Good Luck Finding a Therapist with Cultural Competence
August 29, 2023 6:16 AM Subscribe
Latinas are breaking generational curses, so why are we seen as malcriadas?
“ Lucia later went on to have a Latina therapist who understood her family dynamics and helped her stop feeling guilty about carving out a life for herself away from her family, but she said that her early experience was a reminder that therapy is not “immune to racism and xenophobia.”
“You’re bound to have some therapists who are basically looking to affirm their own bias or their own beliefs about people of color and people of different ethnicities,” Lucia said.
Whether in a therapist’s office or in articles such as this, Lucia said it’s important to be mindful of how we discuss the abuse that sometimes stems from common Latino family dynamics.
“Many people from many different backgrounds have similarly abusive parents, but I think if we keep relegating these issues to a cultural realm, we’re going to keep having these encounters with outsiders that are like, ‘Yeah, you guys are just more violent,’” Lucia said.
Froio said that writing about Latinos who chose to be estranged from their abusive parents led her to reflect on her own journey as a queer Brazilian and Colombian feminist who now lives near her parents in Rio de Janeiro. Like many of us, Froio had early experiences with white therapists who didn’t understand her cultural context. She now has an Afro-Latina therapist who conducts sessions with her in her native Portuguese, something that helped Froio realize that doing therapy in English didn’t allow her to adequately express her feelings. Many of her therapy sessions focus on her relationship with her family and the ways that being her authentic self challenges the “heteropatriarchy, Catholicism and standards of American whiteness” that they hold near and dear. Confronting these issues — and even grappling with them publicly — is necessary work, she said.
“Latino households are not specifically toxic,” Froio said. “We’ve just been taught this very narrow idea of the family — and that means something very specific for Latinas, who take on a lot in their families and are expected to just give up their happiness. When you set down boundaries with your parents, the conflict might be really bad, but you are helping them evolve into the next phase of your own adulthood.””
“ Lucia later went on to have a Latina therapist who understood her family dynamics and helped her stop feeling guilty about carving out a life for herself away from her family, but she said that her early experience was a reminder that therapy is not “immune to racism and xenophobia.”
“You’re bound to have some therapists who are basically looking to affirm their own bias or their own beliefs about people of color and people of different ethnicities,” Lucia said.
Whether in a therapist’s office or in articles such as this, Lucia said it’s important to be mindful of how we discuss the abuse that sometimes stems from common Latino family dynamics.
“Many people from many different backgrounds have similarly abusive parents, but I think if we keep relegating these issues to a cultural realm, we’re going to keep having these encounters with outsiders that are like, ‘Yeah, you guys are just more violent,’” Lucia said.
Froio said that writing about Latinos who chose to be estranged from their abusive parents led her to reflect on her own journey as a queer Brazilian and Colombian feminist who now lives near her parents in Rio de Janeiro. Like many of us, Froio had early experiences with white therapists who didn’t understand her cultural context. She now has an Afro-Latina therapist who conducts sessions with her in her native Portuguese, something that helped Froio realize that doing therapy in English didn’t allow her to adequately express her feelings. Many of her therapy sessions focus on her relationship with her family and the ways that being her authentic self challenges the “heteropatriarchy, Catholicism and standards of American whiteness” that they hold near and dear. Confronting these issues — and even grappling with them publicly — is necessary work, she said.
“Latino households are not specifically toxic,” Froio said. “We’ve just been taught this very narrow idea of the family — and that means something very specific for Latinas, who take on a lot in their families and are expected to just give up their happiness. When you set down boundaries with your parents, the conflict might be really bad, but you are helping them evolve into the next phase of your own adulthood.””
This is an important article, and I think I would like to see a lot more Latina therapists in particular, and also working in this space because - so often, the traditional advice is "cut your family off if they are asking too much" and that is just. not. useful. advice. It's not just unhelpful advice because I can't, although that is also true, but it's unhelpful because that's not what I want. I don't want to cut off my family. I want to find out how I can tease out a way to sacrifice for them without giving up my whole self. And that is just not a question that white therapists are really equipped to handle.
posted by corb at 7:59 AM on August 29, 2023 [21 favorites]
posted by corb at 7:59 AM on August 29, 2023 [21 favorites]
Even before zoom I had ocasional remote sessions with a therapist in Mexico. Just speaking in Spanish made a huge difference. But he was missing the experience of being an immigrant in the USA. Whole sessions were spent with me explaining some aspect of life in the USA.
I tried and failed to find a Mexican raised therapist with immigrant experience.
If you are in this situation, give a try to remote therapy with someone from your culture. Out of pocket of course, but for example my therapist here has a 10 to 75 USD scale.
I wish you all the luck in the world corb.I am not a woman, there are different expectations for men in Mexican families. Not being willing to bend to my mother’s expectations led to almost no contact. I only see her once every month or two, kind of a supervised visit with my daughter. We keep it civil and she has stopped trying to interfere with my life using third parties. But I do feel guilty at times. I have to fight the urge to make sacrifices, they always every single time backfire. But I have a therapist that has lived through this and is very helpful in navigating the hijo malagradecido labyrinth.
posted by Dr. Curare at 8:33 AM on August 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
I tried and failed to find a Mexican raised therapist with immigrant experience.
