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Decolonizing Therapy: Oppression, Historical Trauma, and Politicizing Your Practice
A call to action for therapists to politicize their practice through an emotional decolonial lens. An essential work that centers colonial and historical trauma in a framework for healing, Decolonizing Therapy illuminates that all therapy is―and always has been― inherently political. To better understand the mental health oppression and institutional violence that exists today, we must become familiar with the root of disembodiment from our histories, homelands, and healing practices. Only then will readers see how colonial, historical, and intergenerational legacies have always played a role in the treatment of mental health. This book is the emotional companion and guide to decolonization. It is an invitation for Eurocentrically trained clinicians to acknowledge privileged and oppressed parts while relearning what we thought we knew. Ignoring collective global trauma makes delivering effective therapy impossible; not knowing how to interrogate privilege (as a therapist, client, or both) makes healing elusive; and shying away from understanding how we as professionals may be participating in oppression is irresponsible. 15 black-and-white figures; 2 tables
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Published January 16, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 139 reviews
May 27, 2025
Amazing topic to talk about in that there's so much to talk about! I've felt for a long time that colonization and religious imperialism were mere tools of capitalism. I still do, and I believe that if the Bible got one thing right, it's that the greed of money is the root of all evil. I believe that this pursuit of wealth is the root cause of all the damage done in this world.
What this book does for me is to reframe mental health as an industrialized complex where systemic racism, ableism, homophobia, lookism, fatphobia, etc. control mental healthcare - at least in the US. It never occurred to me that it's the healthcare professionals who set the standards for what normal is and that it's the people and companies in powerful positions who get to decide what those standards should be. This explains why, for example, homosexuality was once considered a mental illness and why it no longer is. Mullan posits that it's white supremacists who are at the top of the social hierarchy and who ensure that mental health is defined by their image of desired health. She also adds the not-so-secret agenda of pharmaceutical companies driven by profit seeking ventures, which are also headed up by people who are best served by white supremacy.
I could see Mullan's point of view. I need to think through how true I think these positions are. I think there's definitely some truth in it, but I need to assess whether I agree with these statements wholeheartedly.
The rest of the book contains her arguments as well as a lot of advice/suggestions on how to improve mental healthcare for populations most effected by the intergenerational traumas caused by colonization. I would rate this book higher, except that it wasn't enjoyable or engaging enough to read. It was informative, educational, and even in some ways, inspirational. But it was too dense. Getting through it felt like walking through mud. I think it's a very important book out there, but it does seem closer to a PhD thesis than anything else.
3.5
What this book does for me is to reframe mental health as an industrialized complex where systemic racism, ableism, homophobia, lookism, fatphobia, etc. control mental healthcare - at least in the US. It never occurred to me that it's the healthcare professionals who set the standards for what normal is and that it's the people and companies in powerful positions who get to decide what those standards should be. This explains why, for example, homosexuality was once considered a mental illness and why it no longer is. Mullan posits that it's white supremacists who are at the top of the social hierarchy and who ensure that mental health is defined by their image of desired health. She also adds the not-so-secret agenda of pharmaceutical companies driven by profit seeking ventures, which are also headed up by people who are best served by white supremacy.
I could see Mullan's point of view. I need to think through how true I think these positions are. I think there's definitely some truth in it, but I need to assess whether I agree with these statements wholeheartedly.
The rest of the book contains her arguments as well as a lot of advice/suggestions on how to improve mental healthcare for populations most effected by the intergenerational traumas caused by colonization. I would rate this book higher, except that it wasn't enjoyable or engaging enough to read. It was informative, educational, and even in some ways, inspirational. But it was too dense. Getting through it felt like walking through mud. I think it's a very important book out there, but it does seem closer to a PhD thesis than anything else.
3.5
March 4, 2024
I wanted to like this book and I do love books that center on decolonizing therapy and the important stance therapists should take on being anti-racists and examining their own potential biases and privileges.
But I do not think this book is anything new from content already in existence. It also doesn’t feel like a lot of this book is actually productive in empowering people who have been oppressed as it feels like it places a blame game on people of the race of systemic oppressors as unable to understand or help or support and that they should just be angry (though of course anger is a healthy reaction to oppression but not without limits). I felt like she kept repeating the same sentiments over and over.
Yes, intergenerational trauma and migration patterns and epigenetics are important to discuss and should be a central part of treating someone holistically and not pathologizing their behaviors in an isolated context without understanding someone’s history. Yes yes yes. But also to the same note - someone’s family history is not the biggest point of consideration before their own personal history and possible bio-psycho considerations.
I think the tone is off-putting but many of the messages in the book are important and need to be heard.
But I do not think this book is anything new from content already in existence. It also doesn’t feel like a lot of this book is actually productive in empowering people who have been oppressed as it feels like it places a blame game on people of the race of systemic oppressors as unable to understand or help or support and that they should just be angry (though of course anger is a healthy reaction to oppression but not without limits). I felt like she kept repeating the same sentiments over and over.
Yes, intergenerational trauma and migration patterns and epigenetics are important to discuss and should be a central part of treating someone holistically and not pathologizing their behaviors in an isolated context without understanding someone’s history. Yes yes yes. But also to the same note - someone’s family history is not the biggest point of consideration before their own personal history and possible bio-psycho considerations.
