Reader,

Q:

How do we continue to show up for our clients knowing we are a part of a system that continuously harms and further marginalizes them?

A:

By understanding that while we operate within an oppressive system, we are not part of an oppressive system, but we are actively resisting from within.

By understanding that if we operate within this oppressive system it is not because we believe in it, but because it is the best we can do now, until we have more resources (time, money, energy) to leave the system completely and work on dismantling it from the outside.

Examples of resisting from within an oppressive system:

• Accepting insurance as a therapist because dealing with insurance companies is the key to get to see my clients and for me to get paid (if private pay is not an option in my area)
• If diagnosing is the only option: i.e., if I need to use my client’s insurance for treatment, I only add a diagnosis after having carefully and thoughtfully discussed with my client what a diagnosis entails (who has access to it, for how long it remains in the client’s chart, what is the stigma that certain diagnosis carry and by reminding my clients that having a label means as much or as little as my client wants it to mean).
• Looking for my own community and not expecting bosses or higher ups to provide that for me.
• Knowing that harm may come my way (in the form of microaggressions, criticism, systemic oppression) and knowing that my community will hold me and help me heal when this happens.
• Politicizing our treatment, and by this I mean understanding how laws, policies, and decisions made by local and national governments (and the state of the world) affect our clients and their mental health. Healing, much like liberation, cannot happen in isolation and there is no true healing if we neglect how policies and politics affect the people we serve.
• Understanding that while I resist from within I can still work to liberate and decolonize mental health.

How do I continue to show up for my clients?

By remembering that I am on my client’s side (not insurance’s, not my board’s, or any other westernized/colonial regulatory body’s) and by reminding my clients that it is an oppressive system that is keeping them sick.

I would understand if you want and can leave such an oppressive system by, say, quitting community mental health, opening a cash pay only practice, being able to afford good quality supervision and not just whatever is offered to you at your workplace, switching to coaching so that you don’t have to deal with absurd state or regional regulations. And my hope is that at that point you will do whatever is within your means to criticize and change this oppressive system from the outside.

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The free monthly Q&A sessions (a.k.a. Decolonized Consultation Sessions) are back

If you participated last year, you are automatically signed (but can opt out here if this is not the right time).

🌈 These are 55-min Q&A sessions where you get to ask all the questions you have about decolonizing and liberating your therapy, healing, and/or wellness practice. You get to create community as the group will also offer feedback and suggestions that have worked for them. These groups are a wealth of communal knowledge!

☀️ I’ll answer as many questions we can cover in one meeting.

☀️ The meetings are recorded and shared for a limited time if you can’t attend.

☀️ You can attend to one or all meetings.

If you have not joined yet, you can sign up below:

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And share this email with ALL your therapists and healer friends, I want EVERY therapist and healer to decolonize and liberate their practices. We need to stop undoing the harm caused by westernized therapy practices NOW.

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In solidarity,

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Silvana @ Decolonize Your Practice​

PS.

If you are new to this newsletter, you can read previous newsletter posts here.

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