Therapists Should Take Public Stands

When I started using Facebook several years ago, it was expressly for professional purposes such as networking and disseminating information relevant to trauma therapy. I avoided posting on political issues, reasoning that doing so would a) distract from the primary focus, and b) risk alienating people who disagreed with me about politics, thus losing the opportunity to reach them about trauma therapy.

For the most part I have stuck to this plan, but sometimes it doesn’t work for me. Not because I just can’t resist giving my opinion. But because sometimes not doing so would make me a bad therapist.

To explain this, here’s a thought experiment.

You’re in a public place (sidewalk, train, restaurant, hallway, whatever) and happen to witness a group of people ganging up on someone: calling that person names, threatening, etc. The names and threats focus on a particular feature of that person (being female, Asian, Hispanic, Black, overweight, homosexual, transgender, intelligent, disabled, poor, Muslim, Jewish, whatever) that you happen to share. OK, only a couple of people in this group are the aggressors. But others in the group are still, well, in the group.

You don’t feel safe intervening, so you move along.

The next day you go to your first appointment with your new therapist. And you recognize them as one of the (passive) people from that group!

Are you going to feel comfortable working with that therapist?

You probably get the point by now, but I’ll spell it out anyway. Bystanders are correctly regarded as complicit – if not as active participants, then at least as the supportive audience. If I don’t want to be regarded as a complicit/supportive bystander, then I have to actively oppose the wrong that’s being done.

And there’s a lot of wrong being done, right out there in the open. Particularly with me being a white male US citizen (though I’m not sure how much this matters in the present context), I can easily be assumed to be complicit in any number of outrages that occur in the public space. When a given outrage is front page news, I am by definition either a bystander, or not.

So I do speak out. On Black (and Native American, and Hispanic) people’s right to get through the day without being beaten or killed by police officers. On Lesbian and Gay people’s right to love and marry like everyone else. On transgender people’s right to use bathrooms, which translates to being able to participate in public life. On Muslims’ and Jews’ right to live in peace. On children’s right to walk down the street or go to school without fear of being murdered. On children’s right to go home without fear of being abused. On women’s right to live with, or leave, their romantic partners without fear of being beaten or murdered. On women’s and children’s right to freedom from rape, and to justice once it has occurred. Etc.

I’ve certainly been disparaged, blocked, and unfriended plenty of times by people who felt offended by one stand or another. I probably lose some prospective clients this way, who may perceive me as a hater or a hypocrite, because I oppose their views or their actions. But the value of tolerance does not require tolerating intolerance. To the contrary, accepting and respecting all people is incompatible with respecting some person’s view that certain kinds of people are less worthy than others or less deserving of rights, respect, or dignity.

Another aspect to taking these stands is that if we’re all about healing the world, the best bang for the buck is prevention. If we can modify social practices and/or government policies to avoid harming large numbers of people, we’re ahead of the game.

I am still glad to provide therapy to all comers, and in fact I am known in part for my expertise in treating people who have harmed others. I am able to respect and care for people even when I oppose certain of their views or behaviors. What I will not do is be a silent bystander when harm is being done. That would be incompatible with my mission to heal the world; and it would make me a bad therapist.