Trainings Offered by Sebastian

Scroll down for information on how to access recordings of past trainings.

Upcoming Trainings

Join us for the expansion of May's successful webinar:

Date: Fri, July 11, 2025

Time: 3:00 PM-5:00 PM EDT

Are you a mental health professional looking to better support your trans and nonbinary clients during times of sociopolitical distress? This training is for you. Learn practical strategies and tools to provide the effective care that is desperately needed right now. Don't miss out on this opportunity to make a difference in the lives of your clients.

Note that while this webinar builds upon Part 1 (available here), it may be beneficial as a standalone, as well.

What to Expect:

In this webinar, Dr. Sebastian Barr will draw from research, clinical experience, and community knowledge to help clinicians build their capacity to step into this work with confidence and comfort. This training will build off of the webinar presented in May 2025, which covered foundations for affirming and effective work in this climate, assessing and conceptualizing sociopolitical distress in clients, and core in-session interventions and approaches. Between that webinar and one offered shortly after the elections in November 2024, Dr. Barr has helped thousands of clinicians find their footing and received many pieces of positive feedback.

The content in this upcoming training has been updated to speak specifically to the concerns and realities we are now facing and what this asks of us as mental health professionals. This training will include practical discussion of the following complex scenarios:

• helping clients cope with reduced access to gender affirming medical care and/or threats of reduced access

• working with clients’ heightened responsiveness/reactivity (sometimes deemed “overreacting” or “hypervigilance”)

• clients who are considering detransition

• working with clients’ increased suicidality

• supporting trans people needing to relocate for safety

• helping clients experiencing activist burnout

• addressing misinformation from clients

Using vignettes, Dr. Barr will discuss with specificity how he incorporates some of the previously taught core in-session approaches and uses other evidence-grounded interventions to manage these contexts.

Additionally, there will be more time spent on the therapist's experience of doing this work. Dr. Barr will discuss how therapists can best navigate challenging reactions we are having to the sociopolitical climate, therapy material, and clients. And there will be review of advocacy actions therapists can take for their clients and for the community at large.

Q&A will be available for live attendees, though Dr. Barr may need to answer the questions asynchronously if there is not enough time.

Effective and Affirming Clinical Work with TNB Adolescents and Young Adults

15 CEUs | Cape Cod Institute | In-Person or Online | Monday July 21 - Friday July 25, 9am-12:30pm ET (with 30 min break each day)

Join me at Cape Cod Institute for an incredible for in-depth education about how to best serve trans and nonbinary teens and young adults. This course will be 15 CEs and takes place in the mornings of July 21-25 (Monday through Friday). Take the course in person and enjoy your afternoons and evenings in the outer or lower Cape Cod. Take the course virtually and keep the rest of your day free for work or other responsibilities. This is the second time this course is being offered and last year’s participants had incredibly positive feedback. Register using the code BARR20 for 20% off.

Save the Date: Live Online Training on Letter-Writing for Gender-Affirming Care

Saturday Aug 9, 4-5:30pm ET

Recordings of Past Trainings

Why This Matters:

While the sociopolitical climate in the U.S. (and globally) has been growing increasingly hostile to trans communities in recent years, this has intensified under the current federal government. Since January 2025 especially, trans and nonbinary people have struggled with worsened mental health as communities navigate hateful rhetoric, risk of violence, restrictions to care and other rights, and fear of what's to come.

Many clinicians feel limited in their ability to support trans and nonbinary clients facing this harsh reality and still unpredictable future, with some likening their provision of therapy these days to "offering sunscreen to a person on fire." But therapy can be much more than sunscreen - and it needs to be. Trans and nonbinary communities need access to helpful ways to make sense of and respond to or manage the understandable distress they are experiencing so that they live meaningfully in the present and future. Mental healthcare providers are positioned to be an invaluable resource to trans and nonbinary clients right now - we just need to be grounded in best practices.

What to Expect:

In this webinar, Dr. Sebastian Barr will draw from research, clinical experience, and community knowledge to help clinicians build their capacity to step into this work with confidence and comfort. The webinar will include discussion of general steps and practice considerations, general psychotherapeutic approaches, recommendations for responding to common scenarios, and reflections on caring for ourselves while doing this work.

A similar webinar offered in November 2024 helped thousands of clinicians find their footing and received many pieces of positive feedack. This content has been updated to speak specifically to the concerns and realities we are now facing in Spring of 2025, and what this asks of us as mental health professionals.

Selection of additional positive feedback from live attendees of the May 2025 Webinar:

“This was a fantastic seminar! I so appreciated all of the content.” | “This is so healing as a trans nonbinary therapist.” | “I appreciate you and your work!” | “I am a trans therapist and times have been tough. This was the perfect way to end the week.” | “I’m looking forward to part two!”

November 2024 Webinar on Post-Election Distress in TNB Clients

Note that some of this content is out of date.