I Hate Being a Therapist

- But Not Because of What You Might Think

When I hear the word “therapy”, it makes my insides revolt. I am a therapist, and I also hate therapy. Why are these feelings so strong? This is obviously not gonna be a rant about my clients. My care seekers are the people who still make me want to be a therapist. But if I love my work, why do I hate being a therapist so much?

To start at the base of this, I really dislike the word "therapy" and what it implies. According to ChatGPT (who sourced various “reputable” dictionaries to provide me with this definition), the origins of the term therapy are as follows:

The word "therapy" originates from the Greek word "therapeia" (θεραπεία), which means "healing" or "curing." This, in turn, is derived from the Greek verb "therapeuo" (θεραπεύω), meaning "to serve" or "to treat medically." The roots of the term emphasize both the act of caring for someone and the medical treatment aspect, reflecting the dual nature of therapy as both a service and a form of healing.

Doesn’t sound too bad, does it?

Well, there are some things that are okay and other things that are not so okay about this definition. While serving a person on their healing journey feels in accordance with how I like to view my therapeutic work, too often it is believed that “treating” or “curing” something that is deemed to be “broken” inside of someone is what happens in therapy. This assumption couldn’t be any more wrong.

What Does Curing and Healing Mean Under Colonial Capitalism?

There is an important distinction to be made between curing and healing. According to AI, “curing” implies healing a disease and restoring the “normal” functioning of a person. “Healing” on the other hand, is defined as a process of recovery and restoration leading to gradual improvement. If we take a moment to think about this, we need to ask ourselves what “normal functioning” and “gradual improvement” mean in a society that feeds off colonial and capitalist values.

Under colonial capitalism, treating or healing means getting back to a point of productivity, profitability, competition, capital accumulation, and market efficiency (ie. being able to work, to earn money, to sell ourselves, to buy things, and to be content with that type of life). It means to happily exist in a status quo that upholds the oppressive structures that lead to our unwell-being in the first place. The individualistic mindset most of us (raised or residing in the imperial core) suffer from, then assumes that a person struggling with their mental health is at fault for their own unwell-being. This is entirely incorrect. A person’s mental health struggle is not a disease that needs to be cured or healed within them. In contrast, it is the system we have created that is diseased and needs healing (that is revolution, not pills).

Our Insanity is Part of our Medicine

Many of my anti-colonial comrades and teachers have known long before me that madness and insanity (i.e. depression, rage, anger, anxiety, dissociation, suicidality, or altered states such as “psychosis” - “going mad”) are completely sane reactions to unbearably oppressive systems. Our insanity shows us that the collective “soul loss” (a term seen on @stefkaufman’s Instagram) that we have brought upon our society is not yet being embodied by all of us. That the system has not managed to completely delude us (however, to some extent, it keeps most of us in delusion, otherwise we would have already armed ourselves and resisted the oppressive forces more actively).

So going insane in the face of injustice means you are still in touch with your soul. It means that your soul has a strong reaction to something that’s utterly wrong and unjust. It means that your bodymind is trying to resist colonial and capitalist indoctrination. It means that you are still alive, even if it can feel like the opposite - especially when our bodies haven’t learned how to channel our insanity to our favor.

If our bodies are unable to “function” within colonial capitalism, it is not us as individuals who need to change from within. It is society that needs to shift, the system that needs to be repaired. As a consequence of that, we can start feeling better from within. Taking this into account, the mere act of going to therapy and focusing on an individual’s healing instead of exerting a collective effort to change the system we reside in, becomes a reinforcement of individualism driven by colonial and capitalist values.

Besides signaling that something is utterly wrong with the system we exist in, individual and collective insanity are also crucial responses to initiate healing processes within these systems. We want people to go completely mad at the system in order to change its status quo. We want people to completely lose it when witnessing genocides, police brutality, and other oppressive forces. If not the millions of people infuriated by witnessing and experiencing ongoing harm, who else is gonna do something to change the status quo? Who else is gonna make the world a liberated place for all? Certainly not the people inflicting the harm. Definitely not the states, governments, and intergovernmental puppets that are complicit in it. And clearly not the people privileged enough to look away from the truth. We have to save us. Literally.

Why I Don’t Recommend Therapy to Everyone Anymore

In my early years as a psychologist (I still am in my early years, tbf), I used to want everyone to go to therapy. While confident in my hypocrisy of not even going to therapy myself, I was convinced that if everyone was to heal individually, the world would be a better place communally. It’s not that the world wouldn’t be a better place if people (especially delusional politicians and arbitrary authority figures) would be less wounded by their own bottled up trauma. The problem is that therapy, as it is practised from a colonial-capitalist framework, can be a strong force in reinforcing the harm we are trying to heal from.

