A BLACK EMPATHIC APPROACH PUBLICATION

Look out for excerpts from my new book. a work in progress
Title: 'A Black Empathic Psychotherapeutic Approach:
         Growing from Rage to Compassion'.


I wanna tell you a bit about where this perspective of a ‘black Empathic Approach came from and how it's been growing over the past 25 years since my initial research and practise with professionals, trainees, students, supervisees and clients.
At the time I was challenged by my own training as the only person of colour and my experiences of racism within training. I felt voiceless and not recognised in terms of my identity as a black woman, experiencing racism in my life and on the training. My research kicked off when I was a senior lecturer, at one university in London and attending two other universities to support tutors to think about changing their attitudes and also to assist students to think differently about learning and practice that acknowledges and addresses the impact of racism.
 
I shall be presenting snippets from my book as it unfolds.
Please feel free to engage with my work and ask questions

Introduction
The institution where I trained was situated in a largely white affluent area of London serving mostly white clients. I noticed they had this book where they registered clients details. As part of our training we practiced and were supervised on the premises.
Alongside some of the clients names was written, West Indian or African and I’d think oh maybe I can work with this person. They put them to the back of the book because they assumed that these clients needed senior therapists.  They used the word borderline mental health and that really got my back up.  I was never offered any black clients and I used to speak my truth during our supervision which was  led by the white lecturers and supervisors. Everything was internal. I had white clients and I'm a black woman working with white clients. I wasn't offered the opportunity to take on any black clients. I felt I'd have more to offer based on some of the racism they may have experienced, which was intersectional to their lives. That was 1985 but nothing much has changed. I was kind of seen as a bit weird, because I was challenging the system, that wasn't facilitating my learning as a black woman.
 
After that I worked in a black mental health project in Brixton. The African Caribbean mental health association The staff were all black people.  We had a solicitor, a housing worker, a befriending worker and some sort of liaison person. I set up a therapy team we had a team of black therapists and we were working inside and outside of the local mental Health hospitals and working with people who were also at risk of going into a Psychiatric hospital and people who had been sectioned under the 136 Mental Health Act.
 
There was a lot to understand and deal with in terms of offering them a familiar face because many of them had experienced Police Prejudice.  One woman was locked up for singing loud on her balcony. There was no real mental space in the project to consider the support  that the staff needed.