_edited_edited.jpg){kind=small}
Stop thinking about social justice and start embodying your social justice values.
You'll walk away with:
1️⃣ Answers to your (really common but sometimes puzzling) questions about decolonizing your own practice.
2️⃣ Ideas on how to protect yourself as a clinician with marginalized identities from the oppressive systems you work in, so that you can continue supporting yourself and your community.
3️⃣ Suggestions on how to shift your practice from traditional or welcoming, to radical and liberation-focused.
This space is for mental health professionals:
➡️ interested in incorporating anti-oppressive and decolonized practices in their treatment.
➡️ who want a community of peers interested in having an anti-oppressive and liberated practice.
➡️ to start practicing and incorporating liberation-focused strategies and not just talk and think about the strategies.
When:
🗓️ Dates for BIPoC clinicians:
Session 1: August 1, 2023
Session 2: August 15, 2023
Session 3: August 29, 2023
Session 4: September 12, 2023
🕙 Times for BIPoC clinicians:
10:00am Pacific Time / 1:00pm Eastern Time (all meetings)
🗓️ Dates for white clinicians:
Session 1: August 8, 2023
Session 2: August 22, 2023
Session 3: September 5, 2023
Session 4: September 19, 2023
🕙 Times for white clinicians:
10:00am Pacific Time / 1:00pm Eastern Time (all meetings)
Cost:
These sessions are free of charge
Suggested topics per session (but you can ask what your heart desires):
Session 1: Building a decolonized practice
Session 2: Anti-oppressive paperwork
Session 3: Inclusive treatment
Session 4: Decolonizing yourself to decolonize your practice
☀️ You can come to one or all sessions
☀️ All sessions are free of charge
☀️ A limited replay will be sent to all clinicians who signed up
☀️ Feeling weird or awkward to ask a question in particular during the sessions? Use this anonymous form to submit your questions
BIPoC?
I understand the term BIPoC to mean Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color: Asian, MENA, SWANA, Pacific Islander, biracial, multiracial, and all other individuals who have been systemically marginalized for not being white. Yes, I know, it’s not straightforward!
And if you are Hispanic and/or Latinx/a/e/o I do understand that you can belong to any of the above groups or to a mix of them as well (we're not a race, and designating us as such would erase all of our AfroLatinx or AsianLatinx siblings, just to mention two examples).
If you are a Person of Color who has light-skin privilege, you are welcome to join the BIPoC group if you choose to, while acknowledging your light-skin privilege.
Q&A (about affinity spaces):
🌻 I haven't signed up because I'm not sure which group I fit in. I'm [POC] and white. I have white privilege. I think I'm generally perceived by white people as white but maybe seem more racially ambiguous to my friends who are mixed. Should I be in the BIPOC group or the white group?
It would be oppressive and colonial of me to tell you where you belong. While you may have light skin privilege, your experiences may be those of a POC, and you may carry the intergenerational trauma of a POC. If you decide to join the BIPoC group (and you are welcome in this group), I would encourage you to do so acknowledging your light skin privilege. And if you decide to join the white group, I would encourage you to consider whether you can actually relate to the experiences of a white person.
🌻 Serious question… what are the spaces for non-white and non-BIPoC to attend? I am biracial and for those of us who do not identify or get represented by censuses are left out and have to choose one of these dichotomous groups. Where we inevitably get “othered” by both.
Whether you identify as non-bipoc, non-white, white passing, light-skinned, multiracial, biracial OR if you are an individual who has been seen/labelled as white, but who does not identify as white (e.g. S.W.A.N.A.) OR if you are someone who doesn’t find themselves represented in a government census and has to choose “other”, BUT you are an individual who carries the systemic trauma of having been seen as less than because you are not white, AND you have experienced an oppressive system and marginalization because you are not white, THEN you are welcome to join my BIPoC spaces.
🌻 As a white person, what is the point of being in an all white space when I want to learn from people with lived experience? I'd appreciate a diverse group in order to learn to have hard conversation openly. I believe having leaders of multiple races could be a more valuable experience. Putting white people in a group of all white people seems like it would lead to circular logic and less learning than being in a group with more racial diversity.
While I agree that we all need to learn from people with lived experience, I encourage you to make sure that you are learning from people who have chosen to educate others and who will get paid for their emotional labor, and not from peers in a mixed caucus group who have not necessarily agreed to educate you.
The Decolonized Consultation Sessions are a space led by a liberation-centering psychotherapist (myself) who holds marginalized identities and lived experience. I doubt we will ever find the educator who holds all of the marginalized identities and all of the lived experiences (I am happy to be wrong though, and I would love to meet, read about, or follow such an individual). Therefore, part of decolonizing ourselves, is to actively search for all of the spaces possible, where we can learn from different people with different lived experiences, as opposed to ask for that to be served to us in one place.