Decolonizing my therapeutic identity: Going beyond the surface

Abstract

In this essay, the author discusses ways people with marginalized identities within training programs may be impacted in their identity development as clinicians of color due to systemic oppression and the history of colonization. The author explores how the lack of literature and representation of non-White individuals in positions of power and the absence of conversations around White supremacy in training programs resulted in the erasure of the trainee’s cultural background in building their identity as an early career professional. This erasure of coloniality, culture, and language resulted in invisibility and silencing of the individual, as well as allowed for the dangers of colonial mentality and socialization toward Blackness going unprocessed. The author reckoned with their struggle to incorporate aspects of their own culture into the work and how the absence of acknowledgment of their Latinx identity in predominantly White supervisory spaces created an experience of shame and inferiority that can be politically localized. The reader is invited to feel and experience through the writer’s lens the damaging impact of these dynamics, revisit ways in which they withhold their identities from the therapeutic encounter, as well as ways in which they may enact this standard of Whiteness in their therapy and supervision.