What is therapy for political distress?
I’m frequently asked what it means that I specialize in therapy for political stress.
Does that mean we can talk about politics in therapy? Yes! We can talk about how politics are impacting your life, causing rumination, or producing or exaggerating specific feelings.
Does that mean we talk about the election explicitly? Yes, if it’s on your mind (and I think it’s on lots of peoples’ minds)!
Does that mean we talk about specific Congressional members or Supreme Court Justices? Sure, if they’re exacerbating rumination, preventing you from focusing on other things, or otherwise causing distress. (You wouldn’t be alone if they did! I’ll admit, I’m often there with you.)
Does that mean we can talk about all the systems of oppression and how groups of people are targeted based on their identities? For sure! These systems impact all of us and hurt all of us, regardless of your identity.
Does that mean we have to talk about politics? No, not at all! Though we may be talking about politics without overtly talking about politics.
The personal is political
You probably have heard the second-wave feminist mantra “the personal is political.” I agree that’s true. What each of us experiences cannot be separated from the world around us, and politics are around us. We may not think what’s happening in the halls of various buildings in DC or Olympia impact us on a daily basis, but it does.
We live in a world where laws and social norms (and morals) constrain much of our behavior. Laws often determine how easily (or not) something can happen. Laws determine who has power in our society and who doesn’t. They determine whether parental leave is paid by employers. They determine how we get healthcare, what treatments are available, and how healthcare might be reimbursed. Laws determine minimum wage and what happens if you lose a job and need unemployment; they determine what constitutes discrimination or harassment. They determine, for immigrants, whether you’re allowed to (and under what conditions) live and work in this country. And that’s just some of what’s happening today–nevermind our histories and ancestors’ experiences.
These things around us deeply impact how full our plates are and much of what we worry about. Because of various systems (which give some of us privilege rather than oppress us), we don’t all have the same worries or same experiences as we go about living in this world. Some of us may have the privilege to read the news and stay informed on politics; some of us don’t have that privilege and instead feel and experience politics as we try to navigate through the obstacles politics have placed in our lives.
Therapy is also political
Therapy is a space where you should feel validated whatever your inherent identities. Whether you’re a person of color, whether you identify as LGBTQIA+, whether you identify as a person with a disability, you should feel that you and your experiences, feelings, and reactions matter.
Various (political) systems impact your experience of being human, whether the climate in which you live and your and your neighbors’ access to housing and to food. Political systems tell us who and what we should be and how we should live (think about what we’re told about “ideal” states of beauty and body size), and the system tells us to “fix” ourselves if we don’t “fit.”
Therapy is also political in other ways, both positive and negative.
On the positive side, therapy’s a place where you can seek wellness or healing. (This may be more radical than we realize! By focusing on healing ourselves and our communities, the systems don’t get the best of us!) In therapy, you create time and space to process or learn to cope with the various structures in our society that create the capitalist grind and reinforce hierarchies that intentionally give some people power while intentionally marginalizing others. You may become comfortable with bucking aspects of these systems and not allowing them to take you for all you’re worth intellectually, creatively, physically, and/or energetically. You can seek to interrupt intergenerational or family trauma and find ways to seek connection in a life-affirming way. Maybe you can find joy. At its best, therapy affirms the experience of being human and helps you find more peace, balance, connection, or self-worth.
On the negative side, therapy suffers from many of the same systemic issues our larger society does. Much of what us therapists learn in grad school and through our on-going education is material originated by (largely straight) cis-gendeed white men. Therapy is part of the medical system, which seeks to pathologize and diagnose. (And what constitutes mental illness is–you guessed it–determined by who has power.) And therapy is expensive, which impacts who receives it. (I’m happy to talk about my own practice of how I balance making a living in Seattle with other communal healing.)
As part of the system, therapy often utilizes individual interventions rather than community-based ones. (For more on this, please read Dr. Jennifer Mullan’s book, Decolonizing Therapy.) Even though therapists are operating within an oppressive system, they can draw attention to that and bring attention to how various systems impact our individual experiences. And that is political.