Discover what it means to decolonize therapy and create healing spaces that honor BIPOC culture, identity, and tradition. Your story and healing matter.
What does it mean to decolonize therapy?
It’s a question rising like a tide in BIPOC spaces—whispers turning into voices as more BIPOC therapists step into the room and take up space. It’s a question rooted in lived experience:
Was this space ever meant for someone like me?
The truth? Yes—but with caveats.
Because while therapy can hold us, the systems it grew from often weren’t built with us in mind.
The systems and institutions we navigate today were not built with BIPOC culture, family dynamics, or ancestral roots in mind. Much of the foundational psychological research was conducted on whitemen. So how can this space fully support someone who is Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, or from another marginalized background?
A therapist doesn't need to share your skin or story,
but they do need to care—enough to listen, enough to learn.
Enough to see that for many of us, family is everything.
Community is survival.
Tradition is medicine.
So when a therapist tells you to “cut off your mother” or to “stop eating rice,”
it doesn’t just feel wrong—it feels like erasure.
Therapy that honors culture doesn’t just make space for you;
it invites you in.
It understands that healing isn’t one-size-fits-all.
It knows that to be seen is the beginning of being whole.
As a BIPOC person—and a therapist—I want you to know:
You belong here.
This space can hold you.
It might take time,
it might take trial and error,
but your healing matters.
Your story matters.
And therapy, reimagined through your lens, can be a place where you are not just heard—but understood.
There has never been a more important time to actively practice acceptance and teach the world’s children to do the same. Acceptance is a daily value that needs regular validation and encouragement; giving adult caregivers an opportunity to practice preaching and implementing regularly.
There has never been a more important time to actively practice acceptance and teach the world’s children to do the same. Acceptance is a daily value that needs regular validation and encouragement; giving adult caregivers an opportunity to practice preaching and implementing regularly. Because children engage life with a natural curiosity, insightful adult response is necessary to raise the newest generation to be tolerant, ever helpful, and accepting human beings.
The influence adults have over a child’s forming opinion when curiosity rears its head is tremendous. It’s a heavily weighted responsibility, not to be taken lightly. This means that every eye-roll, sigh, sarcastic comment made by an adult is absorbed by a child. Physical communication as a parent is a major influencer on a child’s ability to truly thrive as an accepting and loving human being.
Acceptance stems from curiosity, empathy, and compassion. Children are taught these emotional states of being as they are taught intolerance, self-absorption, and hierarchy. Ultimately, it is up to an adult caretaker to examine their own levels of intolerance, reactivity, and response so they can teach children to see the world from a more loving place. Mindfulness toward how you feel and what you project toward and in front of children is essential to creating sympathetic human beings who are willing to see sameness in all they encounter.
Acceptance begins at home. It begins within. And with a solid internal foundation of acceptance, sharing with children becomes easier.
Here are three ways to take an active role in teaching acceptance at home.
Looking for a way to enhance the dialogue with children? Anarghya Nirbail, LAC, is a therapist at our practice who specializes in working with children over the age of six. She is formally trained in CBT from the Aaron Beck Institute and is able to implement play therapy in order to engage children in the therapeutic process. Read more about Anarghya, and schedule an appointment with her HERE.