I used to think that everyone has a good heart, and that the only problem is that many hearts are broken. That we just gotta heal those broken hearts and all will be well. A fairy tale ending. I was wrong with that one, too. Since then I kind of wonder when in history people’s hearts started breaking. While every single one of our souls is capable of an unlimited amount of compassion, connectedness, playfulness, and generosity - why are there aspects of our existence that seem to be equally capable of supremacy, envy, hate, and greed?

My friend Ṣikemi mentioned how it all may have started with humans realizing that they could dominate non-human animals and become supremacist towards them. If this is the case, it seems like the first taste of greed and domination originated in speciesism, which to me, also means an intentional disconnection between human and non-human life. This is exactly the opposite of what life needs to thrive, that is: a sense of interconnectedness with both our human and our non-human comrades (ie. animals, plants, fire, water, air, earth, stones, spirits, gods, ancestors, and the list goes on).

Zooming back into the therapeutic field of oppression, we should be very clear that Western therapy is made for the most privileged. It works for them, and is usually only accessible to them. It is no surprise that even people who are holding the most privilege and power are unwell under capitalism (though for different reasons than more marginalized folks). But what happens when the most privileged who can access healing that works for them and their colonial-capitalist values, start feeling better?

Exactly! No change. No liberation. The privileged will merely uphold the status quo and will (want to) maintain it (white middle class liberals are a good example of this). Because why would they want to change anything? They live well. They don’t have to feel nor even look at the suffering. Their individual lives work out the way they imagine them to work out, and since they don’t have any sense of anti-capitalist unwell-being, there is no need for them to work on changing the system. Considering all of this, therapy then becomes a reinforcing agent of the privileged getting better, and the marginalized getting worse.

For the many reasons mentioned above, I nowadays often refrain from recommending people to go to therapy. This comes out of fear that the colonial values of a therapist will inadvertently contribute to harming the person (I do, btw, not exclude myself from this). An apolitical therapist that believes therapy and the larger systems of oppression to not be interconnected, will inevitably inflict harm either directly or indirectly (see pat.radical.therapist’s Instagram post below). If I do recommend therapy, I always emphasize to find someone who is working on deconstructing colonial values of care, not blindly reinforcing them. This deconstruction should be a given for the practising therapist in the imperial core, eventually leading to a fundamental paradigm shift within the mental healthcare field and making therapy as it exists now vanish completely. But also, who am I to recommend anything? I want to humbly remind everyone that the truth of what works for your healing journey lies within your own body (though sometimes this truth is accessed not so easily when we’ve been taught to numb our bodies).

To give just one example of colonial care that directly happens within the therapy room, I want to talk a little bit about hierarchy and authority. While in mainstream Western therapy, the counsellor is seen as the expert, the client is supposed to learn and change. The therapist gets to be seen as wise and having their shit together, while the client is in the vulnerable position of sharing difficult experiences with someone they might not even know anything about. The implication of the therapist being able to one-sidedly cure or heal an individual is untrue and misleading. An internal healing process of an individual is naturally two-sided (either from our centered Self to our wounded parts, or from our bodymind to another person’s bodymind). So when processing (e.g. trauma) in the presence of others, healing only occurs if there is a good enough amount of trust, connection, and open-heartedness between those present.

The therapeutic hierarchy is additionally problematic because no other person but yourself is the expert over your own inner system. No counsellor, coach, psychiatrist or doctor should enact authority or some type of agenda over your bodymind without your consent. Therapists, like everyone else, have assumptions about what’s right or wrong. They “therapize” from a deeply biased standpoint, which is their own subjectivity. If that subjectivity is rooted in colonial and capitalist values, it will naturally fuck us up - especially if we are marginalized, but likewise if we benefit from privilege. In the end, colonial-capitalist care harms everyone.

The mere act of taking money for care is probably another aspect in which most therapists fail to practise anti-capitalist care. I know that money is the currency with which we have to pay our rents and survival in this system (pay our survival! isn’t that absurd?), but this doesn’t change the fact that compassion, understanding, healing, and connection should not need to be paid for.

