Liberation Psychology
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Many of us are walking around with internalized shit that’s harming us: heterosexism, trans hostility and transmisogyny, white supremacy, ableism, sexism, capitalism, ageism, sizeism… And we’re dealing with the same shit from the systems, communities, and individuals that shape our lives. Our society does not want us to embrace our full selves and thrive.
Liberation-oriented therapy holds space for the rage, grief, fear, and trauma of living in a marginalized body or mind. I reject colonial conceptions of individual pathology and place responsibility for trauma and suffering where it belongs: on the environment. Anti-oppression therapy is about healing, not treatment, based on your own ways of knowing rather than on studies and data. It’s also important to attend to the resilience, joy, connection, and hope that sustain us. We may not be able to escape oppression, but we can liberate ourselves from the conditioning that has harmed us.
I will be open about my own identities, and we will talk about how the privilege or 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.
Liberation is about community. One of my goals is to help you move through the pain of your past and the fears keeping you isolated so that you can reach out and build the connections we all need. Healing happens in relationship to others, to cultural practices, and to connection with the natural world. Anti-oppression therapy is also 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 is 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 differentials.
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The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that
your very existence is an act of rebellion.
—Albert Camus
