Decolonizing Therapy: Oppression, Historical Trauma, and Politicizing Your Practice by Jennifer Mullan

Decolonizing Therapy: Oppression, Historical Trauma, and Politicizing Your Practice Reviews

• 
  Ashton Eleazer

  I wanted to like this book and I do love books that center on decolonizing therapy and the important stance therapists should take on being anti-racists and examining their own potential biases and privileges.
  But I do not think this book is anything new from content already in existence. It also doesn’t feel like a lot of this book is actually productive in empowering people who have been oppressed as it feels like it places a blame game on people of the race of systemic oppressors as unable to understand or help or support and that they should just be angry (though of course anger is a healthy reaction to oppression but not without limits). I felt like she kept repeating the same sentiments over and over.
  Yes, intergenerational trauma and migration patterns and epigenetics are important to discuss and should be a central part of treating someone holistically and not pathologizing their behaviors in an isolated context without understanding someone’s history. Yes yes yes. But also to the same note - someone’s family history is not the biggest point of consideration before their own personal history and possible bio-psycho considerations.
  I think the tone is off-putting but many of the messages in the book are important and need to be heard.
• 
  Desert Rose

  This is one of those books that you are proud to display in your bookshelf (for me, it’s an imaginary bookshelf in my future library). When I first heard about this coming out, I immediately said PREORDER, and my expectations were surpassed. Every therapist, everyone in the field of therapy and social work needs a copy of this book. A baseline to the concept of deconstructing the Western mental health institution, this book calls out for the need to uproot the systemic and ongoing harm that’s ridden in the system, shaping and negatively affecting practitioners and those seeking treatment of any kind.
  
  As someone who is entering the field, I am so grateful to have opened up my abolitionist values to this work. I turned to social work to find ways to heal from the prevailing oppressive, capitalist system that rampages our everyday lives. Knowing that there isn’t any living institution that is exempt from the harmful values that make up Western society, I turn to this book to find inspiration for going forward, to learn how I can be a part of revolutionizing the field, to know where I do and don’t belong, to better understand why I am here in the first place.
  
  This is a book I will turn back to again and again as I continue to grow and learn more about what it means to be a social worker and how to fight for a decolonized practice.
• 
  Jackie Paiz

  Quite literally, life changing. Dr. Mullan has me feeling seen, heard, and valued after reading this book.
• 
  Amanda

  DNF - made it halfway through and this no longer feels like a valuable resource; thankfully, there are many available resources that address similar issues better. The ideas are repetitive and the tone is off-putting. Yes, we need to acknowledge research bias, epigenetics, and migration story. Yes, yes, yes. But why not offer more substantive advice for clinicians to move forward?
• 
  Sidney Harrison

  Makes me rage. Makes me hope. Makes me imagine. Makes me feel a connection that I already knew was there. Makes me real fucking glad I consumed this now as I’m going through my education rather than after I’ve already started practicing.
• 
  Gigi

  As a therapist of color, this book sees me on so many different levels. Sums up my whole journey so eloquently and has deepened my understanding and knowledge on how to do quality work in my career. As a new therapist in the field, during a genocide…this book was heaven sent to help guide me in my career journey. I felt so lost these past couple of months, left so dumbfounded surrounded by social workers who have no regard to talk about current events yet after reading this book felt so much more confident, grounded and validated to trust my own intuition to help clients of color on their path towards healing.
  10/10
• 
  Stevie Ekkelkamp

  *4.5- Such a needed book that doesn't pull punches. Mullan, shows the blatant favoritism to theories, clinicians, and conceptions that cater to white European backgrounds. She makes great points around aspects around the theoretical approaches that are adopted which are directly linked to the evidence that validates them. She explains that those approaches are only given the opportunity to have evidence because they are backed by institutions which are in themselves catering to the privileged perspectives that give the finances for research. Thus, it's the wealthy funding the theories that make sense to them and it turn predicating a white bias. These are then brought into insurances due to the "evidence" that validated them, which further validates a white perspective as "correct". Understanding this on a clinician perspective, it broadened my perspective to recognize that I have to be more open to being uncomfortable with my own white fragility to expand my theories and compassion to others.
• 
  Eden Henderson

  You should read this book. Especially if you are in a helping profession. ESPECIALLY if you are in a mental health profession. It’s heavy and a lot but has so much good and rich information. I will be processing this for a while and I feel like it has opened several doors that are going to make me a better practitioner.
• 
  Kristen Schaer

