This training is designed to provide a comprehensive understanding of racial trauma, along with practical tools for its assessment, conceptualization, and treatment. Through a combination of theory, case studies, and evidence-based practices, participants will learn to identify the signs and symptoms of racial trauma, explore the systemic and psychological impacts of racism, and develop culturally responsive treatment strategies. This training will enhance professionals' capacity to support individuals affected by racial trauma while fostering a more inclusive and culturally responsive approach to care.

Black hair has been denigrated and deemed unattractive and unmanageable, since slavery. Slaveowners required Black women to cover their hair or straighten it to emulate White women in order to be considered acceptable in public spaces. As early as 1786, the Tignon Laws prohibited Black women from displaying excessive attention to their appearance and forced them to cover their hair. Until 1976, wearing natural hair such as an Afro in the workplace could lead to workplace termination due to a lack of protection under the Civil Rights Act. However, despite the Civil Rights recognition, Black hair in its natural state continues to be implicated in bias and discrimination but professionally and socially. States like California, New York, and New Jersey have enacted the Crown Act which makes it illegal to discriminate against someone in the workplace, schools, and public places based on their hair, however, natural Black hair remains at the center of social and political controversy, marginalization, and sanctioning. Although wearing chemically straightened hairstyles is associated with upward mobility in professional settings, by making Black women seem more mainstream and Eurocentric. Chemical straighteners have severe health implications and are the leading cause of breast cancer in Black women. For Black women, hair is rooted in both personal appearance, and political warfare. Similar to other aspects of life, White cultural norms influence the evaluations and expectations placed on Black women and their hair. Therefore, hairstyling has been used to communicate social conventions about gender, race, sexual identity, and social status. Mental health professionals often underestimate the value of hair in the daily lives and well-being of Black women. Negotiating what style to wear has been implicated in racial trauma, colorism, self-image, and self-worth. Black natural hair affects all aspects of Black women’s lives including social settings, and intimate relationships, Black women spend a disproportionate amount of time thinking about, styling, and caring for their hair in comparison to women of other racial and gender groups. Black hair is also a symbol of resistance and empowerment. Hairstyles such as cornrows have historical relevance, the designs, and patterns enabled Black slaves to hide grains in their hair and to encrypt messages and maps to aid in their escape. This presentation will focus on the sociopolitical history of Black hair and provide clinicians with the tools to promote racial healing, self-acceptance, and celebration of natural hair.

1 billion people in the world are disabled. In the United States alone, as many as 61 million adults have a disability; an estimated 15-20% are neurodivergent (CDC, 2020; NIH 2022). Nationally, clients with disabilities experience about 5 times more emotional distress than nondisabled clients (CDC, 2020). We will address the heavy toll of stigmatization and discrimination among individuals with disabilities, including the neurodiverse. Because individuals with disabilities remain the largest minority in the nation there is a demand for professional counselors to increase their competencies in this area. In this engaging interactive training, get ready to learn the ABCs of affirmative care for clients with neurodivergence, disabilities, and intersectional identities. Participants will build a neurodivergent and disability-affirmative toolkit with the facilitator. We will cap off this presentation by providing tangible resources created by the facilitator.

The "Strong Black Woman" stereotype portrays Black women as resilient, self-sacrificing, and able to withstand adversity without showing vulnerability. While seemingly positive, this archetype is detrimental and reinforces expectations that undermine mental health and overall well-being. Black women have leading rates of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and maternal and infant mortality. The Black Strong Black Woman stereotype camouflages mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and sexual dysfunction. It is implicated in disparate treatment in educational, employment, health, and judicial systems,  In this presentation, participants will learn conceptualization and treatment strategies that center on neurobiology, historical trauma, and relational cultural healing.  Participants will identify how frame treatment within a social justice lens and equip counselors with strategies to recognize and address the complexities of the "Strong Black Woman" stereotype in therapeutic settings.

This session will explore the cultural implications linked to the philosophy of "self-care". Specifically, we will explore how the concept of wellness morphed into self-care and consequently became culturally irrelevant to many. History, terminology, and self-care models will be reviewed and analyzed from different worldviews. In addition, the Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies and ACA Code of Ethics will be used to demonstrate how counselors can develop wellness plans and utilize activities that are aligned with the culture of the client/student/supervisee.

This session explores counseling approaches that attempt to understand and address the impact of colonialism and coloniality on individuals, communities, and ecosystems. From Frantz Fanon to Albert Memmi’s descriptions of the effects of colonial violence, racism, and exploitation, we locate the legacy of colonialism and neoliberal globalization in the contemporary world and our local communities and relationships. Through Cabral, Freire, Enriquez, Martin-Bar, and Montero, we enter liberation counseling approaches from a global context and explore the development of critical consciousness, critical dialogical pedagogy, prophetic imagination, and actions-in-solidarity to transform oppressive structures and to create liberatory environments and public homeplaces. Our shared undertaking is to explore the possible roles of liberation counseling in healing the sequelae of collective traumas, understanding and addressing their roots, and co-creating sustainable, just, and dynamically peaceful communities. Additionally, this session will cover an introduction to decolonial philosophy, which leads to questions about the coloniality of temporality and aesthetic experience that underlies the colonization of imaginaries. Beneath the colonized's political, social, economic, and military domination exists the colonization of the consciousness of the colonized. This course exposes aesthetic and affective dimensions of decolonial struggle and opens towards poietic engagements of the lives, histories, and senses of being of the excluded and colonized. Furthermore, this session includes: (1) decolonizing the mind or expanding critical consciousness. Decolonizing the mind means a process to end a false universalism in the wisdom of "Westernized" standards where the truth and knowledge are based on Western knowledge and the production of such knowledge. Decolonizing the Mind touches on language, politics, literature, and history. (2) Decolonization of Education. Throughout history, educational settings have become the center stage of colonial reproduction and indoctrination. As such, academic institutions have relied on curriculum, accreditation standards, and other regulations to control knowledge production and determine the curriculum, how it is delivered, and who can access formal education.

In this webinar, participants will focus on creating actionable mental health initiatives tailored to the needs of Black men in their communities. Working collaboratively, participants will design trauma-focused counseling programs and explore strategies for long-term implementation and sustainability. This session aims to turn theory into practice by developing real-world solutions to address mental health disparities.