ANTI-OPPRESSION PSYCHOTHERAPY
ABOUT ANTI-OPPRESSION PSYCHOTHERAPY
Seeing and valuing who you are
At Continuing Healing Consultants, we are interested in assisting you in finding and building your strengths. For us, your experiences based on culture, race, indigeneity, socio-economic status, gender/gender identity, age, sexual orientation, (dis)abilities, and spirituality are crucial in achieving your goals.
Over 25 years of experience
We have extensive experience providing psychotherapy to individuals, couples, and families, dealing with some of the following:
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Traumatic experiences
- Life transitions and identity
- Loss/bereavement
- Personal and family conflicts
- Relationships
- Managing personal goals
- Hate crimes
- Coping with diagnosis of medical conditions
- Crisis and anger management
- Transgenerational trauma
- Racism (for example, anti-Black racism, anti-Indigenous racism)
- Intersectional violence
Our therapeutic approach
We integrate Anti-Oppression Psychotherapy with other approaches that we have been trained in. These approaches include:
- Expressive Arts Therapy
- Emotion Focused Therapy
- Cognitive Behaviour Therapy
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
- Brief Psychotherapy, Solution Focused Therapy
- Other humanistic approaches in psychotherapy
Why Anti-Oppression Psychotherapy?
- Because the social determinants of mental health are often the least discussed health factors in the mainstream mental health sector and mental health promotion.
- Because research has demonstrated that racism and colonialism are determinants of health and mental health.
- Because intersectional violence is a determinant of health.
- To promote empowerment and the mental health of those who are disempowered by structural violence.
- To develop and evaluate mental health ethics, practices, and services that foster health equity.
What is intersectional violence?
The interconnectedness of experiences of violence due to oppressions (anti-Black and anti-indigeneity racism, racism, sexism, heterosexism, transphobia, ableism, ageism, classism, and colonialism to name a few).
As the Combahee River Collective (1977) stated:
“We are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives”.
Intersectional violence is a determinant of health and mental health, therefore, psychotherapy and any intervention aimed at promoting mental health must address its impacts.