I think the tone is off-putting but many of the messages in the book are important and need to be heard.
February 10, 2024
This is one of those books that you are proud to display in your bookshelf (for me, it’s an imaginary bookshelf in my future library). When I first heard about this coming out, I immediately said PREORDER, and my expectations were surpassed. Every therapist, everyone in the field of therapy and social work needs a copy of this book. A baseline to the concept of deconstructing the Western mental health institution, this book calls out for the need to uproot the systemic and ongoing harm that’s ridden in the system, shaping and negatively affecting practitioners and those seeking treatment of any kind.
As someone who is entering the field, I am so grateful to have opened up my abolitionist values to this work. I turned to social work to find ways to heal from the prevailing oppressive, capitalist system that rampages our everyday lives. Knowing that there isn’t any living institution that is exempt from the harmful values that make up Western society, I turn to this book to find inspiration for going forward, to learn how I can be a part of revolutionizing the field, to know where I do and don’t belong, to better understand why I am here in the first place.
This is a book I will turn back to again and again as I continue to grow and learn more about what it means to be a social worker and how to fight for a decolonized practice.
As someone who is entering the field, I am so grateful to have opened up my abolitionist values to this work. I turned to social work to find ways to heal from the prevailing oppressive, capitalist system that rampages our everyday lives. Knowing that there isn’t any living institution that is exempt from the harmful values that make up Western society, I turn to this book to find inspiration for going forward, to learn how I can be a part of revolutionizing the field, to know where I do and don’t belong, to better understand why I am here in the first place.
This is a book I will turn back to again and again as I continue to grow and learn more about what it means to be a social worker and how to fight for a decolonized practice.
April 6, 2024
DNF - made it halfway through and this no longer feels like a valuable resource; thankfully, there are many available resources that address similar issues better. The ideas are repetitive and the tone is off-putting. Yes, we need to acknowledge research bias, epigenetics, and migration story. Yes, yes, yes. But why not offer more substantive advice for clinicians to move forward?
October 12, 2024
Dr. Mullan went in. There was a blend of decolonizing practice, review of appropriated cultural practices and the unapologetic challenge of the colonial structures within of our mental health system. This book is so powerful.
November 14, 2023
Quite literally, life changing. Dr. Mullan has me feeling seen, heard, and valued after reading this book.
March 4, 2024
As a therapist of color, this book sees me on so many different levels. Sums up my whole journey so eloquently and has deepened my understanding and knowledge on how to do quality work in my career. As a new therapist in the field, during a genocide…this book was heaven sent to help guide me in my career journey. I felt so lost these past couple of months, left so dumbfounded surrounded by social workers who have no regard to talk about current events yet after reading this book felt so much more confident, grounded and validated to trust my own intuition to help clients of color on their path towards healing.
10/10
10/10
October 2, 2024
Writing style frustrated me. The book felt more like a political speech, addressing crucial issues, but light on details how those ideals could be accomplished. I was hoping for and expected a lot more specific take-aways. Found the short section of resources at the end to be most helpful
July 8, 2025
Fantastic.
This might be a book I re-read every year as a reminder to keep doing the work, and how to support myself and others in this work.
This might be a book I re-read every year as a reminder to keep doing the work, and how to support myself and others in this work.
April 15, 2024
This is a truly fantastic read. Enlightening, insightful, thought provoking. Not only is it an indictment of the Mental Health Industrial Complex, but it is also a guidebook of where to go next. Although not prescriptive, there are countless pages of questions practitioners can reflect on to do their own internal work to move forward and decolonize the systems they work in. I wish I could have read this book sooner and firmly believe it should be required reading for literally every student in mental health fields across the board. Could not recommend more highly.
May 27, 2025
this book completely shifted my perspective on the mental health industry and caused me to question all of the existing practices we subscribe to! a must read for ANYONE who is interested in mental health, healing work, decolonization, etc
so much to sit with
so much to sit with
December 19, 2024
This book has a passionate author and an important premise, but it's trying to be and do too many things at once. I'd describe it as a biblical-length polemic on the sordid history and destructive nature of our current mental health systems -- interwoven with personal anecdotes, summaries of other people's research, long bullet-point lists, and long lists of prompts for further reflection. It's unfortunately very repetitive, and not organized in a way that makes intuitive sense. It needs several rounds of developmental editing.
Substance-wise, it's ironic that a book on "decolonizing therapy" leans so heavily on abstract critiques, institutional language, research citations, and bullet-point lists. I was hoping for more storytelling, more of an immersive focus on the narratives of actual people and communities collectively endeavoring to do what systems have failed to do.
It's also strange that, despite the hundreds of pages of decrying the current system, there's little space devoted to challenging the model of therapy itself as a professionalized, primarily individualistic practice. Therapy, as it's currently practiced, only makes sense in a capitalistic world where community members don't feel equipped to hold space for each other, and/or can't rely on each other to co-hold their healing and discovery processes. I'd imagine that truly "decolonizing therapy" might mean dismantling the construct of healing as something we do as individuals in private rooms with paid professionals. It might mean exploring what it would look like to abolish the therapeutic industrial complex, and to develop local community-based cultures of healing instead. This book barely grazed the surface of these possibilities and, for me, sadly missed the mark.
Substance-wise, it's ironic that a book on "decolonizing therapy" leans so heavily on abstract critiques, institutional language, research citations, and bullet-point lists. I was hoping for more storytelling, more of an immersive focus on the narratives of actual people and communities collectively endeavoring to do what systems have failed to do.
It's also strange that, despite the hundreds of pages of decrying the current system, there's little space devoted to challenging the model of therapy itself as a professionalized, primarily individualistic practice. Therapy, as it's currently practiced, only makes sense in a capitalistic world where community members don't feel equipped to hold space for each other, and/or can't rely on each other to co-hold their healing and discovery processes. I'd imagine that truly "decolonizing therapy" might mean dismantling the construct of healing as something we do as individuals in private rooms with paid professionals. It might mean exploring what it would look like to abolish the therapeutic industrial complex, and to develop local community-based cultures of healing instead. This book barely grazed the surface of these possibilities and, for me, sadly missed the mark.
September 10, 2024
this was a very difficult book to read at first. as a mhp i felt indicted alongside the entire mental health industry. there were some painful reflections that mhp’s will have to endure to read this book. I see in the reviews that many mhp’s dnf due to unwillingness to sit in that discomfort, which is so telling, especially given how we require our clients to sit in discomfort on a daily basis. this book envisions a mental health industry that feels so out of reach at times, but can feel closer to our grasps if we are willing to imagine how runs can be different and are willing to sacrifice the comfort that comes with sticking to the status quo. mhp’s are called to begin decolonizing their professional work through exploring the histories of their families and their people, by uncovering stories of displacement and generational grief. we can only decolonize our professional work and this industry once we accept where we fit in this story. this book leans more reflective that practical, which can be frustrating for professionals like myself indoctrinated by white supremacist and capitalistic beliefs of “doing” as a measure of progress. but i would encourage all mhp endure lol and read this book.
January 10, 2025
It took me a long time to read through this book: it took a sabbatical with my student for a few months, I didn’t make time, I didn’t have time.
This book is imperative for any mental health (and other) professional. If you are already on your decolonization journey, some of this will be familiar to you. The questions and suggestions in this book are beautiful and actionable, and this book is part of shifting my practice. A definite re-read and reference book.
This book is imperative for any mental health (and other) professional. If you are already on your decolonization journey, some of this will be familiar to you. The questions and suggestions in this book are beautiful and actionable, and this book is part of shifting my practice. A definite re-read and reference book.
April 19, 2024
Makes me rage. Makes me hope. Makes me imagine. Makes me feel a connection that I already knew was there. Makes me real fucking glad I consumed this now as I’m going through my education rather than after I’ve already started practicing.
September 14, 2024
I promised myself I would finish this, but it's still up in the air as I close in on the final four hours - what a total pile of horse dung! Just because the author carries a "PsyD" after her name does not give her the right to bury us in unceasing word salad intended to upend the entirety of Western civilization. which I am fairly sure is her intention.
I have now heard several sections of text that were repeated verbatim from one chapter/section to another - would be less offensive if she had at least signalled her editor there might be a few rough spots to work on changed the wording. And it would ever so nice if she were to explain fully in just a case or two why she repeatedly rips on the DSM (I too, am less then enamored of it), but she invokes problems with it that are supposed to be evident without explanation.
(side note - I shared early thoughts about how comically bad this work is and we had a good laugh. I asked what they were chuckling about and it turns out their humor centered on humans pranking their dogs with fart humor. It struck me immediately that it would be a tough call to weigh the validity of one over the other as worthy of consideration.)
modalities, indigenous peoples, journal prompt, impactful, generational & familial, trans-personal, felt sense, externalities, emotional field techniques, integrated whole as part and piece of a larger whole, - string together enough word patterns like this over and over again, add few a chapter and section headings, and "Voila!" - you've got yourself a sequel, maybe name it "Decolonizing Therapy II"
I wish Goodreads had negative stars - or at the very least "0"
I have now heard several sections of text that were repeated verbatim from one chapter/section to another - would be less offensive if she had at least signalled her editor there might be a few rough spots to work on changed the wording. And it would ever so nice if she were to explain fully in just a case or two why she repeatedly rips on the DSM (I too, am less then enamored of it), but she invokes problems with it that are supposed to be evident without explanation.
(side note - I shared early thoughts about how comically bad this work is and we had a good laugh. I asked what they were chuckling about and it turns out their humor centered on humans pranking their dogs with fart humor. It struck me immediately that it would be a tough call to weigh the validity of one over the other as worthy of consideration.)
modalities, indigenous peoples, journal prompt, impactful, generational & familial, trans-personal, felt sense, externalities, emotional field techniques, integrated whole as part and piece of a larger whole, - string together enough word patterns like this over and over again, add few a chapter and section headings, and "Voila!" - you've got yourself a sequel, maybe name it "Decolonizing Therapy II"
I wish Goodreads had negative stars - or at the very least "0"
March 17, 2025
I took my time with this book, really letting its lessons sink in and thinking about how colonialism shows up not just in my work but in my everyday life. It pushed me to reflect on the connections between mental health, advocacy, and systemic change, reminding me that therapy (and life) isn’t just about individual healing, but also about collective liberation and community.
Read
October 18, 2025Found this book very validating when it comes to how I feel about what I learn in my psych program and what type of therapist I would like to be. It's a thought provoking must-read for those in the mental health and healing sphere.
