Why Representation Matters: Being Seen in the Therapy Room
- Reia Chapman, LCSW, LISW-CP
- Jul 14
- 4 min read
For too many Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), therapy can feel like entering a space that wasn’t built for them. A space where language is clinical, culture is invisible, and trauma is pathologized rather than understood. The harm isn’t always loud. Often, it’s quiet: a misattuned question, a blank stare during a story about racism, a well-meaning suggestion that lands like erasure.
But when we feel seen—truly seen—something shifts.
Healing becomes more than coping. It becomes reclamation.
What We Mean by Representation
Representation isn’t just about racial matching between client and therapist (though for many, that’s a key safety anchor). It’s about cultural resonance, systemic understanding, and embodied presence. It’s about whether the therapy room feels like a place where your full self is welcome.
Can you show up in your dialect?
Talk about spirituality without being pathologized?
Grieve a colonial wound without being re-routed to CBT handouts?
Representation is about whether the room understands that your pain might not be internal dysfunction — it might be resistance. It might be ancestral memory. It might be centuries old.
Why It Matters
For BIPOC clients, therapy often echoes the same systems that caused the wound.
A Black woman being told to “lower her voice” instead of exploring her justified rage.
An Asian client being praised for emotional suppression in the name of “stoicism.”
A Native client’s connection to land dismissed as metaphor instead of lifeblood.
These are not just moments of microaggression — they are clinical ruptures. And they are why so many BIPOC individuals leave therapy feeling more isolated than when they arrived.
But when we are seen?
When our history is held with reverence, not suspicion?
When our truth is met with curiosity, not correction?
That’s where healing lives.
For Therapists: How to Create Spaces Where BIPOC Clients Feel Seen
Let’s go deeper than “cultural competence” and into radical accountability. Here are real, grounded, and non-performative practices:
Deconstruct Your Training
Most therapy models were built through a Eurocentric, individualist lens that prioritizes neutrality over connection and pathologizes survival as disorder.
Question your curriculum: Who authored the theories you rely on? Whose pain was considered valid?
Learn from outside academia: BIPOC clinicians, grassroots healers, abolitionist writers, and ancestral traditions all carry frameworks that challenge the clinical gaze.
Stop Neutralizing the System
Neutrality in the face of systemic harm is not therapeutic — it’s retraumatizing.
Name the systems: Racism, white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, cisnormativity — these aren’t abstract ideas; they show up in our clients’ bodies and lives.
Hold space for rage, grief, silence, and contradiction without trying to “fix” them.
Do Your Own Excavation
BIPOC clients are not your educators.
Examine your own cultural identity, racial biases, and social location.
Reflect on how your clinical instincts are shaped by whiteness, proximity to power, or trauma disconnection.
Make Room for Collective Wisdom
BIPOC clients often bring healing frameworks from their families, communities, or ancestors — don’t flatten them into pathology.
Ask: What does healing look like in your culture? Who taught you how to survive?
Validate rituals, rest, spirituality, and communal care as legitimate tools of transformation.
Reimagine the Therapeutic Frame
The traditional 50-minute, one-size-fits-all format may not honor the needs of BIPOC clients.
Consider flexibility with pacing, silence, storytelling, or somatic practices.
Understand that boundaries are cultural, and that trust might take longer when the world has made safety scarce.
This Work Is Ongoing
Representation isn’t a checkbox — it’s a daily practice of de-centering whiteness, listening with humility, and building spaces where BIPOC clients don’t have to translate their truths.
To be seen in the therapy room is to be mirrored in wholeness.
It’s to feel, maybe for the first time, that your pain isn’t “too much.”
That your silence has context.
That your ancestors are welcome here, too.
🧭 What BIPOC Clients Can Look for in a Therapist
Choosing a therapist as a BIPOC client can feel overwhelming — especially when you’re seeking more than just “help.” You’re looking for safety. Resonance. Care that honors all the layers of your identity, ancestry, and lived experience.
Here are some signs that a therapist may be a good fit for you:
They Don’t Flinch When You Name Oppression
A good therapist won’t shrink away when you talk about racism, colorism, intergenerational trauma, or structural violence. They’ll hold space without defensiveness — and without minimizing your reality.
They Welcome Your Whole Self
If you speak in dialect, code-switch, pray before sessions, bring your ancestors into the room, or cry silently for ten minutes — they honor all of it. Nothing about you feels “too much” or “not enough.”
They’ve Done (and Are Doing) Their Own Work
They don’t pretend to be neutral. They can speak to their own positionality, name their privilege, and acknowledge power dynamics. You don’t have to educate them from scratch.
They Invite, Not Impose
Instead of rushing to pathologize or “fix,” they get curious. They ask what healing looks like for you — culturally, spiritually, communally. They don’t treat you like a problem to be solved.
Their Practice Reflects Values, Not Just Optics
Check their website, social media, or intake forms. Do they name their stance on racial justice, gender inclusivity, or accessibility? Do they link to BIPOC resources? Inclusion shouldn’t be a footnote.
They’re Open to Feedback and Rupture
A culturally attuned therapist won’t always get it right — but they’ll own it when they get it wrong. They’ll repair with humility, not shame or defensiveness.
✨ Let’s Build Better Rooms
If you’re a therapist: Start where you are. Stay teachable. The work is never done.
If you’re a BIPOC reader navigating care: You deserve a therapy space that sees you — not just your symptoms.
🧠 Further Resources (for clinicians & clients)
Therapy for Black Girls / Latinx Therapy / Inclusive Therapists
🎧 Looking for podcasts that center BIPOC mental health? Try Truth Be Told, Black Mental Health Podcast, or Code Switch.
Books: My Grandmother’s Hands (Resmaa Menakem), The Body Is Not an Apology (Sonya Renee Taylor), Decolonizing Trauma Work (Rita Nakashima Brock)
Podcasts: Truth Be Told, Code Switch, Black Mental Health Podcast
Frameworks: Liberation Psychology, Healing Justice, Somatic Abolitionism
Ready to start therapy with confidence?
Download my free Therapy Prep Guide — a gentle, practical resource to help you ask the right questions, name your needs, and feel grounded from the very first session.
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