VIDEO: Handling Microaggressions in Therapy

VIDEO: Handling Microaggressions in Therapy

An Eight-Step Process for Talking About It With Your Clients

Anatasia Kim & Lauren Dockett

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Let's say your client lets a microaggression slip during a session. Do you bring it up? And if so, where do you begin? Therapist and author Anatasia Kim is an expert on the matter. Here, she outlines her eight-step process for having a conversation with clients when this happens.

"As much as we want to protect the therapeutic relationship," Anatasia writes in her recent article, "we can’t pretend that we therapists aren’t shaped by our own cultural identities, just like our clients are, and that this doesn’t affect what happens in the therapy room."

Anatasia Kim

Anatasia Kim, PhD, is an associate professor at The Wright Institute in Berkeley, CA. She has a private practice and provides consultations and trainings to organizations on matters related to diversity, equity, and inclusions. She’s the coauthor, with Alicia del Prado, of It’s Time to Talk (and Listen): How to Have Constructive Conversations About Race, Class, Sexuality, Ability & Gender in a Polarized World.

Lauren Dockett

Lauren Dockett, MS, is Psychotherapy Networker’s senior writer. A longtime journalist, journalism lecturer, and book and magazine editor, she’s also a former caseworker taken with the complexity of mental health, who finds the ongoing evolution of the therapy field and its broadening reach an engrossing story. Prior to the Networker, she contributed to many outlets, including The Washington Post, NPR, and Salon. Her books include Facing 30, Sex Talk, and The Deepest Blue. Visit her website at laurendockett.com.