October 25, 2024
This book was everything I was looking for in my social work degree. I am affirmed. I am seen.
This is the healing we need and deserve. Thank you Dr. Mullan for putting into words what our souls know.
This is the healing we need and deserve. Thank you Dr. Mullan for putting into words what our souls know.
August 11, 2025
Maybe the best book I've read so far on trying to make connections between healing in therapeutic settings and structural, social change/collective healing. Even when I wasn't sure that I agreed with some of the specific arguments, I was always sure that this was the quality of thinking and of questions that are desperately needed. I learned a tremendous amount. She did some of her professional studies at the same graduate school I attended (CIIS) and I wish she had named names but she didn't. LOL.
P1. We were trained within and for the System. No matter the oppressive system – we are Gatekeepers (and decently paid ones) in those systems. So, let us begin…
P2. May we find new language rooted in healing justice and possibility. May we have fun cocreating new ways of relating and calling in.
P4. May we make space for big feelings, old teachings and new ways of implementing our elders’ medicines.
P6. We contain and metabolize suffering into possibility.
P8. Any of us who studied Freudian psychoanalysis are familiar with the Oedipus complex and the mother wound. It was like psychology and the practice of therapy were not giving me what I needed, psychotherapy became the “good enough mother.” But like any healthy relationship, I realized that one practice, modality, philosophy, or person couldn’t possibly give me everything I needed; it was not possible.
P11. What would it look like to be able to trust that the care, interventions, treatments, and support received would not just care for the individual, but would also be care-filled for the larger community and the Earth?
P23. Decolonization is unsettling.
P25 To being a great sponge of a student to help deal with the emptiness inside. To understanding how effective therapy cannot be delivered without some form of therapeutic activism.
P31 To convey that decolonizing therapy is the process of collective shadow work. <>
P34 Community, connection, creativity, ancestral engagement, sensuality, energetic boundaries, and joy all combat colonial practices and mentality. […]
We seek to divest from pathology-centered engagement into an ancestral-healig engagement. […]
What combats trauma is abundant collective joy. […]. From Feeding Your Demons […] “The way to change things is to address the underlying issue, through feeding our demons, what they actually need instead of what they seem to want.”
40 Colonization is the core wound – the separation from Home.
44 It involves a return to a more authentic and deeply felt part of ourselves that allows people to fully assimilate their histories and the lived experience of their families and communities.
45 […] pathologizing big emotions that are merely healthy responses to abusive behaviors. […] Emotional decolonization involves coming to awareness, unlearning, grieving, raging, and divesting (slowly) from the lies we have been told by colonizers, perpetuated by a white-centered lens.
46 It is part of our job, historically, to care for the wellness of the village and the children […]
63 […] even more pressing is the need to know one’s self and one’s history as much as possible. It will bring us back Home again.
65 It is our birthright to be free, on our homelands, growing crops, being healthy, and being in relationship with one another. <>
69 […] safety […] Who gets to be safe?
78 […] colonization speaks to the root of the dis-ease […] in this sense of being landless, parent-less, unlovable, and unseen. […] For example, a mental health practitioner may work on relational issues with a person, focusing on childhood events, abandonment, abuse, attachments, and family dynamics – which are all relevant and can be important. However, if ancestry, homeland, mother tongue, or a disconnect from any of these aspects of culture and current political climate are not discussed, then the therapy is incomplete.
79 We victim-blame by focusing on personal deficiencies and trauma, rather than structural violence.
96 Where is Home to you? What is your relationship to that Home?
97 Cultural and historical trauma lead to body and land dissociation. Therefore, it is imperative to begin the emotional-decolonial process with oneself primarily.
102 For the most part, people with colonized histories have been “diagnosed and treated” through a Western, individualistic, patriarchal, and oppressive lens.
103 […] “instilling fear was believed to be the best way to restore a disordered mind to reason” (Walinga and Stangor, 2020).
106 […] advertisement […] 1974 show “an angry” African American man with his fist raised in the air and the caption “Angry and belligerent? Cooperation often begins with Haldol” (Metzl, 2010).
119 The history of the counselor, clinician, therapist, social worker […] is VIOLENT. Separating families. Assisting at interrogations and torture. Drugging the youth and our older adults to “keep them quiet.”
128 Maybe we can note when they had felt this way before and who they called for support. […] expressions, as opposed to symptoms.
135 This ache for home manifests itself in the present. This can look and feel disorganized and result in confusion, lethargy, apathy, loneliness, and even a dissociative quality can arise (to use colonial psychology terminology). This is much like the chemical imbalance that psychology and other fields calls depression.
137 Medicalization and rugged individualism support late-stage capitalism through pathologization of big emotions and attempting to medicate big emotions that are a result of the suffering from systemic inequalities and lateral violence. We cannot diagnose without context.
147 [DSM]. This leads us to simply ask, “What is normal, and who gains from creating definitions and continuums of what is considered normal?”
148 The Western conception of what is “normal” deliberately excludes the experiences and pain of POC. […] turns it into a disease or a disorder, inflicting further harm and sustaining the cycle of colonization.
149 Critics of ADHD see it as nothing more than a list of all the behaviors that annoy teachers and require extra attention in the classroom.
