By Adam D. Blum, Founder and Director, Gay Therapy Center
When Dr. Shawn Blue attended graduate school to become a clinical psychologist, decolonizing therapy was not yet created or taught. As a Black woman who loved celebrating diversity, she felt that traditional types of therapy weren’t made by or for people with her lived experience.
When Dr. Blue began practicing, she worked hard to create a welcoming and inclusive space, which attracted clients from diverse backgrounds. When she began also working at a teaching hospital, she kept a focus on celebrating diversity. Once she came across the theory of decolonizing therapy, it was a gamechanger to find something that so deeply aligned with her values and passions.
She undertook training in decolonizing therapy and began offering it to clients from marginalized communities who wanted to feel seen and celebrated, and have their oppression understood rather than diagnosed. Now, in our current charged political climate and rollback of progress on diversity, Dr. Blue says decolonizing therapy is more relevant and helpful than ever.
Gay Therapy Center interviewed Dr. Blue to learn what decolonizing therapy is, how it can be beneficial, and why it can work well as a therapy for LGBTQ+ people.
For someone who’s never heard of it, what is decolonizing therapy?
Decolonizing therapy, sometimes called liberation therapy, uses a theory that dismantles the Western Eurocentric assumption that I think has been at the heart of most of our traditional psychological theories.
A lot of our traditional theories are created by and for the mainstream — and that typically is white and cisgender. Decolonizing and liberation theories come from a standpoint of those marginalized identities who have experienced oppression in our society.
Instead of it looking at experiences in a deficit or as a pathology, it’s viewed as strength-based. For example, consider indigenous knowledge and traditions. A lot of times in today’s medicine, individuals are sometimes turned away from utilizing community-based strategies and don’t feel heard when they want more cultural-based therapies. But in decolonizing therapy, those things are celebrated and supported.
Also, our traditional theories are very power-based. Decolonizing theories lack that power differential, so you feel more like you’re collaborating together with the client on issues that are important to them.
We know there are many different types of therapy, such as cognitive behavioral therapy. For those new to it, is decolonization therapy something that’s incorporated into other types of therapy, or is it its own thing entirely?
It is its own type of therapy, though it’s a newer theory. It wasn’t taught to me in grad school 20 years ago! Some medical schools and graduate school psychology graduate schools are now starting to incorporate it.
How is decolonizing therapy different from other types of therapy?
I don’t think other theories or therapies focus on the impact of challenges like racism, oppression, colonization, barriers, and how they contribute to a client’s distress. I think there can be almost an ignoring of some of the societal factors that have played a part in that, and I think people are pathologized for their distress rather than seeing the world as being the catalyst for the distress.
There’s also a difference related to the kind of collaborative, power-sharing relationship we have in decolonizing therapy rather than the more hierarchical model that traditional ones do. There’s a connection to community resources, spaces, and healers, and social justice and advocacy are a big part of decolonizing therapy as well. There is spirituality piece to this too. Decolonizing theory can embrace a culture’s spirituality, which can be really important.
What was it that drew you to learning about and practicing decolonizing therapy?
I identify as a Black cisgender female, and I have always been really passionate about diversity concerns and issues. A lot of my practice is built around marginalized individuals, whatever that may be. Many of my clients are Black women, some Black men, and many are in the LGBTQ+ community.
I’ve helped multiple support groups related to marginalized identities, including an LGBTQ+ couples group and Black couples group. This has been so much a part of my private practice that I could see that the theories we were using weren’t working for our clients. It wasn’t built for them and it doesn’t highlight the strengths of our marginalized identities.
My passion for diversity work, and wanting to find a theory that really worked and really applied to my clients, is what led me to decolonization therapy. Because I do a lot of diversity work and research, I’ve made sure to set aside time to take a lot of training related to decolonizing therapy, and I use it in my practice with my clients. I also now teach it to residents at a teaching hospital.
Is decolonization therapy only for certain types of people or communities, like people of color, or can anyone from a marginalized community, like a minority religion or LGBTQ+, utilize it?
It’s really for any community that’s been colonized, marginalized, or oppressed. That includes Black and brown communities. It includes immigrants and refugees. It includes LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities, and anyone who’s experienced not fitting into the mainstream societal norm.
There’s also a piece around intersectionality; how we all fit into so many different identities as well. Meaning we could identify with black and LGBTQ, or we could interview as Black or brown and immigrants.
There are so many layers to this. A lot of times people think, how do I fit in? How can we embrace all of the ways we identify? Decolonizing psychology can address this.
How can this type of therapy be uniquely beneficial for those folks?
I think it’s beneficial first because it actually sees them and names their experience, and it doesn’t do it in a way that’s stigmatizing or pathologizing. It really acknowledges the strength-based approach that these communities come from, and that’s not always celebrated in the same way with our mainstream traditional theories.
A lot of people who experience decolonizing therapy say they felt really heard and seen. They feel like their culture is appreciated in a way that sometimes it isn’t in the mainstream. Within this framework, there’s the understanding that cultures come with different experiences, and there’s beauty to it.
Also, a lot of the identities that are relevant for this theory come from cultures that have experienced a lot of intergenerational and historical trauma. In decolonization therapy, there’s a combination and balance of personal healing but also collective healing; in marginalized identities, we tend to join together and be collectivistic in our communities. I think this type of therapy gives us a sense of empowerment, because we are seen from a strength base versus a deficit base. It allows us to tap into our agency and our power.
Can you share more about what you mean by collective healing?
Sure, it’s tapping into collectivistic cultures that really embrace the community over self. In American society, we come from a very individualized approach, but at the core of some of our marginalized cultures, we really embrace and celebrate the community aspects — the village and people around us.
In decolonizing therapy, there’s a piece where we focus on our own personal healing around what we need to support ourselves, but there’s also this piece where we connect with our community around collective healing. This could be celebrating in groups around healing spaces, like healing circles. In some of our cultures, things like storytelling are really important and collective. Mainstream therapies typically focus just on the personal, but in decolonizing therapy, we know that the community is very important too.
So it’s looking at the therapy room not as just a silo with the therapist and the client in a room, but them as part of a bigger community?
Yes, exactly!
That’s so powerful. Is the model of decolonization therapy such that even if a therapist doesn’t share a client’s specific identity or culture, they can still come from a place of making them and their culture feel seen and appreciated, and their oppression understood?
Yes, that is the goal. Though there is a lot of education that needs to happen. If I’m a therapist and I’m not intimately educated about that particular culture, it’s my responsibility to educate myself and not use my client as an educator for me. I’m not coming into a session and expecting someone to educate me and explain their whole cultural background to me; that wouldn’t be appropriate.
Now there are times where we’re going to ask for their personal experience within the culture. I also take a very transparent role and share the work and education I’m doing to learn about it. Then, based on what I’ve researched and educated myself on, I might ask about their experience and find out if it differs from what I’ve learned.
I would find shared experiences. Even if you came in from a different marginalized community, I would, as a Black therapist from a Black community, celebrate your culture. I would understand the history of oppression that your culture has experienced. We would talk about systemic barriers. We would talk about cultural discrimination and all of those pieces that might be part of your experience.
How can decolonizing therapy be helpful for people struggling with political anxiety and challenges due to this current climate?
I think it’s especially important right now; there are a lot of people experiencing so much distress related to the many changes being made, and those changes are very discriminatory.
Decolonizing therapy allows the space to honor and recognize and acknowledge the distress that people are experiencing from it. Again, not seeing it as pathological, but just being normal related to the system that we’re in. I definitely think this theory is especially important right now and during times similar to this in our past, where we’ve seen similar climates of political power being misused.
