What Clients Need in Dark Political Times
Among my circles, I hear a lot about how these are dark times, especially in America. I very much understand the sentiment.
We all know the reasons—the livestreaming of genocide, graphic content put before our eyes without consent, videos on social media of police or ICE murders and kidnappings, etc.
Which brings me to Renee Nicole Good. And all the others murdered by ICE that we didn’t hear about becuase they’re not white. And those who are having their cars rammed into by ICE, or who are being dropped off in parking lots bloodied and brutalized but not kidnapped this time. And the general escalation of fascistic control we’re experiencing.
I don’t know about you, but I have a lot of clients coming to session scared, appalled, frozen, or struggling about all of this. It comes and goes depending not just on the news cycle but on their algorithms.
I have really thought long and hard about how to help them because yes, their concerns are very real. And I love that they care about what’s happening. It’s better than tuning out completely.
So how do we support our clients to stay attuned to what’s happening, act in ways that are true for them, but not be completely swallowed by it?
I believe I’ve found a good way through this with clients, which I’ll share here. The key is something I call Socio-Cultural Attunement and it’s the second core principle of SomaField. The essence of it is about recognizing that systemic, cultural, and historic forces shape a client’s lived experience.
So what does that mean in these times?
I offer a messy draft of some steps you could think about with your clients. My point here isn’t that you have to do it my way, but maybe if I share a little it’ll spark some ideas for you and you can make this your own.
I think the most important first step is validation. Yes, this is scary. Yes, what we are becoming in this county is devastating. I think before you even begin a therapeutic process with a client around their reaction to it, they need to know that you’re with them and get them. This can be slow and empathetic and heartful.
Secondly, I think it’s important to offer support around the impact on them and their reaction. This is about the ways we attend to their specific struggle. You might help them feel their body again, remember what their resources are, or get to where they can name out loud what this is doing to them. This part of the process will be dictated by the client’s needs and the modalities and ways you already know how to work with your clients.
Eventually—and this can be minutes or multiple sessions—I think we need to help our clients remember the goodness of life. Not the idea of it, but the felt sense of it in their human heart. Not as an avoidance technique, not as “going to sleep.” But as an embodied truth of their own life. We simply cannot feed our hearts and brains a diet of all that is wrong in the world and not get sick from it. The very thing that will allow us to get active, organize, or help make change is to have hope. So a belief in goodness and an ability to feel, celebrate, and remark on what is good is necessary to our humanity…and sometimes we need help to get there again.
From this place, a creative availability for action can arise. You can help them feel into and wonder about what might feel right for them to do about all of this and how they want to hold themselves in this time, which can be a big part of shifting from feeling powerless to feeling empowered in their chosen actions.
This is why I think Socio-Cultural Attunement is so important in a therapeutic process. Because if a client comes in distressed about the state of the world and then we try to find out what this reminds them of from their childhood or move them straight into action or try to get them to focus on what’s good without the validation, the willingness to stay with the dark truth of what’s happening, or the stage where we explore the impact on them, I think we miss them. It can end up feeling like a tug of war where the client isn’t getting what they need from you and therefore isn’t helped.
Yes, this requires practitioners to be able to recognize that white supremacy is real, that we live in a caste system, and lots of other nuanced and complicated truths about the world as we’ve created it. Not every practitioner has studied these things or understands them or even agrees. And for those of us who are trying, we won’t always get it right.
But I come back to the hope. I invite all of us—therapists, coaches, wellness practitioners—to be curious about the structures we all live inside of and how these things impact our lives and those of our clients. Once we understand those things better, I promise it will be much more clear how to help clients when they’re struggling with these things.
Thanks for being here. May all beings be free and all victims of violence rest in peace.
Please forward this to anyone that comes to mind if you think they’d enjoy it. :)
