Some Views on Therapy

The Struggle

I was a therapist in Chicago for several years before moving to California in 2018. When I first landed on the west coast, I chose to shift my work into coaching, which I’ve been doing since 2019. And while I love that work and my coaching business, I felt pulled to reenter the therapy world! I’m excited to be in this work again after a hiatus.

And also…I sometimes struggle with what it means to be a therapist.

I’m a queer woman who strives every day to engage in the world within an abolitionist framework, and I find that parts of the therapy profession and how it can manifest don’t always align with that.

Diagnoses, inequitable systems, ableism, the family policing system, mandated reporting, lack of nuance or cultural understandings, the lack of Collective struggle, the coerciveness found in so many treatment systems, the ways it encourages us to police each other, the ways so much of therapy reinforces a colonial, patriarchal, white supremacist world…I could go on and on.

Plus, so much of the ideas and tools found in therapy originated within Indigenous cultures, only to later be co-opted by white people, claiming the wisdom as their own.

There’s a lot that’s problematic about the mental health field. And some days, I feel uncomfortable that I’m still working within it. 

I also don’t believe that therapy is the only option…first, because it isn’t (there are so many healing modalities that help people, including being well-resourced enough to access basic needs like housing, food, healthcare, connection, and joy), and also it has historically been (and is still currently, in many ways) used as a tool of the larger white supremacist, colonial, imperialistic, capitalist systems that we’re currently trapped under.

I find that often, therapy can hyper-individualize everything, and suddenly we’re having pretty understandable reactions to horrific systems or situations and asking ourselves why we feel the way we do…even being led to believe that there’s something wrong with us, clinically or diagnostically.

But maybe the feelings you’re struggling with make sense…and maybe we can work together to both normalize them within the context of the world we live in, and also explore ways that you might access more ease and fulfillment in a system that doesn’t make that very simple to figure out.

This work is a collective struggle, and there is nothing “wrong” with you. And also, I do believe that therapy still has the potential to help you explore the ways in which living doesn’t feel so alone, so tough, so disempowering.

It’s not often easy or quick…but it’s possible. And that can be enough hope to get started.