I believe that almost every mental healthcare practitioner in the imperial core reinforces violent systems of oppression by practising colonial care to some extent. Like Instagram user Kia mentioned after I shared a post with a quote by Arundhati Roy on my Instagram story (curated by @muchachafanzine):

“There’s no “they”, it’s us, everything is us. […] we shouldn't think of it as two opposing sides, two ever-clashing contrasting groups of people (on a different level also we could ask what is even "people" but my argument here is less philosophical and more of a practical opinion). To me it seems more like there are different categories of people with different understanding (influenced by their geographical, economic, and socio-political backgrounds to different degrees) and they act according to what they think is the best […] and they affect the world and shape it to what we see and we know. […]

That being said, there are no two categories of “anti-colonial” or “colonial” mental healthcare practitioners, but rather varying degrees to which all of us exhibit capitalist-colonial care. Depending on (1) how much harmful values have already been deconstructed within the individual bodymind, and (2) to what extent this deconstruction is put into practise, we harm people more, or less. It could then be said that, the less politicized and radicalized a mental healthcare practitioner is, the more they will reinforce colonial capitalism in their healing, and the less people and the global community will heal as a consequence.

The Harm I Experienced With Therapists

Both as a client and trainee, but also as an assistant in therapy trainings, I had horrible experiences with other therapists. Thinking about it, most of the fellow therapists inflicting harm upon me did so for me being me: a neurodivergent, queer, anti-zionist, and politicized individual who doesn’t vibe with the status quo.

The experiences I had in therapeutic spaces that were supposed to be safe ranged from hearing a defensive “but you look like a woman” after reminding my personal therapist that I am non-binary, to participating in therapy trainings led by a bunch of zionists and liberals who wouldn’t acknowledge the genocide in Palestine (while reminding me to call the Palestinian genocide a “war”, or otherwise I’d be “polarizing” people, lol - and to please stay “calm” and neutral while bringing this up). Those type of experiences were numerous and harmful, and elicited a strong aversion and feelings of unsafety towards therapy related environments inside of me. They also made me want to associate with therapists and the Western mental healthcare field less and less.

I will give people the benefit of the doubt and clarify that I am aware that those therapists did not have bad intentions. That their harm was a result of their own trauma, of being more privileged, of not having deconstructed something, or of uneducation. What I don’t want to do, however, is to excuse the injustices I or others have experienced with compassion. Yes, people may be delusional liberals, zionists, or fascists because of their individual privilege, their marginalization, or their intergenerational, historical, or personal trauma. There are always explanations. This, however, doesn’t take away anything from the harm they inflict upon others. And again, I look at myself too when I talk about therapists (ie. people) inflicting harm upon others. I too have done so. With genuine honesty and accountability, I want to clarify that I will continue to inflict harm upon people by existing in colonial and capitalist ways that are so entrenched in my being. It is by acknowledging this, that my deconstruction process continues until I, until we, have abolished those ways entirely.

Why Are we Going to Therapy then?

So, if we don’t need to get rid of our madness but need it as a tool for liberation, and if therapy reinforces colonialism, capitalism, and classism - what are we doing in therapy? Are we trying to heal the parts of us that have experienced oppression and are wounded because of the system? The parts of us that carry attachment wounds because of our parents’ unprocessed intergenerational trauma? The parts of us that have been hurting for decades due to historical trauma? The parts of us that feel deeply lonely in a hyper-individualistic system where most of us are taught to only look out for ourselves? Or the parts of us that experience insomnia because we don’t know how to pay our rent the next month and might need to quit our job because its neuronormative work environment disables us?

While personal and intergenerational trauma are undoubtedly real and very much stored in our bodies, the (ongoing) trauma we experience by living in a society that keeps oppressing everyone is the core component of our unwell-being and closely linked to the origin of most of our traumas. Once my care seekers exit my therapist office, they go back into a system full of oppression. Little is done within the therapy room to alleviate the struggles people have to face outside of it. Aside from that, the people facing the most horrors in this world don’t even have the privilege to enter someone’s therapy office. Therapy would probably not even help them. So what is therapy doing, in the end? Making it easier to survive oppression, but only for the “privileged oppressed” who can pay for it or access it in some other way?

This may only be my imagination, but something inside of me believes that if society was turned upside down and made just for all, a lot of our wounded parts would unburden spontaneously. This, or they would heal gradually by making new life experiences full of community, care, love, deep rest and rejuvenation, time for fun and play, interconnectedness with our non-human surroundings, and feeling purposeful and alive. But maybe I’m just in my own delusion, dreaming of a happy ending? I’m grateful for my unlimited imagination.

So do we Need Therapy at all?

