Date: Monday, September, 2024
Time: 12 – 2 pm EST
Format: Hybrid
- Livestream via Zoom, or
- In person: UNC School of Social Work, 325 Pittsboro Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516
CE Credit: 2 CEs, read for full information on credit types awarded.
Fees: $35 (scholarships available)
Description:
In a politically charged climate, the impact on both therapists and clients is profound, yet we do not receive much training on how to broach or respond to the realm of politics within the therapeutic encounter. As therapists, we aim to create an environment where clients feel safe to bring their whole selves and explore areas for their growth. This becomes particularly challenging when clients’ political views may not align with ours, especially in light of the approaching presidential election, ongoing culture wars, and the effects of policies and discourse on vulnerable communities. Research shows that it is not possible to neatly and easily bracket our opinions, values, and assumptions while attending to clients. This workshop draws from internal family systems, liberation and decolonizing approaches, and acceptance and commitment therapy, to offer tools and frameworks for bringing politics into the clinical space in a way that is ethical and healing. Panelists will address how to broach the political world within therapy, talk with clients when feeling triggered, and raise topics of enfranchisement, voice, and rights. Emphasis will be placed on the role of the therapist, using self-disclosure appropriately, managing your own internal system, and ensuring therapy remains a space for healing and inclusive dialogue.
Learning Objectives:
At the end of the training participants will be able to:
1. Describe at least 2 rationales for broaching political topics in session as part of ethical psychotherapeutic practice.
2. Engage with 3 strategies to introduce and discuss political issues in therapy sessions.
3. Apply at least 1 practice to manage personal emotional reactions to political discussions.
Panelist: Asia Tonja Marie Amos, Ph.D. is a rootworker, Afrofantasy storyteller, Pleasure Activist, and witness of the human experience. She received her B.A. in Psychology and Medicine, Health, and Society from Vanderbilt University in 2013, and her M.Ed. in Human Development in 2017 from Vanderbilt University. She completed her doctoral studies at The University of Memphis in Counseling Psychology in 2022 and obtained a graduate certificate in Qualitative Studies in Educational Research. Dr. ATM is passionate about decolonizing psychology and approaches therapy through an integrative feminist/womanist and liberational framework. She runs her private practice Trauma Alchemy Therapy in North Carolina where she provides integrative trauma-informed services rooted in science and soul.
Panelist: Tasha Hunter, MSW, LCSW is a Black, queer listener, healer, writer, teacher, and advocate. She is a liberation-centered mental health therapist who specializes in working with Black women, femmes, and LGBTQIA communities and believes that healing happens most often when we are seen, heard, and understood by those who value our existence, and that liberation isn’t possible without community and collective liberation. Tasha is a Level 3, Certified Internal Family Systems therapist who approaches healing from a non-pathologizing, decolonized lens, and most often provides a safe container for individuals seeking help due to developmental and ancestral trauma, inner child wounding, sexual violence, racism, sexism, oppression, sexual identity/romantic relationship issues, and spiritual/religious deconstruction. Tasha’s clinical practice also includes pre and post integration of psychedelic/ entheogenic medicine experiences, breathwork, somatic practices, spirituality, and ancestral wisdom. Tasha is a Clinical Cohort leader for Naropa University’s Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Certificate Program. Tasha is the author of the recently released, tell me where it hurts: poetry, meditations, and divinely inspired love notes, as well as, the memoir, What Children Remember. Her writing has been featured in the anthology She Lives Her Truth and Marla Taviano’s book, please cut up my poems. She is the host of the podcast, When We Speak. She lives in North Carolina and owns a mental health private practice.
Panelist: Jennifer Plumb Vilardaga, Ph.D. is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist at JPV Contextual Consulting, where she provides direct services and trainings from an acceptance-and-commitment (ACT) lens. She is a peer-reviewed ACT trainer and received her doctorate at the University of Nevada-Reno under the mentorship of Steven C. Hayes, co-founder of ACT. Prior to opening her private practice, she worked as an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke. She has also practiced and supervised students at the PTSD clinic at the Seattle VA, and supervised providers learning ACT in VA programs across the country. She has published widely on ACT and co-authored a book on the use of personal values work in ACT. Her work uses mindfulness and other skills to provide opportunities to better understand own thoughts, feelings, and other experiences and live more in the moment while following a meaningful life path.
References:
- Brown, A. M. (2021). Holding change: The way of emergent strategy facilitation and mediation (1st ed.). AK Press.
- Fitzgibbon, A., & Winter, L. A. (2023). Practical applications of a social justice agenda in counselling and psychotherapy: The relational equality in education framework (REEF). British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 51(5), 665. https://doi.org/10.1080/03069885.2021.1981230
- Goldsmith, B. L. (2020). Turbulent times inside and outside the consulting room: The politics of polarization and hate and the illusion of the Therapist’s freedom from impingement. The Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 60(6), 747-760. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022167820913358
- McCarthy, K. S., & Saks, J. V. (2019). Postelection stress: Symptoms, relationships, and counseling service utilization in clients before and after the 2016 U.S. national election. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 66(6), 726-735. https://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000378
- Nicola, F. & Hanley, T. (2023). Where “culture wars” and therapy meet: Exploring the intersection between political issues and therapeutic practice, Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 23,593–597. https://doi.org/10.1002/capr.12623
- Solomonov, N., & Barber, J. P. (2019). Conducting psychotherapy in the Trump era: Therapists’ perspectives on political self‐disclosure, the therapeutic alliance, and politics in the therapy room. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 75(9), 1508-1518. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.22801
- Spangler, P. T., Thompson, B. J., Vivino, B. L., & Wolf, J. A. (2017). Navigating the minefield of politics in the therapy session. Psychotherapy Bulletin, 52(4).
- Walser, R. D., & O’Connell, M. (2021). Acceptance and commitment therapy and the therapeutic relationship: Rupture and repair. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 77(2), 429-440. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.23114
- Winter, L. A. (2019). Social justice and remembering “the personal is political” in counselling and psychotherapy: So, what can therapists do? Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 19(3), 179-181. https://doi.org/10.1002/capr.12215
- Winter, L. A. (2021). Swimming against the tide: Therapists’ accounts of the relationship between p/Politics and therapy. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 21(2), 303-312. https://doi.org/10.1002/capr.12401
UNC Chapel Hill – Clinical Lecture Series