Interconnectedness Beyond the Traditional Therapeutic Relationship

Written Collection

Jun 30

As a therapist, I refer to my “clients” as client community members, client as an adjective, and relatedly, I perceive myself as a therapist community member, therapist as an adjective.

Centering our interconnectedness as community members, beyond the "professional” therapist-client relationship allows me to blur traditional ideas of what therapy is and is not.

Rather than limiting myself to the bounds of what a “professional” therapist can (not) or should (not) do. I can focus on the question:

What are some creative ways that I can support this person, as a community member, while considering my social role and power as a therapist?

Having been harmed by mental health practitioners who were committed to traditional forms of therapy (the oppressive and carceral kind), my embodied knowledges have helped inform more creative ways of doing care and solidarity (both offering, and yes, receiving). So far, my embodied therapy-ish practice has involved blending peer support, mutual aid, and collaboration within and outside of sessions with my client community members.

Note: We can not depoliticize peer support and mutual aid, both of which are strategies of resistance, organizing, and survival among marginalized communities in the pursuit of liberation and in resistance to institutional harm.

I focus on these therapeutic relationships through the lens of, “how can I show up as a community member?” to expand beyond the rigid ideas of professionalism ingrained in the mental health industry.

At the same time, it is also important that I name my position as “therapist” and their position as “client”. As a registered therapist, I have social power, being credentialed (or being made credentialed) and perceived as an expert by the larger society, and I am participating in the commercialization of care as part of an industry. The “professional” and financial aspects of the therapeutic relationship can not be disregarded because I have increased potential to cause harm to my client community members through my ties to the Mental Health Industrial Complex.

And so, I hold both my responsibilities associated with social power as well as the possibilities of expansion in the terms, “therapist community member” and “client community member”. It humanizes myself as well as the people with whom I share these professionalized therapeutic relationships.

I share these questions with my fellow practitioners:

What does it mean to care for one another?

What does it mean to show up in solidarity with our client community members?

What possibilities of care and solidarity may open up if we shift from

“how can I offer care as a therapist?”

to “what are some creative ways that I can support this person, show up in solidarity for this person, while in consideration of my social role and power as a therapist?”

For more on practicing solidarity as therapists, check out the following: