The Connectivity Bridge – A Clinical Understanding: Postcolonial Therapy with Latinx Women Living in the United States

Abstract

The negative effects brought by intergenerational trauma affecting Latinx women that transmits across generations has not received the appropriate attention that recognizes the cumulative emotional and psychological wounding brought by the experience of migration associated with the legacies of colonialism, political violence, and related stressors. Intergenerational trauma can be recognized and ameliorated with the application of postcolonial psychotherapy modalities that endorse the relevance of cultural representation, identity, and location, with specific reference to migration, gender, race, and ethnicity that focus on promoting liberation and healing. This article will address the interconnections (The Connectivity Bridge) between gender specific cultural values and/or national narratives that perpetuate the colonial thinking of superiority vs inferiority, based on gender and/or ethnicity, and the creation of negative self-identifications evidenced by many Latinx women. A clinical application will briefly illustrate the existing relationship between postcolonialism, ancestry, feminism, and the migration experience that can affect Latinx women living in the United States. Four cultural expectations of gender specific behaviors with ties to colonialism endorsed by Latinxs will be discussed, namely machismo, marianismo, attitudinal familismo or the feeling of support one expects from family, and simpatia, a cultural relational script that also carries gender specific behavioral expectations. An application of a liberation/decolonization healing approach will also illustrate and challenge the assumptions that gender specific expectations of behavior are antiquated and no longer relevant to modern Latinx women with a history of migration, born or residing in the United States who continue being affected by a continuation of the traumatic effects of the previously suffered oppression in the country of origin for many Latinx women and their descendants.