Therapy for Social Change Podcast

Photo by Kelly on Pexels Hey there everyone— In 1981, the musician, cultural historian, and activist Bernice Johnson Reagon, founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock , gave a talk at a feminist music festival. That talk, “Coalition Politics, Turning the Century,” was reprinted a few years later in Home Girls , one of the most important Black feminist anthologies of the time, and still a foundational fem...

Asking: What is it I think I'm going to receive can be a way into understanding the wishes and longing that drive our compulsive phone checking. At a systems level, the phone serves to recirculate the social consensus, lulling us into believing that social change is impossible. It is difficult to engage in imagination and power when we are instead commenting and receiving information that reinforc...

Grief, Ruthlessness and Patience are three strategies to use to figure out what's important and then do it. How structural inequality and oppression influence our ability to determine what's important, and take risks. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit therapysocialchange.substack.com

--finding focus isn't about social media and lack of self confidence --it can be hard to determine what's important if you haven't been given the tools to determine your own desires and needs --what it important; and how to act, is inseparable from the context of power and oppression within which different people have different access to resources and to make their dreams real. This is a public ep...

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit therapysocialchange.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit therapysocialchange.substack.com

--The roots of the medical model in the DSM III 1980 --The anti-psychiatry movement of the 1970s --Individual versus systemic roots of mental distress --Treatment in the context of individualism or system wide violence This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit therapysocialchange.substack.com

---Bias against the American South --The Republican Southern Strategy --The far right legislative agenda in the context of Southern mythology --American dismissal of the South --The erasure of Southern complexity and actual demographics This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit therapysocialchange.substack.com

--How the mainstream media represents the Alabama IVF case --The exclusion of non white people from the media response to the case --The erasure of the LBGTQ family in coverage of this case --An analysis of the decision in relation to 7 Mountain Mandate --Eugenics, Theology, and State Law This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus epis...

Discusses February 16, 2024 Alabama Supreme Court Ruling declaring embryos children --wrongful death of a child --fetal and embryonic personhood --mental health impact of Dobbs Supreme Court decision --how IVF works --loss of property versus wrongful death --anti-abortion movement This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, vi...

--What it's like to have to change, or choose change and not know how to do it --Change in the context of privilege --Strategies to survive freefall This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit therapysocialchange.substack.com

--How propaganda works --Overwhelm as evidence of mental defeat and propaganda success --Strategies to return to power and not feel overwhelmed This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit therapysocialchange.substack.com

--How to discern the difference between the mind's story and the body's sensations --Sitting with fear and uncertainty --Listening and silence as roots of the creative process --Joy Harjo's poetry This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit therapysocialchange.substack.com

--The change model of New Year's Resolutions --How change really happens --Self improvement versus structural change --including all aspects of mind, body, spirit in change making This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit therapysocialchange.substack.com

--An examination of the Story of People and how it's breaking apart --What it's like to live between two worlds, one that's collapsing and another that isn't here yet --How to stay with uncertainty instead of believing we can predict what's coming This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit therapysocialchange.substack.c...

--The difference between ideation and execution --Disney's Three Rooms of Creation --Grief as a part of finishing --Grief and Transformation in the context of COP28 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit therapysocialchange.substack.com

How can we make complex problems approachable through writing? How can writing help people act, make change in the world? How do we better understand why people are turning away from reading because they find our current problems exhausting? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit therapysocialchange.substack.com

Objectification is the act of turning something living and vibrant and changeable into a thing. It’s one of the key preconditions for an ideology to work. I cannot evaluate my value in patriarchy, or in white supremacy, until I can see myself through its gaze. I have to step outside my experience to look at that selfhood as if it is a static thing. Years of practice of objectification are designed...

One thing I’m curious about is the space between stop and go. I don’t know about you, but when I actually stop something, I feel awful. Some days it takes everything I have to refuse the old coping. Most days I notice how much of what I tell myself I should be doing, or even want to be doing, isn’t mine. It’s not real. It’s not attached to any true feeling of embodied desire, or curiosity, or wond...

Last week I listened to an interview between the arts consultant and therapist Beth Pickens, who specializes in working with artists and wrote Make Your Art No Matter What , and Austin Kleon, the author of a number of bestselling books, like Steal Like An Artist and Show Your Work . Pickens was telling Kleon about the kinds of anxieties she sees in her artist clients. She said every artist should...

It is often said that the dominant culture of the United States is “individualist.” This is a tricky term, because the concept of individualism has its own history and context and is leveraged in many ways in our popular and political cultures. I think that when the dominant white culture of the U.S. is said to be individualist, it has a flavor of Cold War ideology to it: the U.S., globally, stand...

In my last post I wrote a bit about how PTSD became a diagnosis. This week, I’m going to talk about how the diagnosis shapes trauma treatment, and why there can be a gap between the way a clinician approaches trauma treatment–what they think is most likely to bring people relief–and what the survivor might hope for, in terms of reckoning with what happened. The naming of PTSD as a disorder , rathe...

The anthropologist and historian of science Danielle Carr, who is currently an Assistant Professor at UCLA’s Institute for Society and Genetics, published a piece in the most recent issue of New York Magazine profiling therapist Bessel van der Kolk’s trauma work, academic career, and the ways trauma has become “America’s favorite diagnosis.” As most of the folks reading this newsletter likely know...

Imagine a change you’re wanting to implement: an exercise habit, a meditation practice, a weekly phone call with a far-away friend. Or maybe you want to “subtract” something: sugar or caffeine; screen time; criticizing others. What happens when you picture yourself making this change? What words do you hear in your head? What do you see, as you imagine yourself doing this new thing? A common respo...

Examines the question of how evangelical churches struggle with childhood sexual abuse, and what we might do to stop it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit therapysocialchange.substack.com