Dialogue description: Whiteness is characterized by unconsciousness, silence, extreme escapism, polarization, navel-gazing, projection, superiority/inferiority binary worldview, and protective attachments to “goodness”. The construction of whiteness is profoundly pathological and has caused immeasurable suffering, yet it is not in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). This dialogue is an invitation to spend some time together diving into the waters of whiteness, its implications in therapy, and ways that the lenses, skills, sensitivities, and capacities from therapy and anti-racist practice can mutually inform each other.


Food for thought prompts:

  • If whiteness was a client/patient, how would we diagnose it? What would a treatment plan for a whiteness diagnosis look like?
  • How do we bring race into therapeutic contexts and connect it to areas of focus in treatment?
  • What are strategies for clinical applications? 
  • Are there different types of shame? How can shame be part of a liberatory experience in waking up and feeling reality and history more fully?
  • How do we internalize and project the good/bad binary – of desires to be and be understood as “good”, and to distance “bad” white people? How does this show up?
  • How does gender interact with whiteness in the field of therapy?

Recommended pre-reading:

Dialogue Notes:

  • Questions from food for thought/prompts
  • Political utility of pathologizing: who and what
    • Article creatively playing with pathology and whiteness
    • Attentive to legacies of violence and how it plays out
    • DSM cluster of symptoms developed by a white dude, and used for racialized violence – diagnoses are ahistorical, present symptom diagnosis
  • Power-threat-meaning framework in Britain: response to DSM
  • I and co-workers struggle with white youth, called one “entitled” – supervisor said to not call them that, reach the pain that is underneath
  • A lot of whiteness is out of touch with reality-ness, comes from deep pain, shame, disconnection with oneself
  • A good edge in practice, white shame
  • Leftist culture good at taking people down for these symptoms, not a lot of kindness
  • As a therapist who brings in systems of power into my work, felt repelled by DSM, and, is a beautiful collection of studying patterns – oh this is a thing, this constellation of symptoms, rough map of psyche, some comfort that i find – not an isolated experience, so many have it that is has a name
  • Sitting with other side of diagnosis – how do we give something a name and a place, and still have a fraught relationship with the DSM, so much is sexist, racist, homophobic, ableist – who is that person with secure attachment who does not suffer?
  • Feeling the fullness of how it came into being
  • What is whiteness is a behavioral addiction, like gambling or overspending, etc? Perhaps has some compulsive attributes in that – looking at how i see these in myself and in others
  • Patterns identified by Tema Okun in white supremacy culture
  • Addiction gives comfort, safety, place to run away from it all – whiteness gives me those things
  • Practice of anti-racist naming of whiteness itself 
  • Addictive behaviors live in economy of deep reward, white supremacy patterns are rewarded
  • Curious about the shame that comes with feeling history, not a turning away
  • To look at oneself in a mirror of another
  • In place i work, POC and white affinity groups, with coming together – so much of spent time talking with white people about longing to be seen, warmly welcomed by POC, the strange behaviors that this desire produces, anxious avoidance – POC wanted distance from that, white folks wanted to be closer, organizational dynamic
  • What does it mean to self-soothe whiteness?
    • Name the dynamic
    • See potential harm in pursuing what you want, soothe the desire to act it out
    • Somatic grounding
    • Tolerating that you’re not a good object – cannot be seen as good, more honest relationship 
    • Can you be strong enough in your own intentions, and goodness as an imperfect human
    • Long process
  • Psychological defense mechanism
    • When people see me as white, and white as bad, a psychological dissociation
    • My i as me is not bad – how do i walk through space, the legacy is painful to people, i am not painful to people
    • How be in acceptance
  • Ways that i have woken up to how my physical presence can be violent to people of color
    • Problematic in ways, and i take things personally
    • How much eye contact can i make
    • It was hard
    • Sitting with these feelings, tolerance beginning to build, exposure therapy
  • History of other wounds that come up in context of race
    • Other ways i have felt not belonging, othered, etc.
    • Ancestral
    • Ways that i may heal my desires to connect, etc. – which wound gets lit up for us, if i do this work, less i am asking my colleagues of color to provide this for me
    • When to sit in pain and when it’s not helpful
  • Anti-racist practices
  • Naming structures seem less pathologizing
  • Flipping the frame
  • When i am having trauma or anxiety response, is not only my pathology but my superpower – doing a good job to notice things that others may not, and can be maladaptive – not sure if analogy transfers to whiteness
  • I felt resistance reading the article
  • I get into deep shame spirals, very hard for me to see anything liberatory in shame
  • Generative somatics: shame can be protective, like tree sap, when we are exposed shame is in service to protect deeper pains
  • Definition of guilt and shame: guilt something i’ve done, shame comes outside of me
    • Local therapist who does a lot of work on shame – distinction of what i did and what i am
    • How can shame be liberatory? 
    • We need to feel it some but not too much – feel it along with self-compassion, humor and engaging
    • Shame prevents me from having relationships – sitting with it helpful – the shame we don’t feel makes us act out in certain ways, defensive, superiority, anger
    • I do a lot of work with trauma, in a family if one kid is scapegoat who is punished and other kids stand by and witness, can generate shame, what defenses are created to survive that (oh they are bad and i am good)
  • Affect theory: shame can transmute into accountability, integrity, compassion
  • The more i can see truth, the ways these systems impact
  • In the article, ruling class giving whiteness as a protection from ruthless world based on economic exploitation – providing endless possibility
  • The book My Grandmother’s Hands – patterns of surviving in this “new world”, wounding, reproducing violent patterns and making those choices
  • Quote: “shame is a lie that someone told you about yourself” – it serves something
