He is especially upset that people are calling him a racist simply because of his public support of the police department. He says that despite his new efforts to hear from the city’s most marginalized citizens, many people are angry at him and don’t seem to care about his years of hard work. While he admits that a lot of the issues being brought up are unfamiliar to him, especially when hearing from marginalized communities, he tells you that he has always been dedicated to ensuring that everyone in his city is treated equally. Geoff comments that he feels unappreciated at his job for the first time in his life due to public conflicts that are atypical of his city where people “usually get along and are very supportive of each other.” He points to the summer of 2020 and the uprisings around racial injustice and police brutality as the point when “half the city turned against me” because of the arrests of protesters that were happening in the city-a reaction that is causing him great distress and that he feels is very unfair toward him. He claims he has never been to psychotherapy before, nor has he ever considered it, since he traditionally prefers to “deal with his problems himself.” Recently, one of his friends from work mentioned having sought psychotherapy during college and finding it useful, and his wife has been encouraging him to try therapy because of his changes in mood and conflicts at home over the past year. He reports a strong drive to succeed at his job as a city councilor because he wants to create a better city where his wife and son can thrive and enjoy their life.
He reports that he has always been a very hard worker and that he cares deeply about his city where he has lived most of his life. He has come to see you because of depressed mood and anxiety related to changes in his work life that have caused him additional stress. Geoff is a white Footnote 1 49-year-old city councilor in a liberal city in Oregon where he has worked for the past ten years. Finally, a case example is explored using a well-meaning, self-defined liberal white client.
#ENEMY DEEP THERAPY INSTRUMENTAL HOW TO#
The model includes ways for white therapists to engage in the long-term process of self-critique, ways to introduce the salience of race in the white client’s life, and how to connect race and racism to the client’s explicit goals for therapy. A model is offered for how psychotherapists can bring up and work with the topics of race and racism during the course of therapy. This embrace can be particularly challenging for white therapists who believe themselves to be social justice-oriented people, but who nevertheless contribute to racism in both conscious and unconscious ways. This paper argues to embrace the ethical and moral call to actively address race and racism in therapy between white therapists and white clients. However, research shows that race and racism are highly salient for white people’s mental health, and this gap in understanding has negative effects on the well-being of both white people and people of color. Most white people do not believe that race is an important feature of their lives, and this belief continues into the therapy room where race is rarely a topic of conversation, especially for all-white dyads.
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