I Don’t Want to Walk At My Graduation
I seriously don’t.
My school is currently in some hot shit right now. They are a racist institution and they have been perpetuating it through their choices on a deep way lately. Now that George Floyd has had some time to be in the ground the DEI initiatives are no longer “hot” so my graduate programs heart has gone cold in regards to racism. They don’t care anymore. With their decision to disrespect and get rid of black women faculty without a trace and no warning replacing them with white women and expecting us to seamlessly laugh and play along , I don’t want to play. I don’t want to shake their hands. I honestly want to spit in my hand first and have them shake it.
The field of psychology is racist and my school loves the racism. Let me stop mincing words. The school I am getting a Masters in Psychology from has a white Vice President who said Nigga in a meeting to a black woman. The school also in response “disappeared” our DEI director without a trace and genuinely will not be honest about what happened to her. They are telling us not to contact her and that there is a lot of legal stuff going on. I can’t even name my school yet because there is so much that could mess up their own accreditation if they get investigated.
Honestly I don’t care. I’ll get my degree again. I didn’t learn anything at this school. It was a scam. Our classes were trash and the students and teachers were beyond racist. It was such a questionable experience.
I had a white teacher say all her black clients reminded her of Ice Cube and then proceed to do an impersonation of a black man. She also confided in me and specifically said I could hold her trauma because I’m black and proceeded to tell me a sexually explicit story about herself. No one did anything. I went to the Dean and President of the school and nothing happened.
Also there was a student who did a project in our class and in her case conceptualization said there was something about her black client she didn’t trust and said that he was a pathological liar and deserved to be alone. This is someone who is going to be a therapist. The class proceeded to laugh and agree. Also other students talked about their clients of color and clients with lower socio economic backgrounds like they were animals in a zoo.
We were taught racist profiling diagnoses techniques and my teachers spoke of people with severe mental illness, and black people often with disdain and prejudice. This happened so much I just died inside for two years.
Everyone there is too afraid of getting in trouble to say anything.
There is a culture of lying, racism, and corruption in this place, and I worry that this is a reflection of therapists all over the country.
I am worried that our schooling system for therapists in western society makes us no better than the police. Profiling people based upon, race, class, and gender and giving them treatment based upon racist practices and talking horrible shit about our clients.
I don’t want to walk across the stage.
I worry the stench of this place has gotten on me and that I am complicit. I am worried that the field in itself can be weaponized and cause more harm than do good for others.
People always tell me to be the therapist I want to see in the world. This feels like someone telling others to just “be a good cop” but when you are trained to cause harm then what do you do?
How do we unlearn? I am ashamed of my education as a therapist. I am ashamed of all of my schooling. It’s all been rooted in white supremacy and has been really hard for me to reconcile with.
People often sound like robots in my program. It has made so many people soulless. The techniques are not humanizing. We don’t talk to people as though they are human. We see them as problems in need of a solution. We see them as an experiment and a television show with our own bias rather than a human being with human needs.
Our notes are so dehumanizing too. I work in community mental health. I am so disgusted with the way we take notes on others. The county is sick. The country is sick. Capitalism has infected our mental health system and has educated us to become slave catchers for those who don’t meet the status quo.
I didn’t expect to graduate from a program and hate everything I’ve learned. I know others have found some solace in boxes and ways to categorize others and ourselves but I think that is a product of our society that is broken.
I’ve had trouble writing for months because I thought to myself recently that I just need to fall in line. I’ve been really grappling with what does it mean to be maladjusted. What does it mean to be non compliant. Mental illness is often just an excuse for folks to destroy the self worth of those who don’t fit in with the status quo. Obviously this isn’t working since our country has some of the highest levels of suicidal tendencies with all these “therapists” around. Having a therapist and claiming they help mental health is the same as saying cops make us safer in some respects.
We have to decolonize these ways of viewing mental health. It is so helpful for white, wealthy, and differently privileged populations leaving the rest of the world to be called “divergent” and “non compliant” I hate this so much.
The language has entered into the way that therapists talk to each other and talk to clients. We end up reflecting and mirroring rather than hearing, we say things like “that sounds really hard for you” in a patronizing tone, rather than “fuck that sucks.” Why can’t we say “fuck that sucks?” Sometimes I think someone just needs someone else to say “fuck that sucks.” That can be the same kind of validation as “wow it sounds like you’re having a hard time.” I am honestly blessed that I have found a therapist for myself who doesn’t do this. They are the complete opposite of the status quo. They work from a lens of liberation and I love them so much. These therapists are few and hard to find though. I still want my license because I believe in therapy. I believe in healing. I just don’t believe in the methodology of the place I learned it from. I know a lot of other therapists who feel the same.
As a therapist I am going to work from a lens of liberation for all people. I’m not going to talk to my clients with pathological language. I’m not the type of therapist who is going to put their client into a box even if they would feel more comfortable in a box. If you like boxes find a different therapist. We are not dealing with symptoms and we are not ignoring the roots. We are talking about sociological factors which contribute to trauma. We are creating different methods of healing that work for you rather than just have you tried yoga meditation mindfulness and CBT? There is so much more and everyone heals differently damn it.
I don’t want to walk the stage but I don’t want to leave those I love hanging in the balance. I want to celebrate with those who I love who want me to meet their families. I want to still be connected. Though it is tempting to run away.
That’s also my own trauma response. When I feel unloved I run away. The system doesn’t love me, but my friends do. But they are in the system, but I am in the system so do I not love myself? What is love? We have to participate in this to survive one way or another. That depresses the hell out of me. We have to participate due to the fact that capitalism exists. How do we come to terms with that?
Nothing feels like an accomplishment because of the way our world works. I’m graduating but there is still genocide, I’m graduating but there is still capitalism funding the genocide, I’m graduating from a mental health program which is designed to police the reactions and to “assimilate” those who are acting “differently” from the status quo and to put them all in tiny understandable boxes, where we as clinicians get to all say and decide who is “fucked up” and who is “acceptable” we get to break up families with CPS calls based upon our judgement which is often colored by our own bias. We get to write notes about a black man on trial and say that he is untrustworthy and disgusting in clinical terms which adds to his jail sentence. This field is horrific. All these fields are horrific.
I know we often speak about seeing the “both/and” in these situations or the “nuance” but that absolves us from the guilt. There is no absolving from this. If you are choosing this sit in it. Lie in it. Know you are disgusting, and dedicate yourself to trying to create different methods. Dedicate yourself to decolonization. There is no both and with genocide. There is no both and with the carceral mental health system. There is no both and with American Apartheid. There is no both and with systemic racism. That gets us into a dangerous place where we are sympathizing with our oppressors in order to still be accepted by them. In order to be loved by people who will never love us.
There are vice presidents of school calling black doctors racial slurs. Yet we are expected to lick their boots and try to work with them from the inside? We are expected to laugh with them and not demand better? We are expected to hold the nuance of the reason why they do what they do, all the while ignoring the nuance of a black woman being called out of her name and nothing being done?
I hate it here.
Anyway.
I’m walking the stage probably. I hate this. My family wants to see it. My family believes in the tradition of education. I hate this. My family believes in black excellence. I hate this. I want to support my friends who I’m often not even sure if the shit hits the fan would they still stand with me. I hate this.
I hate this.
I hate this.
