Social justice belongs in therapy, because our culture affects us inside and out. We struggle because we live in systems not designed to support our full humanity. Internal and interpersonal challenges are also systemic failures.
To be more present for you, I honor these connections and contextualize our struggles. The revolution may be a long time coming, but right now we can start liberating our minds and spirits from the conditioning that harms us.
Working from a liberatory perspective happens both inside and outside the therapy room. Here are some of the ways I do it.
Social justice inside the therapy room
I strive to understand your feelings, embodiment, thoughts, and actions through the context of everything that makes you you: gender identity, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, ability, religion, body size, relational style, neurodivergence.
Social justice therapy sees your struggles as outcomes of trauma, developmental wounds, and the struggles of existing in a world that does not care about you thriving.
Colonial constructions of individual pathology gave rise to therapeutic approaches that are simply not enough. Cognitive and behavioral models tell us both that our struggles are our fault and that we can fix them through individual thinking and actions. I think this is wrong.
So I choose approaches that are integrative and bottom-up, that emphasize the role of your feelings, body, relationships, and communities as much as your mind. Thoughts and actions stem from emotions and core needs. If we attend to your somatic and emotional experiences, the changes you might want to see in thinking and behavior will follow.
You have inherent wisdom about yourself, and I want to center your agency and consent. I offer suggestions for our work, but never tell you what’s right. We are a team. You know some things, I know some things, and we collaborate in support of what you want for yourself.
Liberatory therapy holds space for the rage, grief, fear, vigilance, and trauma of living in a marginalized body or mind. These experiences are not maladaptive or pathological. They are honest and healthy responses that show deep care for self and community.
For more privileged folks, social justice therapy can be about moving through paralysis, guilt, shame, and other emotions related to privilege and power. I strive to create a relationship that can hold you as you process your own wounds, sit with feelings about your own privilege, get free from shame and stuckness, and find ways to live your values. This can be hard, scary work (I know because I do it), but so rewarding. And while we’re at it, let’s talk about the ways you’ve also been harmed by social conditioning and structural power.
Social justice outside the therapy room
One of my ethics is to learn from those who live it. I learn about marginalization and oppression operating both historically and currently. I want to understand how those forces play out interpersonally and societally to move closer to understanding the effects those systems have on you and on me.
I know I can never be competent in someone else’s culture. What I can do is learn about it through listening, educating myself, and engaging respectfully with others from that culture. There will always be layers I do not understand.
Therapy happens between us, so understanding my own experiences of privilege and marginalization is a necessary part of my work. Otherwise, I risk reproducing power-over dynamics. I will be open about my own identities, and we will talk about how the power differentials in the room influence our work together. And I will own my mistakes, because I’m not perfect and I’ll fuck up at some point.
It’s also important, for you and for me, to cultivate the resilience, joy, connection, and hope that sustain us. Healing happens in relationship to others, to community, and to connection with the natural world. Joy is a form of resistance. And our liberation is bound up together.
