#decolonizing therapy

Decolonizing Therapy (facebook)

Why is being exhausted treated like a personal failure? Why are we told to “toughen up” instead of asking why work feels so punishing? Why does every job demand our humanity—then shame us when it shows?

I see this every day. People blaming themselves for being tired, numb, irritable, or disconnected. People wondering why they feel like they’re failing even though they’re giving everything they have. We’re told we need better boundaries, more rest, a different mindset—while things stay exactly the same.

Burnout isn’t just “being tired.”

It’s when your body, mind, and spirit are all stretched past their limits at once.

As I write in Decolonizing Therapy:

“Burnout consists of three components: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization of clients, and feelings of ineffectiveness or lack of personal accomplishment”

(Maslach, Jackson, & Leiter, 1997).

And yet, burnout is still framed as an individual problem:

“You aren’t getting enough rest.”

“You are managing your time poorly.”

But that framing misses the truth.

“In fact, burnout is a result of the colonial capitalistic conditioning imparted on a person as soon as they begin school.”

From the beginning, many of us are taught the same rules: work hard, complain little, don’t make a fuss, keep authority figures happy, and you’ll be rewarded. This isn’t a rejection of hard work—focused effort toward meaningful goals can be nourishing. The harm begins when our worth, safety, and identity become fused with productivity.

These feelings hit hardest when people are already carrying more—when you’re underpaid, one of the only people of color in the room, doing deeply relational labor, or living in a body that already requires more care in a system that refuses to slow down. 

Burnout isn’t a lack of resilience.

It’s a human response to unreasonable systems.

I wrote Decolonizing Therapy for people who feel like something is wrong—but were told the problem was them. If this resonates, I invite you to read more on page 293. 

Decolonizing Therapy: Oppression, Historical Trauma, and Politicizing Your Practice

— Jennifer Mullan, PsyD

Black therapist book recommendations….

Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery by Catherine Gildiner

The Pain We Carry: Healing from Complex PTSD for People of Color by Natalie Y. Gutiérrez

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

Decolonizing Therapy: Oppression, Historical Trauma, and Politicizing Your Practice by Jennifer Mullan

Also if you’re looking:

https://therapyforblackgirls.com/

Capitalism fatigue is real.

Dr. Jennifer Mullan

Dr. Jennifer Mullan (Pronouns: She/ Her) creates spaces for people and organizations to heal.  She believes that it is essential to create a dialogue to address how mental health is deeply affected by systemic inequities and the trauma of oppression, particularly the well-being of Queer Indigenous Black Brown People of Color (QIBPOC).  

Decolonizing therapy is also about challenging a very hostile, violent, and white-dominated system that has a history of “lobotomizing” and pathologizing dissent.  In my humble opinion, the mental health field is an industry and it serves capitalism, man. It needs to get with the program and become much more intentional about being anti: racist, sexist, fatphobic, transphobic, ableist, and capitalist.

Decolonizing Therapy is about bringing Healing BACK into the Work, rather than just band-aides and structures protocols. People need real solutions, so decolonizing therapy is about maintaining that these solutions can only occur when we work towards dismantling the larger systems that oppress so, so many of us.  

Decolonization is also a practice.  It is not a theory. It is both remembering and transforming.  It is both healing and dismantling. It is creation and shadow walking.  It is politicizing and beingness. To Decolonize is to remember and connect our current struggles, practices, and beliefs to that of our People.  The People before us. Our great grandparents, our great great great great great aunties, and uncles. Those that we only have come to know as we slowly rise to meet ourselves."