Therapy Through a Systems Lens
Culture, Power, and Belonging
One of the things I treasure about being a therapist is this belief and understanding that every person who works with me brings an entire world with them.
No one arrives as "just an individual." We all carry stories shaped by our families, cultures, communities, identities, relationships, bodies, and histories. We have all been influenced by the systems we've lived inside, whether those systems helped us flourish or made life harder than it needed to be.
Because of that, I've never believed therapy happens in a vacuum.
Over the years I've found myself returning to a question like:
What makes sense about this person's experience, given everything they've had to navigate?
That question has changed the way I think about therapy.
It reminds me that pain rarely develops in isolation. Sometimes our struggles grow from loss or trauma. Sometimes they grow from relationships. And sometimes they grow from living in systems that repeatedly communicate that who we are isn't welcome, safe, or enough.
Looking through that wider lens doesn't erase personal responsibility, but it does make room for compassion. It helps us understand behaviors that might otherwise seem confusing, frustrating, or even pathological. Sometimes the problem isn't the person. Sometimes the problem is the environment they've had to survive.
That doesn't mean every struggle is caused by systems, nor does it mean we don't look inward. Personal history, relationships, biology, and our own choices all matter. But I think therapy becomes richer when we hold multiple truths at once. We can explore what's happening inside someone while also asking what has been happening around them.
I've found this especially important when working with people whose identities have been marginalized in some way. Experiences of discrimination, exclusion, poverty, religious harm, ableism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, or chronic invalidation don't simply disappear when someone walks into therapy. They often continue shaping the nervous system long after the original experiences occurred.
That changes how we understand symptoms. Sometimes anxiety isn't simply anxiety. Sometimes it's vigilance that made perfect sense in an unsafe environment. Sometimes shame isn't evidence that someone has done something wrong. Sometimes it's what grows after years of being told, directly or indirectly, that they don't belong. Sometimes what gets labeled as "resistance" is actually wisdom developed through painful experience.
Thinking this way doesn't minimize suffering. If anything, it honors it.
Continuing Education That Has Shaped My Thinking
One of the things I value about this profession is that we're always learning.
New research emerges. Language evolves. Communities continue teaching us about experiences that have historically been overlooked or misunderstood. I don't think cultural humility is something we achieve once and then check off a list. I think it's an ongoing practice of remaining curious, recognizing the limits of our own perspective, and being willing to keep growing.
The following trainings have all contributed to the way I think about identity, equity, belonging, and the role systems play in mental health.
Cross-Cultural Issues in Integrated Healthcare Services
Completed 2023
This course explored how culture, language, and systemic barriers influence access to healthcare. One idea that stayed with me was that equitable care isn't asking clients to adapt to our systems. It's asking how our systems can become more responsive to the people they're meant to serve.
Cultural Competence: A Social Work Imperative
Completed 2023
Rather than encouraging clinicians to become "experts" in someone else's culture, this training emphasized humility, curiosity, and lifelong learning. That distinction feels important to me. Obviously, I don't want to assume I already understand someone's experience simply because I've taken a course. I'd rather stay open enough to learn from the person sitting in front of me.
Improving Cultural Competency for Behavioral Health Professionals
Completed 2024
This training expanded on practical ways clinicians can recognize implicit bias, understand systemic inequities, and build trust across differences. It reinforced that trust isn't created simply by good intentions. It grows through consistency, curiosity, and a willingness to recognize when systems have caused harm.
Gender Affirming Care and Referral Letter Writing
Completed 2024
This was one of the trainings that felt especially meaningful to me.
While part of the course focused on referral letters, what stayed with me was the broader conversation about dignity, autonomy, and reducing unnecessary barriers to care. Gender-affirming care isn't simply about using the correct language. (Though having experts tell me what is important to include or exclude.) It's about recognizing that healthcare systems have not always been safe or affirming for transgender and gender-diverse people, and considering how we can participate in reducing that harm rather than unintentionally adding to it.
Liberty and Equity in the 21st Century
Completed 2023
Looked at broader social and policy structures that shape healthcare access, reinforcing how freedom and well-being are deeply tied to systemic conditions, not just individual choices.
Religious Trauma: Definition and Treatment
Completed 2023
Explored the often-overlooked impact of religious harm, spiritual abuse, and high-control communities.
This training expanded my understanding of how trauma can come not only from families or events, but from belief systems that shape identity, shame, and belonging at a very deep level. For many clients, untangling faith, fear, and selfhood is tender work. Having language for “religious trauma” can be profoundly validating.
