On being a therapist when the empire is falling

I'll be honest: I find myself feeling less and less attached to my social work license and the mental health field as a whole in these times. Not because I don't believe in the power of therapy and healing; I feel incredibly lucky to be able to do this work. I can't imagine myself doing anything else, especially outside of the context of capitalism.

Perhaps that's the point, though. I constantly find myself wondering what it would be like to take up a role as a healer and not as a state agent. Our licenses are limiting and often carceral and punitive. When we become state agents, we are essentially signing a contract in which we agree to protect our license over the false well-being of our clients. While many of us operate as anti-oppressive clinicians, we are still working within the system even if we are against it. Institutionalizing and policing are norms in our field, and this often puts marginalized folks in real danger.

Here's something that I know many of us therapists don't want to hear: now more than ever, we may be called to break the rules of our licenses in order to protect our most vulnerable clients because we cannot rely on the state to keep us safe. We must detach from our licenses and be okay with disrupting the status quo. This is what we are faced with as clinicians. We are collectively being traumatized and living through the fall of an empire, and at the end of the day, all we have is each other to keep us safe. Are you willing to put your license at risk to protect your clients?

I often name to my clients that we cannot dismantle fascism in an hour. Many of us are asking ourselves what healing looks like during these times. Is healing possible when we are actively being traumatized? My short is yes and no. As a therapist who works primarily with folks with complex trauma and intergenerational trauma from child abuse, neglect, dysfunctional families, and histories of war, genocide, and violence, I know healing from these dynamics is possible because I've seen it and experienced it myself.

And yet, what happens when we are actively in the trauma? Sure, the past is in the past, and we can heal the parts of ourselves that are stuck there. But right now, our nervous systems are constantly cycling between hyper and hypoarousal. Maybe we find moments of reprieve, maybe we expand our windows of tolerance and strengthen our psyche, but I'm not sure that healing as we know it is totally possible. The revolution that is to come is not going to be a walk in the park, either. So, what does healing look like in this context? And what will healing look like after, when we are living in the world we imagined for ourselves? What will our roles be as healers?

Therapists, social workers, and mental health professionals, it's time we release our chokehold on our licenses. It's time that we name the reality of what we are experiencing in real time. Most of us feel dysregulated all the time because the world is dysregulating as f*ck. We must be honest with ourselves and our clients about our roles as state agents and, at the same time, as healers. Don't mistake this as despair; I don't have all the answers, but what I do know is that I am excited for the world we can create and my role within the revolution.