Diversity Dialogue: Skating Around the Ice: Unfreezing Ourselves When Working with Transgender Clients in Groups

Hosted by: Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Committee. 

Skating Around the Ice:

Unfreezing Ourselves When Working with Transgender Clients in Groups

Description:

 When working with clients whose identities we do not share, or may be less familiar with, our anxieties may unwittingly lead, at times, to leave those clients out in the cold. 

As we awaken to the threats that transgender people navigate, both currently and historically, our anxiety may compound. We may similarly find ourselves frozen in the fear that we may unintentionally contribute to these harms if our interventions miss the mark.

In this conversation, we hope to make space to manage our clinical not-knowing and to explore forms of counter-transferential frozen-ness that keep us and our transgender clients from being fully present in groups.

Learning Objective for 1 Ethics CEU:

Participants will identify 2 common barriers that prevent therapists from providing optimal care for transgender clients.

Presented by:

Andrea Gray Perry (she/her) is a recent graduate of the psychiatric/mental health nurse practitioner program at UT Austin, where she pursued additional training through Dell Medical School’s Integrated Behavioral Health Scholars program specializing in youth and families. As a nurse, she approaches psychotherapy and psychopharmacology as part of a seamless continuum of ways in which we seek to offer new pathways of hope, healing, and wholeness to clients. Before training as a nurse practitioner, she worked in domestic violence and sexual assault survivor advocacy, most recently serving as the manager of the sexual assault advocacy program at SAFE Alliance. She currently serves as a subject matter expert on the Texas Sexual Assault Survivors State Task Force and is pursuing a program of research on community health workers' impact on dementia family caregivers and their loved ones. She is excited to begin a year of postgraduate training at the New Mexico VA Healthcare System and looking forward to maintaining connections to the AGPS community at a distance.

Stacy Spencer, LCSW-S (she/her) is a Practice Administrator at Integral Care in Austin, Texas where she oversees campus-based mental health services in four school districts. Services include: on-campus psychotherapy, crisis response, teacher trainings, psychiatric services, peer support and suicide prevention. Stacy also oversees a pilot program, Safe Landing, that provides clinical and case management support to youth in foster care and their families.  Prior to working at Integral Care, Stacy worked at Five Acres in the Residential Treatment and Permanency Programs in Los Angeles County for 10 years. Stacy is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and holds a Master's Degree in Social Work from Columbia University

Location: Address to be disclosed to registrants