156 You cannot self-care or self-love your way out of systemic oppression. <>
Community care is beautiful […] yet it is not the antidote for systems that continue to kill us. The mental health fields were created to support and justify dehumanizing the less productive for a more profit-driven society. <>
160. Research is highlighting what communities of color have known for eons, that intense behavioral expressions are rational responses to their environment and helps to keep them safe. […] As Harris (2021) beautifully states: “The solution is to change the environment that produces such trauma.”
178 Although traditional mental health models ask us to look within, and to alter or shift our thoughts for a more “stable outcome,” the fact remains that Freud, Charcot, Ellis, Bandura, Fitz, Klein, Mahler, Rank, Linchan, and others all sidestepped a fundamental truth – that there are and continue to be deeply impactful effects of settler and emotional colonization that have been passed on to us.
181 The key question remains, “How is the legacy of trauma transmitted in this person, family, community, and/or ancestry?”
187 We are not meant (as practitioners) to hold, be, and heal each participant of therapy alone.
201 “Many children pick up on the defensive structures of traumatized parents. Additionally, the children intuitively absorb the repressed, dissociated, and warded off trauma that lurks behind the aggressive overtones found in many adults’ parenting styles” (Auerhahn & Laub, 1998)
202 […] “over time, the experience of repeated traumatic stressors become normalized and incorporated into the cultural expression and expectations of successive generations.”
205 The attachment styles as a mechanism of transmission are relevant to the trauma of colonization, as colonization breeds disconnect from self and others. <>
207 We can imagine that the ownership of trauma and agony filled with grief, confusion, and rage can create confusion around intergenerational boundaries. In other words, What is mine? What belongs to my family? What belongs to my ancestry? What belongs to my culture? The confusion and blurred boundaries can recreate traumatic effects for the second generation and inadvertently continue to perpetuate violence.
212 Get into the habit of asking therapy participants, “Is this yours?” […] Ask yourself “Is this my sadness?”
232 […] an example of what is possible when we reintegrate and allow our duties and presence as caregivers to be a reflection of what our “professional ancestors” provided: presence, compassion, space to grieve, and ritual as ceremony.
235 […] may our mental health practices and practitioners be fluid, love-centered, flexible, humanizing, fun, accessible, and liberatory.
241 “The trauma has you addicted to the drama” […] “That’s the story line; do you want to stay hooked, or can we go deeper?” […]
If our therapeutic providers are not explaining that family, cultural, and collective histories (which I call ancestral trauma) prior to our birth can be contributing to our dysregulated states, then what are we doing? Rage and grief – on an individual, collective, and ancestral level – must be explored when we are learning to metabolize the trauma stuck in our soma and affecting our psychology.
244 We are not being honest about the root causes of current-day pain – likely because we are uncertain how the past collides with the present […]
248 Grief is just love with no place to go.
252 […] grief reactions are the quite normal symptoms of being distracted, sleepiness, regressive or “acting out” externalized behaviors, as well as bursts of anger and irritability. This is also true for adults; however; children and teenagers have a biologically lessened impulse control. <>
260 Understanding our past can inform, liberate, and bring joy to our future.
271 It is crucial that we engage in a process that reacquaints us with our basic goodness and cultivates our capacity to embrace the ignorance of the world and ourselves with tenderness.
272 Disguises attempt to hide what we fear, but they have a way of creating more fear in our day-to-day lives and in the lives of others. […] Disguises are symbolic of what is ungrieved [….] Disguises are ambassadors of the past – old stories of rage that require our loving attention.
We have unconsciously, or consciously, created aspects of ourselves that are still craving control and the release of rage.
273 <> This is an indictment of how diagnosis was only ever meant to subvert and control.
274 It is important that we apply a lens to critically analyze the fields we so love and protect. Because the people for whom many of us hold space are not receiving what they fully need.
300 One of my favorite practices is to simply ask the participant if they would like to hear/know some insights that are arising.
306 One of my favorite ways to follow up is by asking: “And what do you feel capable and willing to do about this?” <
313 It is irresponsible to be a container for suffering and overwhelm, without also ensuring you are tending to your own energy.
314 I am allowed to release or put down what I cannot hold for the moment.
336 It’s essential to allow ourselves to see love, vulnerability, and the possibility of trust as part of a decolonial frame. Choosing to engage in trust, after centuries of ancestral gaslighting and deep harm takes courage. <>
348 Research tells us that abused children have an innate belief that love can coexist with abuse.
355 Chew on the difference between therapy and healing.
359 What conditioned response do we hold that needs to be observed, and cleared in order to allow ourselves to receive and give in healthy reciprocity?
365 Work from a historical generational wound lens, not just a childhood trauma lens.
P9. Listing of elders and resources for liberation psychologies
P13. ??? to ask self for practitioners
P14. Truth-telling and trauma healing
P41. Compare to Thomas Huebl’s vision of collective healing; also re AEDP – phenomenology taking environment outside into account
66. our own trauma impacting tx of others
75 migration experience
89 the trauma burger
92 intergenerational tree of transmission (and suggestions for practitioners)
109 drapetomania as relates to ADHD, defiance etc.