If you are in this situation, give a try to remote therapy with someone from your culture. Out of pocket of course, but for example my therapist here has a 10 to 75 USD scale.
I wish you all the luck in the world corb.I am not a woman, there are different expectations for men in Mexican families. Not being willing to bend to my mother’s expectations led to almost no contact. I only see her once every month or two, kind of a supervised visit with my daughter. We keep it civil and she has stopped trying to interfere with my life using third parties. But I do feel guilty at times. I have to fight the urge to make sacrifices, they always every single time backfire. But I have a therapist that has lived through this and is very helpful in navigating the hijo malagradecido labyrinth.
posted by Dr. Curare at 8:33 AM on August 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
I realize this isn't for white people, but perhaps connection-preserving therapy will be useful for people in general.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 10:02 AM on August 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 10:02 AM on August 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
FWIW, there's some resources out there to connect you with a culturally competent therapist.
Health in Her Hue offers access to licensed mental health professionals who specialize in dealing with cultural issues and are constantly being trained on how to provide more inclusive care. The brand is marketed toward Black women and Women of Color, but it looks like some of the therapists listed on the site are equipped to handle a multitude of cultural backgrounds and that “everyone is welcome to find a provider that’s the best fit for them.”
There's also the Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective (BEAM), Trevor Project, Latinx Therapy, and WeRNative.
posted by magstheaxe at 12:13 PM on August 29, 2023
Health in Her Hue offers access to licensed mental health professionals who specialize in dealing with cultural issues and are constantly being trained on how to provide more inclusive care. The brand is marketed toward Black women and Women of Color, but it looks like some of the therapists listed on the site are equipped to handle a multitude of cultural backgrounds and that “everyone is welcome to find a provider that’s the best fit for them.”
There's also the Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective (BEAM), Trevor Project, Latinx Therapy, and WeRNative.
posted by magstheaxe at 12:13 PM on August 29, 2023
Unfortunately the scarcity of non-white therapists in the U.S. appears to be a largely stable situation. :-(
Which I suspect intersects with the conversation about family, as black and Hispanic adults are much more likely to be financially supporting family. The path to becoming a therapist is almost entirely unviable if you have to support anyone other than yourself; hell, it’s barely viable if you just support yourself. When you have people who depend on you for financial support, you simply cannot do what is required of you in our current training system without a lot of luck and/or beating yourself bloody through it.
This, by the way, is also part of why the field is overwhelmingly female. There are, of course, single and independent women in training or working as therapists. But there is a very large bloc that is women who are being financially supported by their male partners; the reverse sometimes happens, but because of gender pay gaps and a general lack of historical precedent re: gender roles and expectations it is very unusual. Because men are still expected to be the primary providers of financial support, training to become a therapist is largely inaccessible to married or partnered men in a way that can be true of women, but in large numbers is not. I am certain this is even more of a relevant issue for men of color, who have their own unique relationships with the support and provider role.
The intent here is not to make this post about Latinas about men, but to highlight how therapist training is really only accessible to a specific kind of person—usually young, white, straight, cisgender, middle-class partnered women. Can this specific demographic be culturally competent? Sure. Will it ever be as good as making the system accessible to Latinas and everyone else excluded from the profession? No. I’m a big fan of DEI education and cultural competency training and even I have become so, so tired of the focus on simply putting in more content and doing nothing to change the reasons why we have so few therapists of any other background.
Great article, though—really appreciate diving into the details of family dynamics and how these experiences play out in therapy. Much to think about.
posted by brook horse at 8:45 PM on August 29, 2023 [5 favorites]
Which I suspect intersects with the conversation about family, as black and Hispanic adults are much more likely to be financially supporting family. The path to becoming a therapist is almost entirely unviable if you have to support anyone other than yourself; hell, it’s barely viable if you just support yourself. When you have people who depend on you for financial support, you simply cannot do what is required of you in our current training system without a lot of luck and/or beating yourself bloody through it.
This, by the way, is also part of why the field is overwhelmingly female. There are, of course, single and independent women in training or working as therapists. But there is a very large bloc that is women who are being financially supported by their male partners; the reverse sometimes happens, but because of gender pay gaps and a general lack of historical precedent re: gender roles and expectations it is very unusual. Because men are still expected to be the primary providers of financial support, training to become a therapist is largely inaccessible to married or partnered men in a way that can be true of women, but in large numbers is not. I am certain this is even more of a relevant issue for men of color, who have their own unique relationships with the support and provider role.
The intent here is not to make this post about Latinas about men, but to highlight how therapist training is really only accessible to a specific kind of person—usually young, white, straight, cisgender, middle-class partnered women. Can this specific demographic be culturally competent? Sure. Will it ever be as good as making the system accessible to Latinas and everyone else excluded from the profession? No. I’m a big fan of DEI education and cultural competency training and even I have become so, so tired of the focus on simply putting in more content and doing nothing to change the reasons why we have so few therapists of any other background.
Great article, though—really appreciate diving into the details of family dynamics and how these experiences play out in therapy. Much to think about.
posted by brook horse at 8:45 PM on August 29, 2023 [5 favorites]
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Unfortunately the scarcity of non-white therapists in the U.S. appears to be a largely stable situation. :-(
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:50 AM on August 29, 2023