Should people of colour only receive therapy from people of colour?

Race Reflections AT WORK

In today's episode Guilaine continues her reflections on relationships between Black people, continuing on from her thoughts in this episode: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/15451884

She addresses a question she has been answering for a long time and that keeps coming back: Should people of colour only receive therapy from therapists/analysts/psychologists/mental health professionals of colour.

She focuses on psychotherapy which is a very specific field of work, but asks a question that may be of interest or use to people of colour from all workplaces.

Three reasons why black therapists may wound their Black clients:

1. It is not enough to match people on their race alone
2. Just because someone has black skin doesn’t mean they have done the professional work when it comes to training around racial trauma. (And a lot of training is designed and delivered by white people so this is also a structural issue.)
3. Just because someone has black skin doesn’t mean they have done the personal work around their relationship to whiteness, their heritage, their ancestry, intergenerational wounds, colonialism, etc…

Two more things to consider:

1. There are other skills that therapists may have that are not specifically related to racial trauma that will help people experiencing racial trauma such as anxiety management and other core skills.
2. It’s understandable why Black people might prefer Black therapists, primarily for reasons of safety and trauma

Her conclusion is that everybody would benefit from having skills for working with people experiencing racial trauma, and all training institutions and providers should offer training in racial trauma that is thorough, and supports people to work with people who are experiencing racial trauma and race based injury regardless of their racialisation. And that often racism gets in the way of working therapeutically with people of colour.

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