126 intergenerational trauma requires politicized tx
136 immigrants 80% of NYC asylum 1847-1870
138 oppressive vs anti-oppressive mental health language
143. APA psychology and whiteness (and no engagement with histortical experience of Jewishness as it shifted from Vienna in 30s and 40s vs US in late 20th century)
145 “empirical evidence” (like AEDP phenomenology) as tool to whiteness/coloniality of discipline
153. modern vs decolonized psychology
159 risks to Black people in over-explaining grief and rage to “helpers”
182 Dr. Hickling, Jamaica
184-5. examples of early efforts at decolonial healing
187 collective liberation of all people
203 projective identification and repetition compulsion
215 Freud associates religion with hysteria
216 Ellis research showing religion correlates with mental illness (later research contradicts)
221 rules rx with well-being
222 Maslow’s hierarchy as cultural appropriation
237 when client hears voices (also p307)
239 behavioral diagnoses and white supremacy
257 disenfranchising the legitimacy of grief
258 historical unresolved grief
267. rage vs anger
272 rage types
275 social purpose of sacred rage felt by individual
276. rage & release
279 work w/ rage-grief axis
285. what the spirit wants, what brings healing (quote)
294. redefining/populating psychology canon
296. no critique of Jung… sigh
316. central dialectic of psych trauma
332 professionalism code for white
344. ??? to consider
361 planning as prevention
363 practitioners can have fun
364 encourage group healing spaces/invite joy
366 What else is possible?
387-9 clearing energy between sessions
P1. We were trained within and for the System. No matter the oppressive system – we are Gatekeepers (and decently paid ones) in those systems. So, let us begin…
P2. May we find new language rooted in healing justice and possibility. May we have fun cocreating new ways of relating and calling in.
P4. May we make space for big feelings, old teachings and new ways of implementing our elders’ medicines.
P6. We contain and metabolize suffering into possibility.
P8. Any of us who studied Freudian psychoanalysis are familiar with the Oedipus complex and the mother wound. It was like psychology and the practice of therapy were not giving me what I needed, psychotherapy became the “good enough mother.” But like any healthy relationship, I realized that one practice, modality, philosophy, or person couldn’t possibly give me everything I needed; it was not possible.
P11. What would it look like to be able to trust that the care, interventions, treatments, and support received would not just care for the individual, but would also be care-filled for the larger community and the Earth?
P23. Decolonization is unsettling.
P25 To being a great sponge of a student to help deal with the emptiness inside. To understanding how effective therapy cannot be delivered without some form of therapeutic activism.
P31 To convey that decolonizing therapy is the process of collective shadow work. <>
P34 Community, connection, creativity, ancestral engagement, sensuality, energetic boundaries, and joy all combat colonial practices and mentality. […]
We seek to divest from pathology-centered engagement into an ancestral-healig engagement. […]
What combats trauma is abundant collective joy. […]. From Feeding Your Demons […] “The way to change things is to address the underlying issue, through feeding our demons, what they actually need instead of what they seem to want.”
40 Colonization is the core wound – the separation from Home.
44 It involves a return to a more authentic and deeply felt part of ourselves that allows people to fully assimilate their histories and the lived experience of their families and communities.
45 […] pathologizing big emotions that are merely healthy responses to abusive behaviors. […] Emotional decolonization involves coming to awareness, unlearning, grieving, raging, and divesting (slowly) from the lies we have been told by colonizers, perpetuated by a white-centered lens.
46 It is part of our job, historically, to care for the wellness of the village and the children […]
63 […] even more pressing is the need to know one’s self and one’s history as much as possible. It will bring us back Home again.
65 It is our birthright to be free, on our homelands, growing crops, being healthy, and being in relationship with one another. <>
69 […] safety […] Who gets to be safe?
78 […] colonization speaks to the root of the dis-ease […] in this sense of being landless, parent-less, unlovable, and unseen. […] For example, a mental health practitioner may work on relational issues with a person, focusing on childhood events, abandonment, abuse, attachments, and family dynamics – which are all relevant and can be important. However, if ancestry, homeland, mother tongue, or a disconnect from any of these aspects of culture and current political climate are not discussed, then the therapy is incomplete.
79 We victim-blame by focusing on personal deficiencies and trauma, rather than structural violence.
96 Where is Home to you? What is your relationship to that Home?
97 Cultural and historical trauma lead to body and land dissociation. Therefore, it is imperative to begin the emotional-decolonial process with oneself primarily.
102 For the most part, people with colonized histories have been “diagnosed and treated” through a Western, individualistic, patriarchal, and oppressive lens.
103 […] “instilling fear was believed to be the best way to restore a disordered mind to reason” (Walinga and Stangor, 2020).
106 […] advertisement […] 1974 show “an angry” African American man with his fist raised in the air and the caption “Angry and belligerent? Cooperation often begins with Haldol” (Metzl, 2010).
119 The history of the counselor, clinician, therapist, social worker […] is VIOLENT. Separating families. Assisting at interrogations and torture. Drugging the youth and our older adults to “keep them quiet.”
128 Maybe we can note when they had felt this way before and who they called for support. […] expressions, as opposed to symptoms.
135 This ache for home manifests itself in the present. This can look and feel disorganized and result in confusion, lethargy, apathy, loneliness, and even a dissociative quality can arise (to use colonial psychology terminology). This is much like the chemical imbalance that psychology and other fields calls depression.
137 Medicalization and rugged individualism support late-stage capitalism through pathologization of big emotions and attempting to medicate big emotions that are a result of the suffering from systemic inequalities and lateral violence. We cannot diagnose without context.
