It is fair to say that the world hasn’t been in a great place since 2020, with a pandemic, corrupt governments, wars, political unrest, the rise of the far right, and so on. Therapists have been in high demand because there is a lot of unprocessed trauma and distress out there.
Trauma can dysregulate the nervous system, which in turns can cause psychosexual and relationship problems. I have witnessed couples separating because they disagreed on Covid vaccines, they had different political views (or they started to vote differently), because they grieved differently, or simply because they ran out of emotional resilience or patience with their partner. This is even more prevalent in minority and marginalised people, because the world that we currently live in is becoming more hostile to differences, so the everyday stress for just living is increasing. I have noticed how social media encourages binary views in echo chambers, and misinformation can have dangerous consequences – including the disturbing rise of the far right.
I recently attended an interesting CPD on self-disclosure with trauma therapist Jamie Marich. We discussed how we might need to re-think self-disclosure when the world is in political unrest. Some therapists believe that discussions on political views should be kept outside of the therapeutic space. In an ideal world, the political landscape of our country might not be important for the therapeutic process, but Jamie Marich questioned if it is still so in today’s world, because it could be part of establishing a safe space for both clients and therapists.
Reflecting on this, I wondered if we should attempt to figure out if a client holds extreme political views. Could we feel safe with such clients? I am comfortable working with people whose views I disagree with, and still be an empathic therapist, because it is either irrelevant to their therapeutic process or it is an opportunity for the client to examine their self-concept and the perception of their environment informed by their past. However, these days, might we be more likely to encounter a client whose views go beyond reading the Daily Mail? There is an abundance of extreme views currently: racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, queerphobia, and misogyny, which have gradually become more normalised with rhetoric from senior members of the past Government. Often, good outcome in psychosexual and relationship therapy requires the client to think creatively about their intimate lives, and to think outside of the narrow societal messages of sex and relationships. I wonder if it is possible to explore the expansiveness of eroticism with people who hate human diversity.
Would screening for safety conflict with discriminating a client because of their political views? I have always disliked binary thinking, but, in these heightened times of binaries, partly encouraged by social media, do we need to take a different position? It is still important not to collude with binaries but we also need to keep the therapeutic space safe for clients and for ourselves. For example, I am an obvious gay man, so clients can safely assume that I am LGB friendly. But with the current increase of transphobia, it might not be so obvious to clients that I am trans-friendly. How could a trans client know that I provide a safe therapeutic space for them? I find myself making more self-disclosures showing that I uphold the political and social justice values of a genuine queer ally. I believe it is my job to be pro-active in making the therapeutic space safe for all minority populations, and, self-disclosure is a part of that. It is important for me because I am all too aware that it is common for marginalised clients who live with minority stress everyday to come to therapy for a respite from societal oppression and only find the therapeutic space replicating the oppression of the outside world.
I am vehemently against discrimination of all kinds, but I also believe in the good fit of therapist – client. Psychosexual and relationship therapists help clients become aware of how they choose their intimate partners, so, perhaps, we need to be curious about how clients and therapists choose each other. Making an informed decision about a therapeutic relationship in this unstable world may involve further self-disclosure for the co-creation of a safe space. Let us reflect on that.
Silva Neves LDPRT Alum
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