Culturally Sensitive Therapy

I believe strongly that our culture(s) play a huge role in our happiness as well as our dysfunction. I take social, cultural, family, and systems level factors into account when working with clients and believe that healing our relationships to our cultures is a major part of overall mental health.

Having worked with diverse client groups over the year has given me a strong understanding and appreciation of how important it is to attend to all aspects of a person's background and identities to understand your worldview and values.

I have experience working with individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds and their families, and I am always eager to learn more about others.

Many of the clients who see me experience identity issues or trauma symptoms related to racially based or intergenerational traumas. My professional training and experience as an activist and advocate spanning decades underlies much of my focus on racial and social justice. I'm particularly attuned to issues of "difference" among those whose experiences do not reflect dominant thinking regardless of whether that experience reflects marginalization: Mixed-race, interracial and multicultural.

Well-researched treatments aren't enough. Your therapist requires the right attitude for diversity-affirmative care. I make an effort to practice cultural humility, which is a lifelong commitment to learning and respecting clients' identities and experiences. Labels don't help here - I try to neither over-inflate nor under-estimate the role of your identity in your life. I work to foster safety, trust, transparency, collaboration, and empowerment.

As a Black gay male therapist, I feel I understand people's needs who come from diverse cultural backgrounds. As a person who endeavors to be culturally humble, I encourage exploration in the areas of Age, Developmental disabilities, Indigenous heritage, National origin, Racial identity, Ethnic identity, Gender, Socioeconomic Status, and sexual orientation.

I approach my work always honoring each person's unique background. Culturally affirming therapy helps people to feel understood and seen. This is especially important when systems of oppression affect the mental health of those in historically underserved and underrepresented groups.

I think this is a key foundation to any therapy.

Culturally sensitive therapy emphasizes the therapist's understanding of a client’s background, ethnicity, and belief system. Therapists can incorporate cultural sensitivity into their work to accommodate and respect differences in opinions, values, and attitudes of various cultures and different types of people.

Completed multiple trainings in providing culturally responsive treatment across a variety of settings to include children, adults, adolescents of multiple ethnicities.

Culture informs how we view and understand our values and others around us. It's important to integrate that into therapy, as well as for your therapist to respect and understand your perspective.

This is the lens that I view therapy through.

My training as a counseling psychologist is steeped in a holistic view of humanity: strengths-based, developmental, contextual, multiculturally-sensitive with a focus on social justice. I have taught many courses on on CST, but more importantly, I continue to engage in a personal ongoing practice of cultural self-exploration, including awareness of the privilege I hold. CST means that we can explore all aspects of your identity and the ways they influence and contextualize your experiences.

My counseling approach is warm, supportive, and encourages clients to connect with their inner child to unlearn the internalized oppressive messages that result from life, on a micro and macro level; with the belief that unlearning these messages can empower folx into moving forward and reclaiming their lives.

I believe that we all see the world through our own cultural lens. Being allowed to learn about a client's world and belief systems is a truly humbling experience. With my experience as a former diversity coordinator coupled with being aware of the various cultural stipulations that exist in society allows me to provide you with the necessary and relevant interventions that would not only be respectful to your beliefs but also catered towards the system we are a part of.

Alison has a background in providing psychotherapy in an urban setting at a major hospital in Bronx, NY. Alison strongly believes understanding a client’s background and belief system is paramount for optimal treatment as it relates to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, or other important elements of culture and/or identity.

Kinship Counseling Collective believes each individual has a unique cultural identity and background that shapes their experiences and perspectives. Kinship is driven by our commitment to offer our clients culturally responsive and anti-oppressive therapy, empowering all of us to challenge and resist oppressive systems and work toward social justice.At Kinship, we value access and ease of finding excellent therapists of color. We wanted to support an increase in access through online therapy.

Diversity is intersectional and culture is so much more than simply race or ethnicity. I take into account the whole person and their experiences, beliefs, and worldview and let them educate me in their culture without making assumptions based on how they present.