In our work as Motivational Interviewing (MI) practitioners, it’s crucial that we create safe and accepting spaces for all our clients. Whether we’re working in education, criminal justice, mental health, or another space, every served person we work with deserves to feel a sense of belonging and affirmed.
So how can we, as practitioners who may not be members of the LGBTQ+ community, be aware and empathetic to the experiences of those in the LGBTQ+ community?
Awareness, deep understanding, and reverence is an essential aspect of building a rapport with the clients we serve.
Why LGBTQ+ Affirmation is Crucial?
It is critical and important for served persons to be accepted for who they are. Carl Rogers, an early thought leader in person-centered care, noted:
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”
The question that has been coming up for me is, how can a person accept themselves just as they are if the person holding space for them is not accepting them just as they are?
Whether you use MI or another person-centered approach, the first step toward engagement and rapport is to ensure the served person feels safe sharing. All humans need to feel secure and safe before they can open up and connect with other humans and especially, human service providers. A big step toward establishing a sense of safety is to revere the person and all their facets.
So what does LGBTQ+ affirmation look like? Like any form of acceptance, it begins and ends with Human Reverence. We hold space without judgment, but with acceptance, and individualize our approach to fit the needs of each person in our care.
If we are not members of the LGBTQ+ community, we lack lived experience. Educating ourselves is a key to understanding the unique experiences of LGBTQ+ community members, present and past.
As we educate ourselves, we want to be guided by the Spirit of Motivational Interviewing: partnership, acceptance, compassion, and empowerment. As we focus on creating safe, therapeutic spaces, education in the right mindset is crucial.
Self-Education: The First Step to Inclusion
It’s not someone else’s job to teach others about their experience being a part of any given community, including the LGBTQ+ community. We must educate ourselves rather than expecting our clients to educate us on the present and past of their community.
Further, when I’m sitting down with another human to hold space for them, I am not working with “a community.” I’m working with a uniquely manifested human that has various community affiliations that they themselves ascribe to and in their own unique way. Each member of any community is unique—including the LGBTQ+ community.
There are unique experiences within the LGBTQ+ community, so even if one is a member of the community, there may be—and likely are—experiences and histories that one does not know. Doing research and work to understand LGBTQ+ individuals’ experiences can support us to build empathy and connect with all humans from their unique experience.
What does doing the work look like? It can look all sorts of ways. Here’s a few: engaging in content and information created by LGBTQ+ creators. I purposefully follow folks on social media who are unique from me in regard to their community affiliations. Watching TV series movies, and documentaries made by LGBTQ+ filmmakers can be a good start (and fun!). For those of us in the Midwest, particularly Wisconsin, I recommend the PBS Wisconsin Documentary, Wisconsin Pride, as a good starting point for a specific historical experience of LGBTQ+ humans within Wisconsin. Familiarize yourself with the history of your particular locale.
Reading books authored by LGBTQ+ members can also help us learn and empathize with their unique perspectives and experiences.
Self-awareness is crucial to our individual personal and professional development, learning and growth. We must see beyond the veil of our own experience so we can hold space and empathize with people who may have lives unique from ours.
As practitioners, we must proactively seek knowledge about the communities we serve. The burden isn’t on the served persons to explain themselves or shepherd us through the experience. That is our responsibility to ourselves, our world community, and the community and individuals we serve.
Honoring Individual Identities: Beyond the Box
There’s a trap we can fall into which lumps LGBTQ+ experiences together, but it’s important to recognize that practitioners should honor individual identities without putting them in yet another box.
There is a vast range of uniqueness within the LGBTQ+ experience. A Trans person’s concerns may greatly differ from a Gay person’s concerns. Other individual facets, abilities, and socio-economic factors can also have a significant impact and be attended to. It’s important to be aware and attuned to intersectionality, where multiple facets of multiple community affiliations overlap and compound their experiences.
Motivational interviewing focuses on deeply understanding (empathizing with) the individual. What’s true is: when we hold space for another human, we are always doing so with a human who has a unique experience from our own and a unique culmination of experiences––even if we’re part of similar or overlapping communities. Want to test this theory? Who’s sitting in which chair and how did they get there?
By practicing MI, we can connect with people on their individualized level.
Navigating Our Now
As human service practitioners who want to create safe, welcoming spaces for all served persons, it’s essential that we stay informed about issues and experiences impacting our LGBTQ+ clients.
In many cases, the importance isn’t in being perfect but in showing that we’re making a concerted effort toward creating a true sense of belonging and empathy for everyone. As we do the work on educating ourselves about the unique experiences of the LGBTQ+ community and individuals, we can better manifest an empathetic space founded on a true sense of belonging.
Holding Space with Acceptance
In Motivational Interviewing, acceptance is critical. No matter our personal values, we must show up for the people we serve without judgment and with acceptance in order to extend the proper care to them.
If you’re a provider who cannot hold space for someone because of your values, it is in everyone’s best interest for you to transfer the person to someone else. Knowing ourselves is important to ensure we provide the best care possible to a given human. It’s vital that we are able to set aside personal beliefs if we want our fellow humans to receive the care they need and deserve.
Training programs like Life After Hate teach practitioners to hold space for diverse individuals, including those with extreme past affiliations. Life After Hate, for example, is a violence intervention community that helps people disengage from violent, far-right hate groups and online spaces.
In sharing a space with someone with different values, we must avoid assumptions about what the client needs and do the work within ourselves to address judgment and approach our fellow humans with acceptance, as individuals with unique life experiences from our own.
To create an affirming space, we should use reflective listening. Reflective listening supports us to demonstrate our empathy (deep understanding) of the person’s experience vs. our assessment or other.
Further, we want to defer to the served person when centering their needs. To do this, we want to ask open-ended questions that allow the client to sit squarely in the driver’s seat of their journey.
As practitioners, we can let the client decide how much their unique human experience will factor into our conversations. We can then modify our approach to align with the person’s experiences, perspectives, and on. Simple example questions might be, “How has your experience influenced your journey?” or, “Are there aspects of your experience you’d like to explore today?”
The beauty of MI is that it’s the practitioner’s job to empower (draw forth that which is already inside the person) and uplift the served person to make the positive changes that will improve their life, as they see fit. It’s not up to us to decide what those changes must be or what that improved life looks like. It’s up to them and it’s up to us to support them to sit with their choices and possibilities.
If you’re hoping to connect and build rapport with clients from the LGBTQ+ community, it’s critical to commit to ongoing learning through media, books, and training. Our collective journey toward Human Reverence is ongoing—and one we as humans service professionals must commit to, in order to provide the care every human deserves. Focus on each client as a whole and unique person. Familiarize ourselves with the history and experiences of the individual’s community(s), so we may create affirming spaces that demonstrate our empathy and reverence.
MI’s Spirit naturally aligns with LGBTQ+ affirmation, and as humans service professionals, we must deepen our knowledge and recognize that we should take daily steps to practice acceptance.
For more on Motivational Interviewing and building Human Reverence, please reach out. We’re happy to share knowledge on the journey and help you foster an environment where clients feel safe and empowered.