  • It is a delusion 
  • As social beings we need to feel shame
  • Waking up process about truth
  • Feeling of shame around race, there is no way out of this socialization – ways to reclaim more or different territory of the self
  • Shame feels so intertwined
  • When people say “i’m good”, defending against shame – working on whiteness is working on shame
  • Shame and powerlessness feel very close together
    • In whiteness, i feel powerless against white supremacy and anti-black racism
    • I feel so small, no impact – extremely powerful feeling to be with
    • Ways that i internalize and externalize, i must be bad because i am not powerful enough to fix this thing or interrupt this violence, absolve myself
    • Frozen 
    • What immobilizes people
  • Anger can tell us that a boundary has been crossed
  • In a relationship, if i am feeling shame, there may be abuse here
  • Shame about being powerlessness – how is this linked to feeling like we have to control everything, our own emotions, deny that we are part of nature
  •  Powerlessness and control – surrender to interdependence, deep humility and discomfort – finding power within limits, if in control then it’s our fault, acknowledge not control can be a type of freedom
  • A power of not being in control
  • Chaotic influence
  • Shame brought me to ask these questions, have the time to sit with it
  • Healthy and toxic shame can walk a fine line
  • Nexus of shame with whiteness and patriarchy, as someone targeted by patriarchy, any shame can be triggering of that trauma, feels like narrow space for my nervous systems to discern
  • I must be bad because i did not/can not intervene
  • Both white and black people were not allowed to feel that pain
  • Lynching photos & white people’s expressions – what is this pathology
  • Accountability towards movement, how to not let it stagnate in you – feeling the unacceptability of it – accountable to the welfare of other human beings
  • Transmutation
  • Free up energy to work to reduce and end harm, rather than prove i did not cause it
  • In this time in history, how are we in conversation across time – how is shame in conversation with these ghosts and lineages we have inherited?
  • How bodies impacted and benefited by these systems
  • White clinicians or folks receiving therapy
    • How do you see talking about therapy as part of your work
    • Since therapy guided by their desires, not often looking at whiteness
    • Would be interesting if someone came in with those therapy goals
    • I don’t wait for someone to name a trauma, will give languaging, frameworks – why not do this around whiteness
      • When i do this i feel nervous, and it has been helpful, looking at whiteness, capitalism, Puritan work ethic
      • If named too early, may turn them off – when reveal depths of abuse that are present, when ready to hear it
      • But also saying, you are abusive
      • Do i need to get over whiteness in the room
  • What are movements in not perpetuating punitive police-calling around what clients share
    • All the push back i got saying not wanting to call police who would come to Black client’s home during holidays
    • Safe and collaborative process
    • Gone well when i have been transparent about care and understanding
  • Appropriate for client to bring up own whiteness?
    • I appreciate tool of self-disclosure, others do not – prefer to be canvas that client can paint on
    • Thinking about interracial couple i was working with early on – saying to white man “I hear you saying ‘I’m a good person’” and to Black woman, “I hear you saying ‘i’m a person’”, it blew the roof off their relationship, reveal these age-old dynamics, something so much bigger than ourselves
    • In the way that a diagnosis can be helpful – oh this is a thing, i’m not the only one, a hunger to understand why am i caught in this
    • Value of treating whiteness as you would treat anything else
    • Container of whiteness and symptoms that may go along with it are helpful, taking responsibility for the whiteness on the couch
  • Curious about how one is read as a radical therapist
    • Would that inhibit sharing the stupid shit i’ve done and think
  • Naming whiteness as the suffering the person is experiencing and causing
  • Antidote to shame is connection, beautiful give and take of centering/decentering self
  • When does bringing up whiteness in therapy not go well
  • I went into therapy to talk about whiteness all the time
  • Thinking about intersections of identity, and externalized and internalized shame
  • So refreshing to be in a space of people providing and receiving therapy
  • Clinical questions about mindful avenues to explore this
  • Feeling disoriented and not sure what i think about this, some disintegration
  • Overwhelm at complexity of humans, where can i surrender
  • Consultation group around this
  • Emotional ride of this conversation
  • Taking away a lot from control/surrender conversation 
  • Look more deeply into my own existential fear and how that relates to whiteness, white colonization
  • In recent time, has been hard to be with themes we are exploring here, wanting to move away from toxic shame, 
  • Haunted by ancestral feeling, knowing my ancestors were violent or complicit in violence
  • This is a lifelong journey – i will never not be white
  • Questions about gendered experiences of whiteness
  • A lot of themes swirling around, how they connect with the theory i’m hyped on in therapy school now
  • Whiteness as security blanket
  • Nuances of shame, intergenerational feminism
  • What does healing for perpetrators look like?
  • Impacted by people’s vulnerability and risk-taking
  • Collective antidotes to white shame, connection, freeing up space to be more present
  • Therapeutic tool of dignity, how do i feel more to be able to feel that more
  • What is mourning, sit with feeling, and not just move into action
  • What’s the energy that will sustain me when it gets complicated in politicized therapy
  • Craving more cross-generational dialogue
  • I need to do work to get in touch with my emotions around race – ways i cushion myself from shame
  • so much mechanicalness on forms of racial justice training – trained certain responses out of me, a cycle that keeps me out of feeling emotion and deep feeling around lineage, feeling the numbing built over years
  • Emotional containment, release, ability to fall back on not doing that deep exposure with POC or to get that connection, in white anti-racist spaces
  • Prioritizing deep emotion
  • Feeling present in witnessing growth
  • Have never sat with a room of folks of my race, talking about race, so well
  • Could bring this up more with my clients, friends – as a country our future depends on it