Decolonizing Trauma Therapy: From Disembodiment to Somatic Reclamation

Abstract
Decolonial therapy is a healing approach that addresses colonialism's effects on individuals, groups, and communities' psychological, physical, and spiritual health. This presentation will explore the risks associated with maintaining a Eurocentric model of therapy amidst ongoing systemic racism, oppression, alienation and the dehumanization of people of color.

Alienation refers to the depth of pain, anguish, grief, and human suffering associated with the multiplicity of violences that colonial systems employ when separating and alienating colonized bodies from place. Dehumanization means the depth of pain, anguish, grief, and human suffering associated with the multiplicity of violences that colonial systems employ when educating and disciplining colonized bodies to fit into the imaginations, laws, and ideologies of the settler or postcolonial nation-state.

There is a call to shift to decolonized therapy practices in order to decrease isolation, encourage empowerment, and nurture safe expression for people of color. This training will explore the somatic impact of colonialism and capitalism on people of color and marginalized populations. The impact of oppression on the nervous system will be explored. In addition, participants will learn about the embodiment of racial trauma and associated threat responses. As so much of oppression and racism is often disembodied; dissociative elements of racial trauma will also be explored. Dissociative responses to colonial violence are considered in our decolonizing therapy as acts of self-preservation in the context of ongoing systematic attacks on the integrity of one’s person.

Colonization pathologizes anger. Supporting the embodiment and voice of anger is a vital component to decolonizing therapy. Methods for acknowledging anger and its path to grief will be discussed. Participants will gain an understanding, via somatic exercises, of how to assist in resourcing oppressed clients both internally and externally. The presenter will explain the importance of supporting curiosity of cultural and ancestral history in the treatment of racial trauma, cultivating liberation, and honoring the nervous system’s need for rest.