  This book should be required reading for everyone in social work/counseling school, and also for those in practice, for that matter. Dr. Mullan does a a fantastic job of outlining what decolonializing therapy might look like and has given me a lot to chew on for my own practice.
• 
  Nia Avila

  this was a very difficult book to read at first. as a mhp i felt indicted alongside the entire mental health industry. there were some painful reflections that mhp’s will have to endure to read this book. I see in the reviews that many mhp’s dnf due to unwillingness to sit in that discomfort, which is so telling, especially given how we require our clients to sit in discomfort on a daily basis. this book envisions a mental health industry that feels so out of reach at times, but can feel closer to our grasps if we are willing to imagine how runs can be different and are willing to sacrifice the comfort that comes with sticking to the status quo. mhp’s are called to begin decolonizing their professional work through exploring the histories of their families and their people, by uncovering stories of displacement and generational grief. we can only decolonize our professional work and this industry once we accept where we fit in this story. this book leans more reflective that practical, which can be frustrating for professionals like myself indoctrinated by white supremacist and capitalistic beliefs of “doing” as a measure of progress. but i would encourage all mhp endure lol and read this book.
• 
  Shawn (readthehousedownbooks)

  Such a profound work of how to dismantle white supremacy, imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism from therapeutic practice. This book will be a reference for my therapy relationships for the rest of my career.
• 
  Osha Brown-Bear

  heavy yet beautiful and so much to unpack, but already going back through with sticky notes because I didn’t the first time! 😙🤌🏽
• 
  Brit (britlovestoread)

  A good read with lots of important info.
• 
  Roots.Branches.Wellness

  @decolonizingtherapy writes, “Your entire education HAS been a form of colonization. We have been taught to medicalize and treat symptoms, yet we continue to ignore the soul wounds of historical trauma and colonization. We victim-blame by focusing on personal deficiencies and trauma, rather than structural violence.”
  
  Is the medical/mental health industrial complex broken? Or is it working exactly the way it was intended to, or must, because it was founded by a white, capitalist, patriarchy? “Decolonization doesn’t mean “diversity,” it refers to the collective journey toward undoing systemic and individual harm on people, land, cultures, our emotional health, and physical bodies. We are being asked to look at who has taught us, what have they taught, who has it been approved by, and why. Decolonization is a process of asking ourselves: “Whose history is this?””How do your words and actions seek to address what has been stolen/lost?” and “How we can heal?”
  
  This book gave me a lot to think about! My favorite part was near the end, where the author explains her Somatic Soul Trauma Timeline exercise. Similar to a genogram, but with more breadth, it takes into account personal, collective, ancestral, intergenerational, and political experiences. I also loved her invitation to unlearn the following: ”Move away from pathologizing. Practice energetic boundaries, not just physical and emotional ones. Honor righteous rage within mental health. Question professionalism. Hold more spaces for queerness, especially nonbinary and trans folks. Bring all of your own identities into the room when appropriate. Chew on the difference between therapy and healing. Be aware that therapists were trained under white supremacy (consciously or not).”
• 
  August Acuna

  Wow! What a book. I believe EVERY mental health professional should read this during their school years. It’s raw, vulnerable, eye-opening, and inspiring. I took so many things from it and have been more aware of it in the therapy room as well as outside the office. I highly recommend it to anyone who truly wants to make a difference in the mental health world. I’m reaching out to the author soon because she deserves to know how amazing her book is and what’s it’s done for me and my clients. I recommend it to ALL of my therapist friends. I’m glad one of my friends brought my attention to it.
• 
  Emily St. Amant

  Required reading for therapists and all mental health professionals. People interested in mental health and the healthcare industry should also give this a read. Its full of historical context and highlights the desperate need to decolonize the mental health industrial complex and to build effective systems of support and care.
  
  I took my sweet time working through this. Some days I only got through five pages or so, as some parts weighed more heavily on me. I recommend buying a physical copy and slowing digesting this. One reason is that learning takes time, but most importantly, a lot of this was very emotionally heavy. If you’ve been in the field a while or have been deeply impacted by colonial practices (including the -isms), be prepared. This will bring up deep and challenging emotions and will require some processing and space to do so.
  
  For those who are newer to the field, if you’ve not yet experienced burnout or the moral injury most of us community mental health survivors have, it may not hit as hard (and how nice for you, I’m not jealous, not at all…). However, reading this early in one’s career may help prevent some of the harm we all inevitably perpetuate. I say “only some” because the systems we’re educated and practice within are harmful and at this point in time there’s no way to avoid it completely.
  