Well, it depends. We definitely don’t need it as it’s done in the white Western ways. But we do need healing, care, and support. “Therapy”, if it involves anti-colonial oriented healing approaches (many indigenous healing approaches are, if not whitewashed), channeling our insanity wisely, radicalized education, connection, and care, can be a tool for liberation - under the “right” circumstances and with the “right” person. A perfectly anti-colonial being doesn’t exist, but the right person may be someone who, for example, is open, curious and able to make mistakes. Someone who is able to take accountability and offer repair when trust has been broken, someone willing to continuously learn and deconstruct their internalized bullshit. Someone we connect with. Maybe someone who is like us.

Truth is, I am getting to know more and more mental healthcare practitioners who fit into this category. We are learning. But in the end, who am I to tell anyone anything? If your therapy works and is healing for you, great. Nothing to add to that, I think? If your therapy does not work for you and feels uncomfortable - I would think about finding another therapist, or an alternative healing approach. Authentic self-expression (writing, singing, crafting, performing, moving our bodies!), community, interpersonal connections, existing in nature (and so much more) can all be crucial to healing, even be your main source of healing. We have to stop viewing therapy as the only gateway to feeling better.

It is true that in a type of therapy that works for us, we can release rage and process the bodily sensations that come up as a response to existing in this society in order to have an easier time navigating it. We can heal some of our parts that carry personal, historic, or generational burdens. Somatically process trauma that is ready to be released. We can find connection and feel less lonely. Practise conflict, repair, love, openness, trust, and care. We can do all of this in therapy, theoretically, if we find a healer that shares those values and is not obsessed with their expert-role.

So I guess, well, all of this, is why I hate calling myself a therapist. I don’t want to be a “therapist”. And although I do what I do, and will continue accompanying my care seekers on their healing journeys, I may not even see myself as a therapist anymore. Like Dr. Jennifer Mullan (@decolonizingtherapy) mentioned on her Instagram: maybe you grow out of being a therapist as a natural result of internal evolution and healing. It seems like slowly but surely, we are leaving typical therapy set ups and are seeking places where love and growth are served better (as mentioned on her post below). Be that in 1:1 peer support, peer/affinity/survivor group settings, or non-hierarchical one-on-one healing encounters.

So What Do We Need in Therapy, or Instead of Therapy?

While paid individual therapy sessions don’t seem to be the ideal anti-colonial care set up, if we deconstruct the meaning of the therapist office, it is true that we all need spaces to connect with like-minded people who allow us to exist in genuine authenticity. People who can hold actual space for us to find our own purpose and truth. I do think that a therapist’s office can be such a space if “led” by a politicized person that values curiosity, accountability, care, and repair instead of assumptions, authority, power, and feeling good about themselves because they know how to “save” or “help” us (they don’t).

Politicized therapy can also change the way we embrace our madness in order to become embodied agents of revolution. Instead of mental health struggles being destructive forces in our lives, attending to them in therapy could be a way to bring us closer to finding our own role in life and liberation, and to actively practise our purpose. Instead of needing to get rid of our mad and altered states, getting to know them, befriending them, and listening to what they’re trying to do for us can help them transform to become constructive agents in liberation (for ourselves, and the world). With all of this being said, anti-colonial therapy is by far not enough in regards to working towards liberation, and I believe that most of my work as an agent of liberation happens outside of my office.

Though I believe that when in pure, raw, and genuine connection with one another, we can figure out how to heal, and heal together, I still don’t like calling myself a therapist, nor a healer. To me, all of this implies that I know better, have authority, know what’s right or wrong, what’s healing or harming. And while I do know and have learned some things, and have a certain set of skills and experiences, there are no rule books nor recipes for healing “correctly”. Different things work for different people and abolishing whatever steps of healing I have internalized while trying to just listen closely, as if I knew and understood nothing, has resulted in much better outcomes in my practise than trying to follow an agenda of healing.

In light of this, I absolutely love working with my care seekers, and feel incredibly privileged to have the honour of accompanying them on their individual healing and deconstruction journeys. I don’t need to see myself as a therapist, nor a healer. So what could I be? Well, maybe it doesn’t matter, in the end I’m just another person. Grateful to join others on their explorations. Maybe I’ll just be me.

Acknowledgement: thank you to my friends and comrades Ṣikemi Akinmade, Firas Rafeh, Lea Köhne-Volland, Manel De Aguas, Yara Toubassi, Lynette Masai, Orla Mairéad, and Tomi Tenneber who took the time to proofread this little piece. Thank you for your corrective suggestions, helpful insights, discerning discussions, celebration, and encouragement. Even if this is just a small piece of writing, it wouldn’t exist in the same way without you.