This is One Therapist Whose Political Beliefs Will Never be Hidden…

Ask any therapist, and I guarantee you at least 90% of them (I’m honestly just throwing out a random percentage, don’t actually hold me to it…I really just mean a majority) will tell you that they were told at some point in grad school to be a “blank slate” as a therapist.

Whether explicitly or implicitly (often both), these messages were rampant in my schooling, and it lead to me trying to figure out how to be a good therapist without seeming like stone in session.

Thankfully, my internship was at a LGBTQ+ community space, so there was less of the “blank slating” going around (when lives are literally on the line because our politicians won’t support us, it gets pretty necessary to be open to talking politics in sessions).

But still, as a fresh new therapist, it felt confusing—isn’t it not just my skills and education, but me who is present in the room? Isn’t that also important?

Haven’t I, as a client, responded to certain therapists over others, sometimes primarily because of personality alignment or misalignment? Doesn’t it matter to me as a client if my therapist is aligned with me on the values I hold dearest?

And, perhaps most importantly…isn’t our suffering, our healing, our mental health, our wellness, our liberation political?

The answer is a resounding YES.

This quote from Anna Clarissa Rojas Durazo really captures it: “The western medical model of disease deflects political causation and individualizes the origin of the problem/illness.”

By depoliticizing our suffering, it removes the responsibility that our systems of oppression have for what we often refer to as “mental health problems.”

It says, it’s not racism, it’s depression.

It says, it’s not inequity, it’s anxiety.

It says, it’s not patriarchy, it’s low self-esteem.

It says, it’s not capitalism, it’s low motivation.

It says, it’s not ableism, it’s psychosis.

It says, it’s not imperialism or colonialism, it’s narcissism.

It says, it’s not hyperindividualism, it’s codependence and attachment issues.

The list goes on and on…

…but it all can be put under the same umbrella of this: Our human experiences are directly impacted by our systems and politics, and to ignore those is to be told to slap a bandaid onto a gushing open wound (and then blame the person if that wound doesn’t heal from said bandaid).

This is why politics will always be a part of my therapeutic process.

To ignore them is to ignore root causes. Why would that be helfpul??

I am not a blank slate. I am a full ass human, sitting with my clients, supporting them as they process some really tough shit.

Shit that, often times at least, might be a little easier if our systems were more supportive of their wellbeing.

That matters.

It doesn’t mean that there isn’t any hope because the causes are so big.

It means maybe it’s not a “mental health problem,” maybe it’s a reasonable reaction to some deeply unreasonable things.

And with that, how can we move through the muck with a little more ease, maintaining a sense of hope along the way that if we all keep working together, we can imagine our way to creating a better world?

Therapy is political. Our mental health is political. Our overall wellbeing is political.

Any therapist who says otherwise will try to blank-slate you into thinking that these things don’t matter, that they’re not relevant to the therapeutic process, that politics or systems of oppression or collective liberation don’t have a place in the therapy room.

And to that I say, without reservation, fuck that.