  I will also say that while most of this was incredible, there were some points that were repetitive. People looking for answers to “what’s next” won’t find them here. I agree that having a blueprint for the inner revolution is needed for systemic change, but I do wish there had been more callouts to concrete solutions that mental health professionals can start championing. Not all of it is rocket science, and there are many people advocating for reality/research-based strategies to save lives and our planet. Some things will require wrestling with as communities, others are very much cut and dry.
• 
  Michelle

  I have been a follower of Dr Mullen’s IG page for years, and was very excited about this book. I have a physical copy but ended up listening to it on audio to meet a deadline for a book club meeting.
  First, just writing a book that tries to capture what it means to decolonize therapy is a great feat and she does a great job of providing background and overview for why therapy needs to be decolonized by citing the racist history in the field and how it can be a tool for further harm via colonization and white supremacy.
  She then goes into some practical ways that a therapist can incorporate this lens in their work. Overall I found it to be a great introduction for someone new to the field and I can see it being used in graduate programs looking to expand their theoretical understanding. It’s also great for seasoned therapists who didn’t receive this training or do self education on the topic.
  Now that I have competed the audio I am interested in looking deeper into the SSTP? Tool that she mentions by looking at the pages of the book. Personally, a lot of what she wrote about was familiar to me and a part of my training but even still I didn’t mind reading it because I appreciated her perspective. It also made me realize how fortunate I am to have been trained in one of the places she mentions in the book as an example of an organization doing the work. Because being there was my first real introduction to the work and I was there for over a decade, I think I took for granted that not everyone has experienced that kind of training or exposure to other ways of working. Until we have thousands of clinics like that in this county, we need books like this one to help pave the way.
• 
  Bookworm

  I spotted this at the library and thought this would be a good read. While I have not engaged in therapy and am not a therapist myself, etc. I thought this would be interesting to see what the author had to say. I know some people have had really awful experiences with therapists and would guess that it partially comes from, well, colonization. So I was wondering what I might learn here.
  
  There are certainly things that are food for thought: Author Mullan discusses how certain things are probably not covered as deeply in therapy but should be: intergenerational trauma, the power imbalance and how much power therapists can have, the need to step out of some of the things and tropes and long held beliefs that might be damaging to a practice or to patients, etc.
  
  It's a lot. Both in terms of what's being discussed as well as the sheer volume of the work. I have to agree with the negative reviews: while I am no expert, I do wonder how much is new or whether a lot of this is simply repackaged for an audience that deals directly with therapy, etc.
  
  I think there's a lot here and there are probably a ton of therapists out there who could stand to read though a text like this (they won't). But all the same I also would not be surprised if they were turned off by the text or the volume or what the author covers, etc.
  
  Ultimately this was not a book for me and is probably not for a layperson who is not a therapist. It might, however, be good for those looking to go into therapy, as a social worker, etc. and I would not be surprised to see this on a college-level or higher syllabus.
  
  Would recommend you borrow this from the library if it really interests you, though!
• 
  Eric

  I promised myself I would finish this, but it's still up in the air as I close in on the final four hours - what a total pile of horse dung! Just because the author carries a "PsyD" after her name does not give her the right to bury us in unceasing word salad intended to upend the entirety of Western civilization. which I am fairly sure is her intention.
  
  I have now heard several sections of text that were repeated verbatim from one chapter/section to another - would be less offensive if she had at least signalled her editor there might be a few rough spots to work on changed the wording. And it would ever so nice if she were to explain fully in just a case or two why she repeatedly rips on the DSM (I too, am less then enamored of it), but she invokes problems with it that are supposed to be evident without explanation.
  
