Revealing Colonial Discourse in Therapy
The Hundred-Faced Monster Pt.1
Everything is connected.
We are all fighting the same hundred-faced monster.
The fight has many names.
Free Palestine. Black Lives Matter. Land Back. Pride. Me Too. ACAB. Neurodiversity. Independance Wars. Revolution.
Each and every instance of reclamation of ourselves, our lineage, our relationship to land and to each other is done in the name of resisting the Monster. Robin Wall Kimmerer calls it Windigo Spirit. Many people in my circles call it The System. I like to call it The Machine.
I see this monster as well in the spirit Koh the Face Stealer in Avatar Last Airbender, or in the city of The Capitol in The Hunger Games. This last one is not exactly a monster, but much too appropriate an analogy to let it go.
Koh the Face Stealer by Jared Krichevsky, fan art of The Last Airbender Live Action Series. Check out his art here: https://www.jaredkrichevsky.com/ . Koh shares many similarities with the Noppera-bō of Japanese Folklore.
The Monster makes its way into the therapeutic space, as well. This has been said many ways, and many times, but we cannot afford to be ‘politically neutral’ as therapists when the neutral is killing us, our clients, and the world.
As the monster has many faces, the machine has many parts.
There are many threads that constitute this tapestry of domination, disconnection, and wanton destruction. And so, it is normal to feel overwhelmed. This is, after all, much bigger than any of us. But certainly not bigger than all of us.
Okay, cool. What does this mean for us therapists and healers within the therapeutic space?
If you work with people victimized by violence, marginalised in some shape or form, people of the global majority, The Machine is directly harming them. Hell, it’s probably directly harming you as well.
I join the fight with those who fight the face called Colonialism.
I’ve chosen to focus on anti-colonialism as a central element of my practice as I notice how it connects to so many of the threads my clients come in with.
How every depression, every anxiety attack, seems to touch it through resistance to violence. So many of my clients have been told by the medical system, their families, the academic system, media, and the legal systems that what they are experiencing is a problem within them.
So-called Trauma.
So-called Depression.
So-called Anxiety.
So-called Executive Dysfunction
I can go on and on and am likely to write more about alternate ways of seeing these words from a dignity and resistance centered perspective. As valid, and sane responses to being harmed by the Monster and those who do its bidding through acts of violence and -isms.
Agents of the Monster feel emboldened to act in its stead by being invested with a code of conduct. A discourse giving them the ‘right’ to enact their will (or the will of the Machine) upon others.
The Colonial Code, or Colonialist Discourse
Wade (1999) says:
Colonialist discourse can be defined as a n^work of discursive repertoires (terms, tropes, metaphors, and accounts) that conceal or obscure the atrocities and displacements perpetrated against indigenous peoples and that also limit consideration of the real (and documented) harm done to individuals, families, communities, and cultures while portraying Europeans, their actions, values, institutions, and aspirations as inherently good and progressive, or a t least as superior to the corresponding aspects of aboriginal culture. Colonialist discourse naturalizes the domination of indigenous peoples by portraying it as the inevitable or necessary—if regrettable-result of social or biological forces (Bhabba, 1990; Said, 1993).
Dr. Catherine Richardson Kineweskwew (2009) breaks it down in very simple and easy to understand terms.
The “colonial code of relations” as articulated by Allan Wade (1995) describes an unspoken code that is embedded in the helping discourses of various human services.
The code holds that:
1. I am proficient
2. You are deficient, therefore I have the right to
3. Fix you, diagnose you, change you, intern you
4. For your own good.
Have you heard that one before? I know I have. And I am frankly disturbed not only by how prevalent it is in so many spheres, but also how I had never noticed it before.
And now I see it everywhere.
In schools.
In hospitals and mental health wards and families.
In the way incarcerated folks are forced to endure inhuman conditions as if committing a crime somehow removes someone’s personhood and right to dignity. As if the law was not written in order to support the continued extraction of land for profit and removal of its protectors.
In the way social work can blame the immigrant family who are struggling to find resources to feed and clothe their children, rather than providing access to healthcare, housing, and safety.
I see it in the therapeutic offices teaching ‘conflict resolution and emotional regulation’ to women who have been brilliantly managing the gender-based violence they are subjected to on a daily basis. Who have lost custody of their children for being the ‘crazy one’.
I see it in the use of ABA forcing neurodivergent folks to be subjected to painful experiences and lose soothing practices such as stimming for no other reason than passing as neurotypical.
I see it in so-called conversion therapy, in CBT’s ideas of ‘limiting beliefs’ and much of psychotherapy’s ideas of depression, anxiety, OCD, and pathologization of neurotypes that do not contribute to capitalist production, the twin face of colonialism.
After all, you gotta turn that land you’ve extracted into profit, don’t you.
I know that the first time I realized how much I had been using the colonials discourse within my practice, I became quite disquieted. I felt betrayed. Here I had paid thousands of dollars and spent years of my life practicing something that I was now learning was harmful rather than helpful.
My initial response was to reject it. My second was to engage in self-recrimination. My third was profound relief. I knew, deep in my bones as someone who has also experienced violence that this was a Truth I had not been privy to. One that explained my own anger, ‘acting out’, and seemingly ‘difficult behaviors’ that didn’t align with who I knew I was deep down.
I was resisting violence without even knowing it was violence.
And now I can see it, touch it, feel it. I can play with it, infusing my resistance and rage with love, joy and creativity.
Drama Therapy is finding ways to express ourselves and our experiences beyond words into the realm of the body, spirit, and heart.
Naming is Taming.
Just as an image, a movement, or a character in a story, the word encapsulates a Truth. It becomes a Symbol. A Knowing, once it has been given space to breathe through embodiment, through breath and creativity and color, becomes a bridge between mind and spirit.
And honoring that Knowing through creation and sharing is, in and of itself, grasping the thread within you. The one connecting you to all the others.
And we can let go of the colonial discourse, exchanging it for one of respect and reciprocity.
We are all connected.
–
DEEPENING THE WORK
Read
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin
or
One article from the list found on the Centre for Response-Based Practice Website
https://www.responsebasedpractice.com/publications/#
My personal favorites are
Language and violence: Analysis of four discursive operations.
Taking children’s resistance seriously: A Response-Based approach to children experiencing violence.
Engage through Creation :
Create a poem, an image, and a movement from what your responses (including the ones within your body) are reading about the colonial code.
Create an image or character of The Monster for you.
Share your creations in the comments :)
Much Love,
Nat