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Articles by Kayla Vargas, PhD

Kayla M. Vargas recently completed their PhD in counseling psychology in the Counseling Psychology Program at the University of Oregon. Their research interests focus on educational equity in higher education for Latina college students, critical consciousness development, and supporting survivors of intimate partner violence and sexual assault. Their clinical work focuses on working with undergraduates, identity development, and eating disorder recovery using interpersonal and liberational psychology approaches. Their personal interests include Seahawks football, writing and performing poetry, and finding a song lyric to capture any human experience. They will transition into a faculty role in the Fall at Heritage University and maintain a part-time client caseload. For now, they are focused on developing as a researcher, a clinician, an educator, an advocate, and a human being.

5 Ways to Support Your LGBQ & Gender Non-Conforming Clients in Session

5 Ways to Support Your LGBQ & Gender Non-Conforming Clients in Session

by | Jun 17, 2021 | Clinical Corner

As helping professionals, we share a united goal of empowering the individuals with whom we work to meet their goals. Though it remains important to address social issues on a large scale (e.g., protests, donations, advocating for policy change), a lot of what we do as helpers happens one-on-one. That is, most of us work to empower individuals interpersonally through therapy.

With this in mind, I would like to share tangible ways to support LGBTQQIA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual) and/or gender non-conforming (individuals who do not identify as cisgender, meaning they have gender identities that do not match the sex they were assigned at birth, and/or those who reject the gender binary, or do not identify as male or female) clients in session while also acknowledging the importance of social justice advocacy on a much larger scale.