Unlearning Straight Lines
Inclusive LGBT+ Affirmative Practice Training
A one-day workshop with Lauren Turner
When LGBT+ identities, relationships or questions about gender and sexuality enter the therapy room, many practitioners want to respond with clarity and care, but can feel unsure about language, boundaries, or how to work with their own assumptions. This one-day in-person workshop offers space to think about these moments in depth, so you can meet them with more confidence, nuance and theoretical grounding.
You can expect a mix of teaching, reflection and clinical discussion, with a strong emphasis on real-world application and psychological safety. Whether you are a trainee, newly qualified, or an experienced practitioner wanting to refresh your thinking, this workshop offers a grounded, non-shaming space to ask questions, try things out, and deepen your practice.
Course content
Led by Lauren Turner, a humanistic psychotherapist in private practice with an international caseload and a specialism in working with the LGBT+ community, the day will invite you to think across sociocultural, relational and intrapsychic levels of experience. Drawing on ideas such as the Cultural Parent (Drego), relational models of the therapeutic relationship (for example, Clarkson’s integrative framework), script theory within Transactional Analysis, and contemporary understandings of minority stress and power, you will consider how wider discourse, the here-and-now relationship and the client’s inner world intersect in LGBT+ work.
What will I gain?
By the end of the day you will:
- Have a clearer, theoretically informed sense of what “LGBT+ affirmative practice” means for you in the therapy room, beyond good intentions alone.
- Be more aware of your own assumptions, discomforts and blind spots, and understand these in relation to concepts such as the Cultural Parent, minority stress and internalised narratives.
- Feel better equipped to navigate language around identity, gender and sexuality in ways that are collaborative, respectful and responsive to the client’s script and developmental history.
- Have engaged with common clinical dilemmas and vignettes, so that you have more theoretical and practical options when LGBT+ themes arise unexpectedly.
- Be able to think more confidently about the impact of social context, power and safety on LGBT+ clients’ experience of therapy, and to locate this within relational models of the therapeutic relationship.
- Leave with a bank of questions, phrases and therapeutic stances that support inclusive, reflective and ethically grounded work, informed by humanistic and TA-based perspectives.
You will also receive a Connexus Institute CPD certificate for 6 hours of training.
Who is this workshop for?
This training is aimed at trainee and qualified counsellors and psychotherapists, from TA, humanistic and integrative orientations and related modalities, who want to feel more able to work with LGBT+ clients and LGBT+ themes in clinical practice. You do not need prior specialist knowledge; curiosity, openness and a willingness to reflect on your own social positioning are the most important starting points.
Dates: Friday 26th June, 2026
Length: One day
Times: 9:30 am to 4:30 pm
Mode: In-person
Cost: £120 (inclusive of VAT)
More Information
Let us know if you have any questions
Meet your course leaders
Lauren Turner
Lauren Turner MSc, PGDip, LLB (Hons), MBACP is a humanistic counsellor and psychotherapist with a specialist focus on gender, sexuality and relationship diversity. An inclusive practitioner, Lauren works extensively with trans and gender diverse clients, and with people exploring neurodivergence and its impact on identity, relationship and belonging. Working relationally and in a trauma-informed way, she integrates Transactional Analysis, Person-Centred and Gestalt approaches, alongside somatic and polyvagal-informed perspectives. Trained at Metanoia Institute, Lauren now lives and works in Spain, maintaining an international online practice. Her previous career in the legal field has given her a particular awareness of power and systems, and she is committed to offering therapy that is thoughtful, inclusive, and firmly grounded in clients’ lived experience.