance (archived outline)

LGBTQ+ Relationship Workshop: Connection and Communication Through Differentiation (archived outline) Minneapolis

Mental Health and Social Service Professionals: Self-Care During COVID-19 and Beyond (archived description): These online Psycho-Educational Coaching & Wellness Groups run in 5-weeks rotations. Up to 18 people per group. (Up to 7.5 CEUs are available with your board’s approval.) No one is turned away for inability to pay. Grounded in healing-centered engagement, and oppression and trauma-informed.