Racial Trauma-Informed Therapy
KIMBERLY YAMADA, MCP, RCC (PENDING), VITALITY COLLECTIVE
VANCOUVER THERAPIST
If you are familiar with trauma-informed counselling, you may understand how trauma-informed therapy is a process of ‘peeling back the layers’. Through a trauma-informed lens, a counsellor strives to ‘peel back’ the layers of a person to understand what has happened in their lives and how this trauma informs how they move through the world (yes, just like Shrek said ogres are like onions, so are people! Lots of layers!). Trauma-informed therapy is gentle, curious, and compassionate. Trauma-informed therapy makes space for people to come as they are and moves away from pathologizing - towards seeing and honouring someone fully.
Racial trauma-informed counselling takes a similar approach but includes wider community and systemic relations in this curiosity. Racial trauma-informed therapy moves beyond the individual - working to unpack the weight a person carries with them due to not only their own experience of racial violence, but the intergenerational and ongoing trauma resulting from oppression, colonialism, imperialism, and white supremacy. A racial trauma-informed therapist not only works with you to understand and resist the impacts of oppression in counselling but also works towards dismantling these systems outside of the therapy room. Healing and liberation go hand in hand!
Melody Hope Li of Inclusive Therapists puts it simply:
Society asks “What is wrong with you?”, trauma-informed therapy asks “What happened to you?”, and racial trauma-informed therapy asks “What happened to you and your people? What is still happening right now?”
Hold On, What is Racial Trauma?
Racial trauma is ongoing collective and individual injuries from ongoing exposure to racism, oppression, racial stress, and race-based discrimination. Racial trauma includes the emotional and physical symptoms experienced by Black, Indigenous, and people of colour (BIPOC) due to racism, as well as the collective trauma that may be carried by an individual.
Racial trauma is complex, with many contributing forms of violence and harm. From childhood, racialized people experience threats to their physical and emotional safety due to living in an oppressive world (individual experience of racism). Further, these threats attack not only you but everyone in your community (collective experience of racism). Racial trauma is also the immense weight of intergenerational trauma due to colonialism and imperialism, carrying the pain of your ancestors and histories of violence (historical and intergenerational impacts of racism). On top of all that, systemic oppression is entangled in the trauma racialized folks experience - systemically kept excluded, othered, and minoritized through racism (systemic racism impacts).
Racial trauma is “insidious, mostly invisible, and virtually inextricable” from the experiences of racialized folks (as described by professor and researcher, Kenneth Hardy). The impacts of histories of erasure and exclusion of racial trauma in literature and practice also contribute to racial trauma - without honouring its existence, the pain only continues to grow. Kenneth Hardy also conceptualizes racial trauma as hidden wounds, which really paints a picture of how deep, painful, and misunderstood racism’s impact can be.
Racial trauma is often misperceived, dismissed, or ignored, as the history of psychology and counselling is built upon white supremacy and pathologizing of the BIPOC experience. However, racial trauma has a significant impact on well-being. Racial trauma wounds and oppression are often at the root of a lot of issues BIPOC face, but these are not addressed or acknowledged. Symptoms are treated instead of healing the racial trauma. For example, children and youth are often treated for ADHD, aggression, anti-social behaviours, anger issues, anxiety, etc. instead of the racial trauma that leads to these behavioural concerns. Oversight of racial trauma leads to misdiagnosis, inappropriate treatment, negative impact on therapeutic relationships, and perpetuating oppression. This misunderstanding and lack of attention are likely due to a lack of professional awareness, bias and discomfort, and the exclusive scope of diagnostic materials.
Racial trauma is real trauma. Often, racial trauma and experiences of racism are discounted and minimized in society, so finding a counsellor that sees how oppression impacts your mental health can be powerful and healing.
What Does Racial-Trauma-Informed Therapy Look Like?
Racial trauma-informed therapy should be validating and affirming. Counsellors who practise from a racial trauma-informed lens first need an understanding of the impacts of race, racism, and systemic oppression to facilitate conversations about race. As a client, you should feel empowered to bring up race-related issues in therapy. In racial trauma-informed counselling, talking about race and racism should feel safe and a natural part of the process. Racism is explored in a similar way as any other trauma - with openness, curiosity, patience, and validation. The first part of racial trauma-informed therapy work is that racial trauma must be acknowledged! It sounds simple, but feeling seen and understanding the weight is not your own to carry, but a result of ongoing oppression, can be so powerful.
Racial trauma-informed therapy makes space for anger and rage. Rather than seeing anger as an issue to ‘manage’, racial-trauma-informed therapy understands anger as a normal, valid response to the ongoing violence of white supremacy. It makes perfect sense why someone may be angry and need to express this in a world that continually oppresses. However, if left unreleased and unacknowledged, this rage can be overwhelming, self-destructive, and isolating. The goal of racial trauma-informed counselling is not to get rid of rage but to express and release it, gain awareness and control, then redirect it to fuel empowerment and resistance. Oppressed peoples have a right to be angry and racial-trauma-informed therapy can support people to rechannel rage and process it in intentional ways to release anger in ways that move us forward.
Building community is a crucial part of racial-trauma-informed therapy. If we carry the weight of collective trauma, we must also heal through the power of the collective. In therapy, you and your therapist may work together to find spaces of solidarity, build connections to your people, explore ways to become involved in justice movements and invest in causes that resist oppression. As said before, healing and liberation go hand in hand.
There are many ways in which a therapist may apply a racial trauma-informed lens and many creative ways to work through oppression! These are just some parts of what racial trauma-informed therapy may look like. Most importantly, racial trauma-informed therapy does NOT encourage BIPOC to adapt to oppression in the way other traditional psychology models might. Instead, racial trauma-informed therapy is ultimately about building safety, acknowledging harm, feeling seen, shifting from survival to resistance, and liberating yourself from the violence of oppression.
References:
Hardy, K.V. (2013). Healing the hidden wounds of racial trauma. Reclaiming Children and Youth, 22(1), 24-28.
Menakem, R. (2021). My grandmother’s hands: Racialized trauma and the pathway to mending our hearts and Bodies. Penguin Books.
Li, M.H. [@inclusivetherapists]. (n.d). Posts [Instagram profile]. Instagram. Retrieved January 9, 2020, from https://www.instagram.com/inclusivetherapists