  (side note - I shared early thoughts about how comically bad this work is and we had a good laugh. I asked what they were chuckling about and it turns out their humor centered on humans pranking their dogs with fart humor. It struck me immediately that it would be a tough call to weigh the validity of one over the other as worthy of consideration.)
  
  modalities, indigenous peoples, journal prompt, impactful, generational & familial, trans-personal, felt sense, externalities, emotional field techniques, integrated whole as part and piece of a larger whole, - string together enough word patterns like this over and over again, add few a chapter and section headings, and "Voila!" - you've got yourself a sequel, maybe name it "Decolonizing Therapy II"
  
  I wish Goodreads had negative stars - or at the very least "0"
  
• 
  Shana

  ***Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review***
  
  Having followed Dr. Mullan on Instagram for some time, I went into this book with some awareness of what I was entering into. She does not disappoint in longform, though there were plenty of lines/snippets that could easily be made into graphics for social media. She played to her strengths, and she clearly knows what they are. Content-wise, everything was as expected and delivered as promised. The formatting was interesting, and allows for portions of the book to be used in practice. There were a few topics/questions I was hoping she'd delve into that were briefly mentioned, if at all, but those are specifics that aren't necessarily of interest to a mass audience, so I get it. My minor qualm with the book (or perhaps more largely with the movement to decolonize various systems) is that sometimes in the passion and enthusiasm to present an alternative the Western-centric models, there can be an idealization of all indigenous and/or non-European cultural practices that start to sound like the "noble savage" trope. I can follow the pendulum swing and understand the reason for it, and hope to hold all the varied truths that allow us as mental health practitioners of any and all varieties to maintain critical lenses and most of all, pay attention and listen to the people we co-exist and work with for real-time input and collaboration.
• 
  Allison Damico

  The introduction is so important. It goes over what this book is really about and how you may or may not enjoy it. In a nutshell therapy is political. I liked the sometimes vulgar language to really sell the point, but that’s a personal preference. I would say this is more for actual therapists than it is for us on the outside because it affects how to therapists interact with clients. I could see this also benefitting someone who takes part in therapy as well to see things from the other side. I am neither of those people even though I probably should be in therapy for my own mental health. I did find some parts to be long and drawn out or even in some cases repeated too many times. I understand that sometimes to get the point across it could be repeated but within this lengthy book I think it could have been condensed and had a more impactful delivery. I found this book was a lot to digest so I suggest giving yourself time and space to read it, this is not a quick read. #goodreadsgiveaway
• 
  Cheryl

  May we learn from the Land, from the Indigenous people of the Land, and engage in reciprocal right relationship with the Land, as well as one another. As we slowly awaken, undo, and decolonize our mental and emotional behavioral care systems, may we allow for room to not know and to learn from the people we serve. May we stop calling the people who participate in therapeutic work with us “patients” and “clients.” It is so capitalistic and pathologizing. May we find new language rooted in healing justice and possibility.
  
  Colonialism is one of humanity’s core wounds.
  
  Part of historical and intergenerational trauma is excavating and honoring ancestral trauma. This includes recentering ancestral strengths. We seek to divest from pathology-centered engagement into an ancestral-healing engagement. We must center healing back into our communities. We must center wellness and emotional consciousness. What combats trauma is abundant collective joy.
  
  Beautiful panoramic view of how those of us in the healing professions can start to begin this important work.
  
• 
  Jenny Hickman

  I’m very grateful to have read this book at the beginning of my training as a mental health practitioner. It will be an essential guide in my conceptualization of the overwhelming number of modalities, interventions, and assessment tools to learn about. Looking forward to referencing back to this essential text as I continue to grow in practice and deepen my own understanding of myself and how I move through this world.
  
  An aside—I noticed that a lot of reviews commented about an “off-putting tone” in the writing. Couldn’t disagree more, and I feel that criticism is rooted in a lot of what Mullan is talking about. What “tone” are folks looking for in order to feel this is a “legitimate” academic text? And where did your expectations of tone in educational materials come from? Just food for thought.
• 
  Purple Poofy

  I feel conflicted about this book. While the message is a great one, the actual writing of the book really grated me. It should have easily been half of its size because there is SO much repetition of the same phrases, concepts, ideas. In one chapter the author used the word "deeply" so much, I started a drinking game.
  
  I understand that for some folks repetition may be needed to have the concepts sink in, but I just got bored of reading the same thing over and over again.
  
  I would only recommend this to someone who is just getting into decolonizing work and is very unfamiliar with any concepts about it. For others, this book feels like one to get what you need and get out.
• 
  Whitney Campbell

  Wheeeeewww. I’ve got to sit and stew in this for a long while. I needed this for me. I needed this for the people with whom I work. I needed this for my soul. Did I mention that I needed this for me? Decolonizing the mind is hard work, exhausting work, necessary work, liberating work. I had to check myself a few times when I was rubbed the wrong way with something and sit with how colonized thinking is why I was rubbed the wrong way. Thank you for this work. I checked this out from the library but I will be obtaining my own copy so that I can go back and revisit so much!