Understanding Structural and Institutional Racism
Completed 2025
This course named something that often goes unspoken: Racism isn’t only interpersonal. It’s structural. It lives in policies, systems, healthcare access, education, housing, and legal institutions. It reinforced how mental health symptoms can’t be separated from chronic stressors like discrimination, surveillance, or lack of safety. And it asked an important clinical question:
How do we avoid pathologizing people for surviving unjust systems?
What These Trainings Have Continued to Teach Me
As I looked back over these trainings, I realized they covered a wide range of topics. On the surface they seem quite different, but I put them together here because they feel similar to me. Rather than encouraging clinicians to become experts on different identities or communities, they consistently pointed toward something much more important: staying curious.
Curiosity is a value I hold deeply and a word you will definitely hear in the therapy room from me.
None of us can fully understand another person's experience simply because we've read a book or completed a training. We can certainly learn. We can reflect on our own assumptions and blind spots. We can become more aware of the systems people have had to navigate. But every person still arrives with a story that is uniquely their own.
To me, cultural humility isn't about knowing everything. It's about being willing to say, "Help me understand your experience." That feels like a much more honest place to begin.
Rather than asking only what's happening inside someone, I find myself wondering about the larger context of their life. What stories have they inherited about themselves? What messages have they received from family, culture, religion, school, or society? Which of those messages genuinely fit, and which were learned because they helped someone survive?
Sometimes those messages sound like:
You're too much.
You're not enough.
You don't belong here.
You have to earn love.
You're wrong for being who you are.
Those beliefs rarely develop in isolation. They often grow from experiences of living within systems, relationships, or communities that communicated those messages over and over again. (In a myriad of ways too!)
That's one of the reasons this work connects so naturally with Narrative Therapy and Internal Family Systems for me.
Narrative therapy reminds us that our identities are shaped by the stories we inherit as well as the stories we create. Internal Family Systems offers another way of understanding those experiences. Many of our protective parts developed because they were trying to help us survive environments where authenticity didn't always feel safe. Healing isn't necessarily about getting rid of those parts. Often it's about helping them realize they don't have to keep carrying burdens that were never really theirs.
When I think about all of these trainings together, that's probably the thread I keep coming back to.
I don’t need to be an expert. I need to continue to be a better listener. Someone who can remain curious long enough to understand another person's world before assuming I already know it.
A Personal Reflection
One of the reasons this kind of learning continues to matter so much to me is because I've always been fascinated by stories. I am huge bibliophile and read broadly with a deep love of character driven stories. I feel a deep connection to the role that stories play in our lives. So when I speak of my love of stories it’s not just the stories we tell ourselves, but the larger cultural stories that quietly shape how we understand identity, relationships, success, family, gender, belonging, and even what it means to be "healthy." These stories shape our world.
I don't believe therapy is about helping someone become normal.
Honestly, I'm not even sure "normal" is a particularly useful goal. (What does that even mean! You are very likely “normal already within the context of the bell curve of humanity)
I'm much more interested in helping people feel at home in themselves.
Sometimes that means healing from trauma. Sometimes it means grieving who you thought you were supposed to become. Sometimes it means recognizing that the shame you've been carrying was never really yours to begin with. Belonging, at least the way I've come to understand it, isn't something we earn by becoming more acceptable. It grows when we find spaces where we no longer have to hide.
Because therapy isn't only personal work.
It's relational work.
It's community work.
And sometimes it's quiet justice work.
Every time someone no longer has to apologize for who they are, every time they begin questioning stories that kept them small, every time they experience being met with curiosity instead of judgment, I think healing becomes a little more possible.
Digging Deeper
If this post resonated with you, you might also enjoy exploring:
Identity Work – Exploring the stories, values, and experiences that shape who we become.
Narrative Therapy – Understanding how cultural narratives and personal stories influence our lives.
Internal Family Systems (IFS)– Learning how different parts of ourselves develop in response to our experiences.
LGBTQIA+ Affirming Therapy– Therapy that celebrates identity while recognizing the impact of minority stress and systemic barriers.
Kink-Affirming Therapy– Supporting people in exploring identity, relationships, and sexuality without shame.
ENM & Polyamory Therapy – Navigating relationships through communication, authenticity, and curiosity rather than assumptions.
Attachment & Relationships– How our earliest relationships continue to influence connection and belonging.
Religious Trauma – Understanding the lasting impact of spiritual harm and reclaiming identity after high-control environments.
Trauma Therapy– Healing with an awareness of both the nervous system and the broader contexts in which trauma occurs.
Contact Me – If you'd like to explore any of these ideas together, I'd be happy to connect.