Blog

Taking a proactive stance against racism means engaging our minds, bodies and interpersonal selves. How can we develop the capacities we need for this essential and often deeply challenging work? Psychotherapist Eugene Ellis, founder of the Black, African and Asian Therapy Network, author of The Race Conversation and co-editor of the new book Therapy in Colour, outlines three core resources to help therapists stay on – or come to – the path of anti-racist practice.

We are all impacted by xenophobia and racism, whether we are the ones being wounded, or the ones intentionally or unwittingly doing the wounding. Ahead of a free PESI UK Clinical Spotlight webcast on 1st April, author, psychologist and yoga therapist educator Dr Gail Parker explores the implications for our psychological health and wellbeing of living in a culture of unhealed ethnic and racial trauma – and the importance of self-care practices for promoting post-traumatic growth.

What will the therapy profession do in this new year to ensure it stays awake to the reality of racism? What can individuals do to contribute to collective change? After a year of talking and training around these issues, Arts Psychotherapist, Adolescent Counsellor and Group Analyst Anthea Benjamin reflects on ‘black fatigue’ and Brené Brown’s notion of vulnerability in leadership – and shares some ways in which we can all become engaged with power issues and work towards the decolonisation of therapy.

From our courses to our consulting rooms, we are always encountering tensions between compliance and otherness, sameness and difference. So why do trainings continue to marginalise issues of otherness, and discourage explorations of privilege? Dr Dwight Turner explains why intersectional understanding is a tool no trainee or psychotherapist can do without.