There is honor and dignity in holding both the shadow and the light

Earlier this week, I posted on Instagram about how much I appreciate the ability to show up as a therapist in private practice as my whole self. I feel a greater sense of agency in the process of setting my boundaries, which are firmer in some areas of my practice now and more flexible in other areas.  I am enjoying the increased transparency around my personal subjectivity. This week I dropped off my ballot and voted for Biden Harris. This weekend I will be honoring Día de los Muertos. Both of these parts of my personal subjectivity matter in my work with clients. Both of these personal facts influence the perspective I bring with me into the therapeutic process. 

You may have heard that therapy is not the place for politics, and that therapists are obligated to maintain neutrality in the room, regardless of their personal beliefs. It is true that there used to be a time when therapists were trained this way, and this history still finds its way into many or most training programs. Today, there are still therapists who attempt to practice this way. I am not one of them. In fact, my practice is founded on the basis that our mental and spiritual health is intertwined with the ways in which we interact with the world and the world interacts with us- individually and collectively. Our racial identities and experiences are a core part of how the world interacts with us, and we cannot meditate or therapize ourselves out of the reality of racism. 

You may have seen in my profile that I operate from a Health at Every Size informed framework (HAES) and thought, “what is that?” or maybe it is part of what drew you to my profile! The short explanation is that I operate from a weight neutral standpoint, but am anything but neutral when it comes to speaking out against weight and size discrimination. This means that I don’t care how much you weigh, but I care about the ways that living in a fat phobic world have impacted you. I care about your relationship to food and your relationship to your body -- not what your body looks like or the content of what you are eating. No matter what size, shape, gender, or race you are, you are worthy of dignity, respect, and care. As simple as this core principle is, the world of HAES is beautifully diverse and nuanced.