147 [DSM]. This leads us to simply ask, “What is normal, and who gains from creating definitions and continuums of what is considered normal?”
148 The Western conception of what is “normal” deliberately excludes the experiences and pain of POC. […] turns it into a disease or a disorder, inflicting further harm and sustaining the cycle of colonization.
149 Critics of ADHD see it as nothing more than a list of all the behaviors that annoy teachers and require extra attention in the classroom.
156 You cannot self-care or self-love your way out of systemic oppression. <>
Community care is beautiful […] yet it is not the antidote for systems that continue to kill us. The mental health fields were created to support and justify dehumanizing the less productive for a more profit-driven society. <>
160. Research is highlighting what communities of color have known for eons, that intense behavioral expressions are rational responses to their environment and helps to keep them safe. […] As Harris (2021) beautifully states: “The solution is to change the environment that produces such trauma.”
178 Although traditional mental health models ask us to look within, and to alter or shift our thoughts for a more “stable outcome,” the fact remains that Freud, Charcot, Ellis, Bandura, Fitz, Klein, Mahler, Rank, Linchan, and others all sidestepped a fundamental truth – that there are and continue to be deeply impactful effects of settler and emotional colonization that have been passed on to us.
181 The key question remains, “How is the legacy of trauma transmitted in this person, family, community, and/or ancestry?”
187 We are not meant (as practitioners) to hold, be, and heal each participant of therapy alone.
201 “Many children pick up on the defensive structures of traumatized parents. Additionally, the children intuitively absorb the repressed, dissociated, and warded off trauma that lurks behind the aggressive overtones found in many adults’ parenting styles” (Auerhahn & Laub, 1998)
202 […] “over time, the experience of repeated traumatic stressors become normalized and incorporated into the cultural expression and expectations of successive generations.”
205 The attachment styles as a mechanism of transmission are relevant to the trauma of colonization, as colonization breeds disconnect from self and others. <>
207 We can imagine that the ownership of trauma and agony filled with grief, confusion, and rage can create confusion around intergenerational boundaries. In other words, What is mine? What belongs to my family? What belongs to my ancestry? What belongs to my culture? The confusion and blurred boundaries can recreate traumatic effects for the second generation and inadvertently continue to perpetuate violence.
212 Get into the habit of asking therapy participants, “Is this yours?” […] Ask yourself “Is this my sadness?”
232 […] an example of what is possible when we reintegrate and allow our duties and presence as caregivers to be a reflection of what our “professional ancestors” provided: presence, compassion, space to grieve, and ritual as ceremony.
235 […] may our mental health practices and practitioners be fluid, love-centered, flexible, humanizing, fun, accessible, and liberatory.
241 “The trauma has you addicted to the drama” […] “That’s the story line; do you want to stay hooked, or can we go deeper?” […]
If our therapeutic providers are not explaining that family, cultural, and collective histories (which I call ancestral trauma) prior to our birth can be contributing to our dysregulated states, then what are we doing? Rage and grief – on an individual, collective, and ancestral level – must be explored when we are learning to metabolize the trauma stuck in our soma and affecting our psychology.
244 We are not being honest about the root causes of current-day pain – likely because we are uncertain how the past collides with the present […]
248 Grief is just love with no place to go.
252 […] grief reactions are the quite normal symptoms of being distracted, sleepiness, regressive or “acting out” externalized behaviors, as well as bursts of anger and irritability. This is also true for adults; however; children and teenagers have a biologically lessened impulse control. <>
260 Understanding our past can inform, liberate, and bring joy to our future.
271 It is crucial that we engage in a process that reacquaints us with our basic goodness and cultivates our capacity to embrace the ignorance of the world and ourselves with tenderness.
272 Disguises attempt to hide what we fear, but they have a way of creating more fear in our day-to-day lives and in the lives of others. […] Disguises are symbolic of what is ungrieved [….] Disguises are ambassadors of the past – old stories of rage that require our loving attention.
We have unconsciously, or consciously, created aspects of ourselves that are still craving control and the release of rage.
273 <> This is an indictment of how diagnosis was only ever meant to subvert and control.
274 It is important that we apply a lens to critically analyze the fields we so love and protect. Because the people for whom many of us hold space are not receiving what they fully need.
300 One of my favorite practices is to simply ask the participant if they would like to hear/know some insights that are arising.
306 One of my favorite ways to follow up is by asking: “And what do you feel capable and willing to do about this?” <
313 It is irresponsible to be a container for suffering and overwhelm, without also ensuring you are tending to your own energy.
314 I am allowed to release or put down what I cannot hold for the moment.
336 It’s essential to allow ourselves to see love, vulnerability, and the possibility of trust as part of a decolonial frame. Choosing to engage in trust, after centuries of ancestral gaslighting and deep harm takes courage. <>
348 Research tells us that abused children have an innate belief that love can coexist with abuse.
355 Chew on the difference between therapy and healing.
359 What conditioned response do we hold that needs to be observed, and cleared in order to allow ourselves to receive and give in healthy reciprocity?
365 Work from a historical generational wound lens, not just a childhood trauma lens.
P9. Listing of elders and resources for liberation psychologies
P13. ??? to ask self for practitioners
P14. Truth-telling and trauma healing
P41. Compare to Thomas Huebl’s vision of collective healing; also re AEDP – phenomenology taking environment outside into account
66. our own trauma impacting tx of others
75 migration experience
89 the trauma burger
92 intergenerational tree of transmission (and suggestions for practitioners)
109 drapetomania as relates to ADHD, defiance etc.
