Statement of Values
as a Social Justice-Oriented Therapist
How do my values show up in our work together?
First, I seek to honor, validate, and affirm your lived experiences. Your experiences and your narratives matter deeply to me. You have the right to be seen and heard.
I welcome conversations about race, privilege, and oppression.
I am humble.
I acknowledge I am not perfect; I will make mistakes.
I do not turn away from topics with the potential to create discomfort in my own being. I do not expect you to educate me or to speak for an entire group. I do not expect you to take care of me or save me from discomfort during these conversations.
If an identity does not feel especially salient to you or does not feel relevant to your therapy goals, I will not force you to talk about it with me.
I seek to create a spacious container, a brave space, for us to connect authentically and to show up as our whole selves.
I will not be hurt or offended if you decide to end therapy with me and find a therapist who is more aligned with your identities or lived experiences. In fact, I will probably praise you for asserting your own needs!
I view therapy as an opportunity to name and make explicit those wounds and injuries that are so often dismissed or denied by White people or people who benefit from existing hierarchical structures.
I believe that your trust is earned. It’s not guaranteed just because of the initials after my name or the words on this page. My hope is that once a felt sense of trust and safety is established, we can co-create a relationship that fosters meaningful growth, healing, and transformation.
What are my values?
I’m committed to recognizing and processing my own culpability and complicity in supporting systems of power, privilege, colonization, and oppression as well as the culpability and complicity of my ancestors.
I actively work to counter and unlearn the harmful biases and social conditioning I absorbed as a White, straight, able-bodied, middle class, cisgendered woman with an American immigration story dating back to the Colonial period. I view this process as a daily exercise in connecting to myself. I routinely examine and question my own implicit and explicit beliefs. I acknowledge the unearned privileges and advantages I have inherited.
I support social justice movements like Black Lives Matter. I take measurable actions to dismantle institutional systems of oppression. I take measurable actions to undo personal patterns and behaviors that contribute to racism, inequality, and exclusion.
I believe in reproductive justice, bodily autonomy, and self-determination. I believe everyone should have the right to control when and if they have a child. Abortion is not a crime.