Check Your Biases as a Therapist OR ELSE

https://youtu.be/fU0YvYkdXPo

We ALL have Biases, whether we want to admit it or not but we have to start acknowledging our own biases as therapists and as people before we cause harm to someone looking for healing. Let’s talk about how to identify what’s going on inside ourselves and keep it from spilling out to those who don’t deserve those presuppositions.

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Today I have something that I want to talk about that I’ve actually never talked about publicly. There’s a phenomenon that happens in my life that I’ve actually never made a video about, never made a post about nothing. It happens in my life very commonly, and it’s related to race. But I don’t want you to get tripped up thinking that it’s a comment about race or that this video is a commentary about race.

It’s actually a commentary about privilege. It’s actually a commentary about bias and how every therapist has biases. And we just need to be aware of those biases, because those biases influence how we see people, how we treat people, and how we talk to people.

So let me explain. I have a very public business, a very public profile, and me and people on my team, myself, Dr. Froerer, or Anna Francis, we make a lot of videos, and we post them on Facebook, we post them on Instagram, we post them on YouTube, we post them all across social media.

And one of the comments that I get very frequently, or one of the kinds of comments I should say that I get very frequently, that none of my white colleagues get, is people will ask me, usually very rudely, what are my credentials that allow me to talk as a psychotherapist. So when we make videos, and myself, Adam and Anna do them frequently, and we talk about psychotherapy. Adam talks overtly and openly about research. We offer different trainings and different resources to psychotherapists.

None of them on my team or none of my other colleagues that are not associated with my business (they’re just in the field) get asked the question, “What are your credentials that allow you to talk about psychotherapy?” But I get that question at least weekly and usually very rudely.

And it makes me think about people’s biases. Why do they see me as different from my colleagues when I talk about psychotherapy? And the answer is, because I’m a black man. And they look at me, and because I don’t look in the image that they expected the therapist to look, I don’t come across as an authority. So they question my authority before they decide to listen to me. And they don’t do that with Adam, because Adam looks exactly like what they thought it would look like. Adam looks like straight down the line, right in the box what they thought it would look like. Elliot does not.

So when they see Adam making a video talking about research, they don’t question whether or not they should listen to him. They just listen to him. And by the way, as they should. Adam is probably the number one person, in my opinion, on the planet that you should listen to above anyone else talk about research. But Adam looks like what they expected it to look like, so they don’t question his authority.

Whereas Elliot, I’m probably the number one resource in the entire world that you should listen to, talk about Solution Focused Brief Therapy. But I don’t look like what people expected it to look like. So thus, before they decide to listen to me, they first have to question whether or not I’m an authority that they should listen to.

And it got me thinking about bias, it got me thinking about privilege, it got me thinking about the positionality. And the truth is, all people have biases. You just have to be aware of them. I wish I could sit here and say that, therapists shouldn’t have biases. But what I really want to encourage you to do is just realize that we all have different privileges, and we all have different levels of disadvantage, and we all have biases. And if you’re going to practice therapy, in particular Solution Focused Brief Therapy, you have to be aware of your biases.

And I’ll give you an example. Because of the way I grew up, and this again, I’ve never really talked about this dynamic publicly. But if you’re not aware of your biases, you can’t do quality psychotherapy, and you certainly cannot do quality Solution Focused Brief Therapy. So I decided, I’ve just got to make a video about this and I’ve got to share the impact of this, but I’m going to openly talk about a bias that I had early in my career that I notice is shifting now.

When I was a kid, I talked openly about my father’s treatment of me, not being always super kind, and not being always very fair, and causing a lot of fear and anxiety. I noticed when I went into this field, and I entered into this field in my mid to late 20s, 25, 6, 7, whatever age I was, I don’t remember with my first job in the mental health field.

And I noticed that I had a difficult time interacting with black men who had facial hair because it would trigger those old memories of me as a kid. So when a black man came to therapy, maybe he was the father of one of my clients, because in those early days I worked with kids and teens, or maybe he was the partner in a couple. It was very difficult for me to be focused and realize that I can trust what this man is saying, because I couldn’t really trust what my dad was saying.

And it was very hard for me to realize that I can treat him with kindness and that he doesn’t necessarily have any negative thoughts or intentions about me, because my father did have those kinds of things and I had to be aware of that bias and work against it.

And over the years, that bias is beginning to shift and change, or has shifted and changed.

But you got to be aware of whatever your biases are, and we all have them. And sometimes those biases cause you to look at someone, and not even realize, but because that doesn’t look like the picture I thought it would look like, I’m going to question the authority, the authenticity, and wonder if I should have to listen to that person. This shows up in your therapy. I guarantee you it shows up in every single therapist’s office and it shows up in my life and social media. But it’s just something we have to be aware of.

So if you want to be good as a psychotherapist, if you want to be good at Solution Focused Brief Therapy, and if you just want to be a better human, be aware of your biases and work against them.