126 intergenerational trauma requires politicized tx
136 immigrants 80% of NYC asylum 1847-1870
138 oppressive vs anti-oppressive mental health language
143. APA psychology and whiteness (and no engagement with histortical experience of Jewishness as it shifted from Vienna in 30s and 40s vs US in late 20th century)
145 “empirical evidence” (like AEDP phenomenology) as tool to whiteness/coloniality of discipline
153. modern vs decolonized psychology
159 risks to Black people in over-explaining grief and rage to “helpers”
182 Dr. Hickling, Jamaica
184-5. examples of early efforts at decolonial healing
187 collective liberation of all people
203 projective identification and repetition compulsion
215 Freud associates religion with hysteria
216 Ellis research showing religion correlates with mental illness (later research contradicts)
221 rules rx with well-being
222 Maslow’s hierarchy as cultural appropriation
237 when client hears voices (also p307)
239 behavioral diagnoses and white supremacy
257 disenfranchising the legitimacy of grief
258 historical unresolved grief
267. rage vs anger
272 rage types
275 social purpose of sacred rage felt by individual
276. rage & release
279 work w/ rage-grief axis
285. what the spirit wants, what brings healing (quote)
294. redefining/populating psychology canon
296. no critique of Jung… sigh
316. central dialectic of psych trauma
332 professionalism code for white
344. ??? to consider
361 planning as prevention
363 practitioners can have fun
364 encourage group healing spaces/invite joy
366 What else is possible?
387-9 clearing energy between sessions
October 31, 2025
Took me more than a year to finish this one. Love the main messages, but I think it could have been at least half the length and more effectively structured
November 20, 2024
amazing
I actually loved this and was able to digest a lot more that I initially anticipated. Books like this can feel daunting and I don’t think I would have picked it up if I hadn’t been required for class. But I am so so glad I did. I want much of this if not all to inform my practice as a clinician and I want to be a partner in the work of decolonizing therapy !! I think this will be a book I continuously come back to.
I actually loved this and was able to digest a lot more that I initially anticipated. Books like this can feel daunting and I don’t think I would have picked it up if I hadn’t been required for class. But I am so so glad I did. I want much of this if not all to inform my practice as a clinician and I want to be a partner in the work of decolonizing therapy !! I think this will be a book I continuously come back to.
March 19, 2024
*4.5- Such a needed book that doesn't pull punches. Mullan, shows the blatant favoritism to theories, clinicians, and conceptions that cater to white European backgrounds. She makes great points around aspects around the theoretical approaches that are adopted which are directly linked to the evidence that validates them. She explains that those approaches are only given the opportunity to have evidence because they are backed by institutions which are in themselves catering to the privileged perspectives that give the finances for research. Thus, it's the wealthy funding the theories that make sense to them and it turn predicating a white bias. These are then brought into insurances due to the "evidence" that validated them, which further validates a white perspective as "correct". Understanding this on a clinician perspective, it broadened my perspective to recognize that I have to be more open to being uncomfortable with my own white fragility to expand my theories and compassion to others.
April 9, 2024
You should read this book. Especially if you are in a helping profession. ESPECIALLY if you are in a mental health profession. It’s heavy and a lot but has so much good and rich information. I will be processing this for a while and I feel like it has opened several doors that are going to make me a better practitioner.
May 24, 2024
It was a little trickier for me to follow everything towards the end. There were some good points made, but I was expecting a different kind of conversation around decolonizing therapy. I’m not sure if I wanted it more practical or more historical, but it was just missing something for me. Still good and valuable!
February 4, 2025
This object of the book was ambitious and complex but the author managed to draw a landscape that was understandable, broad, and important and in many ways provided relief for BIPOC individuals working in the mental health settings or who are involved with populations who are affected by mental health challenges.
This book is a must read for anyone working as a mental health practitioner.
This book is a must read for anyone working as a mental health practitioner.
April 14, 2025
This is written as a polemic, with a shopping list of grievances repeated ad nauseum throughout the book. It was light on solutions.
Next time I'm handling a violent situation, DT will be the farthest thing from my mind.
IPV and meth are the biggest drivers of misery in my work. Wealth disguises misery and buys silence.
Was this book life changing? Nope.
Next time I'm handling a violent situation, DT will be the farthest thing from my mind.
IPV and meth are the biggest drivers of misery in my work. Wealth disguises misery and buys silence.
Was this book life changing? Nope.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 3, 2025
Read this for a grad school social work class and I think this should be a must read for social workers, new and experienced!
Great perspective, important messages, and necessary challenges to our normative approaches to the many facets of social work. Social work has an oppressive history, this kind of content is vital to improving the world and assist in healing!!
Great perspective, important messages, and necessary challenges to our normative approaches to the many facets of social work. Social work has an oppressive history, this kind of content is vital to improving the world and assist in healing!!
August 22, 2024
Such a profound work of how to dismantle white supremacy, imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism from therapeutic practice. This book will be a reference for my therapy relationships for the rest of my career.
October 27, 2024
This is literally the best and most needed book I've ever read in the field of therapy. I already practice this way, but have never found a book to support it. This is what I want taught in graduate schools.
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