As the field of counseling and psychology recognizes harm it has done to marginalized communities, it is important to take responsibility for ways we have not been culturally competent and carried a western lens when sitting with people of color. It is imperative we take the time to learn with humility and know that we are not the experts. There are two books that were recommended to me at Massy Books in Vancouver, Canada (female and Indigenous owned independent bookstore!).
I’d like to share excerpts that inform ways I want to begin viewing my own life journey of growth and how I hope it will also translate to clients. I hope you may also expand your own views for yourself. We have much to learn from each other.
Indigenous Healing Psychology: Honoring the Wisdom of the First Peoples :
Mary Lee’s work as a traditional counselor exemplifies how healing as opposed to curing, is more characteristic of Indigenous approaches to therapy. While curing focuses more on fixing what is wrong with people (e.g. some diagnosed illness), typically through the removal of identifiable symptoms, healing is a broader, more dynamic, more open-ended, and respectful process. Healing can be seen as a movement toward meaning, balance, connectedness, and wholeness. Symptoms may not be removed-though few would oppose their removal-but healing can still occur. Meaning, for example, can be created in life still carrying the symptoms of an illness. Rather than fixing someone, healing seeks to support and enhance ongoing life adaptations and transformation. Though healing and curing are not mutually exclusive and can influence each other in practice, curing is more frequently a focus in mainstream approaches.
Indigenous Healing: Exploring Traditional Paths:
Within aboriginal traditions, there is something else at work, something that flows from the recognition that no one can ever claim to be meeting their responsibilities perfectly or to be perfectly healhty. The belief is that we can always think, say, do and be better than we are now. In that sense, we are all engaged in healing, which is to say that we are all on the same road, together, trying to move closer to Creator’s spirit in everything that we do.
As I said earlier, some of us start that journey with many blessings, and others begin while facing great threat and suffering immense injury. But we all undertake essentially the same journey, and it lasts throughout our lives.
[Healing} is seen not simply as a response to injury but as a life goal to be sought….healing stands primarily for moving-toward, not just recovery from. It involves always trying to manifest that which is within us but is so difficult to reveal.
I’m grateful for voices different from my own that help me see things I cannot see without them. The Indigenous way is compassionate, full of grace, sees human experiences as nothing to be ashamed of or to overcome but part of. It allows us to be dynamic people and not defined by pain. At the heart of it, we are to be valued and treasured and healing is not isolated nor does it occur in a vacuum. We need one another.
