Day 4 Reflections

It's difficult because we don't know how. It's uncomfortable. We worry about using the wrong word, or offending, or getting caught in a bias or getting caught "exposing" ourselves. So its easier to walk around it or allude to it without truly confronting it. The impact of not discussing it is that we perform a disservice to our clients and to ourselves. We become complicit. It's hard to say how much the direct impact could be, it's not easily measurable from a single moment. But multiple small moments of silence can lead to a large loss.

The improvement we can make is through educating ourselves more often and better, to make time out of our lives for it, to admit when we don't know something, to be okay with discomfort, and to try.

Racism is difficult to discuss in our field because it is oftentimes uncomfortable. Particularly for White individuals, it can be easy to ignore racial stress and trauma because it does not impact them directly. For some people, it can be easier to ignore conversations about racism than embrace them. By not discussing racism in a therapeutic space, we are may be doing a disservice to clients who are impacted by it. As clinicians, we can improve by being aware of the importance of these conversations, and practicing getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.

I think one of the reasons racism is so difficult to talk about in our field is related to what Robin D'Angelo had to say about white fragility: Many of my fellow clinicians I've worked with are white and would consider themselves as liberal and progressive, and white progressives feel like they've "done the work" or "get it" or don't see themselves as racist because of this. Or think the "BLM" sticker on their office door is enough. I second the above comments, and resonate with the Admin comment about using the wrong word or inadvertently causing more harm, this anxiety is something I definitely struggle with.

I think racism is difficult to discuss in our field because it's difficult to discuss it in our day to day lives--in many ways, I think the therapy space often becomes a microcosm of our larger society and culture, where discussing uncomfortable topics like racism are "easier" to ignore. I wonder if it would become "easier" to bring up racism if it was seen as an important enough to regularly discuss in our homes, schools, work, politics, etc.
The impact of not discussing racism within the therapy space promotes erasure and dismissal of people's identities within our culture. As therapists, I believe we have an obligation to name the topics that clients struggle to name in their lives outside of therapy, especially so that we're not contributing to the "ignorance is bliss" narrative perpetuated by institutional and social systems.