Let’s Talk About How to Talk About It: Practicing the Clinical Skill of Broaching (on-demand)

Logistics & Scheduling

Preferred date or timeframe:
Proposed length: 1.5 hours
Requested fee:

Curriculum & Content Plan

Presenters indicated that curriculum does not qualify as either law & ethics, supervision, or cultural/bias content.

Online class experiential components: slides (PowerPoint, Google Slides), poll or survey

Learner experience level: Novice/Beginning Learners: No advance knowledge required

NBCC Content Area: Counseling Theory/Practice and the Counseling Relationship

Program Description:

“I kept quiet because I did not want to alienate my client.”

How many of us have been reluctant to ask clients about difficult things? Maybe the client is defended, highly sensitive, avoidant, or just vulnerable and we want to protect them. We all learned how to ask about self-harm and suicidality during our graduate training as mental health professionals, and over time, develop that as a skill where it becomes practiced and natural. But what about taboo topics that our society has a tough time talking about? A critically important topic is race, especially if you’re a white counselor working with a client holding a different racial identity, and there are plenty of others too — like politics, in this age of extreme polarization. Does the concept of therapeutic neutrality get in the way for you to ask about these topics directly?

This workshop will offer a review of the clinical skill of broaching which you may have learned about in graduate school. If this skill is new to you, we’ll catch you up with its purpose and potential benefits. You’ll understand how broaching fits into culturally informed practices, and how it can help reset a power imbalance that may naturally occur in the therapeutic relationship. Broaching will be presented as a key skill within a social justice informed framework for clinically responding to our sociopolitical moment of 2026.

Participants will examine how principles of ethical responsibility and beneficence apply to broaching sociocultural and power dynamics in the therapeutic relationship, expanding on clinical models of risk broaching (e.g., suicidality) to include issues of oppression, privilege, and sociopolitical systemic harm.

Attendance at Resonant Equity’s prior Role of the Counselor training would be the ideal foundation for this skill-building workshop, however if you missed those trainings, no worries. There are no formal pre-requisites for this broaching skills workshop, and all interested mental health clinicians are welcome.

Please note: As part of this training experience, participants will be given the chance to practice skills using a video of a mock client. Those videos were created by AI. Resonant Equity recognizes the moral complexity of AI use. If you are strongly opposed to AI, we respect that, and suggest that this training may not be the right one for you. Registering for the training indicates your acceptance of this application of AI tools for the purpose of clinical skill development. All course content including the design of the learning objectives, this course description, and the slides was created by the presenter, Dr. Lisa Wenninger.

Educational Goals:

This training offers a short how-to lecture on the rationale, purpose, and clinical application of broaching, especially in the context of cross-cultural counseling dyads and for sensitive or stigmatized topics such as politics, with the bulk of the training being experiential, where participants will practice the skill.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the rationale and potential clinical benefits for broaching
• Explain the utility of broaching political topics as part of social-justice informed counseling
• Describe how broaching can be considered a decolonized practice in counseling
• Implement the clinical intervention of broaching appropriate to the client identity, culture, presentation, and circumstance

Equity Focus:

This training shares the importance of cross-cultural broaching as the responsibility of the clinician as a power-sharing strategy in counseling.

References:

Presenters

Presenter Name: Lisa Wenninger, PhD, MBA, LPCC/LPC/LMHC, NCC, BC-TMH

Pronouns: she/her
Email: lisa@myriadsites.com
For this training, this presenter’s background and expertise qualifies them for this NBCC Presenter Category: Category 1: Graduate degree in mental health field, and qualified by education, training, or authorship for this specific subject
Presenter CV/Resume : https://resonantequity.org/wp-content/uploads/formidable/3/WenningerLisa-CV-Nov2024-2-2-1-2.pdf

Education:

• Doctorate: CES Antioch University 2024

Relevant experience/training related to topic :

Doctorate degree in Counselor Education and Supervision. Five years as an active participant in California BBS Board and Committee meetings on regulations.

Professional licenses (including state), and/or specific certifications that are related to this topic.:

CA LPCC #14315
WA LMHC #61478356
VA LPC #0701015452

Presenter Bio (to be included on promotional materials):

Dr. Lisa Wenninger (she/her) has a PhD in Counselor Education and Supervision from Antioch University Seattle. She is a National Certified Counselor and is licensed in California, Washington, and Virginia, with a telehealth-only social justice counseling practice working with individuals with marginalized identities who are navigating a complex and difficult world. Dr. Wenninger serves on the Board of Counselors for Social Justice to promote advocacy and allyship within the counseling profession and help nurture development of the professional identity of counselor-advocate in colleagues. Dr. Wenninger makes a point to attend the meetings of the California Board of Behavioral Sciences and in other ways stay on top of laws and regulations affecting counselors and our clients. She regularly provides continuing education courses on topics such as law and ethics of telehealth, culturally informed diagnosing, and antiracism in counseling, and consults with organizations interested in building more inclusive and welcoming cultures.

Does presenter have special needs or require any accommodations?: none
Permission to Record I give my permission to record my presentation for use by Resonant Equity in creating an on-demand version of my training content.

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Respect for Intellectual Property – All presenters attested that: The content to be presented does not infringe upon or violate intellectual property or privacy rights of any other party, including copyright, trademark, and license rights, The presenters attest that they either own the materials to be presented, and/or are permitted by law to use the materials in the proposed program.