Navigating Difference Through Identity-Conscious Psychotherapy

< Back

Short Description

This interactive workshop explores how identity, power, and lived experience shape the therapeutic encounter, using an identity-conscious psychotherapy lens grounded in epistemic justice and the CuRReNTS-C framework. Participants examine how concepts often labeled “resistance,” enmeshment, or non-compliance can reflect epistemological self-preservation and relational wisdom, and practice noticing and responding to tension, cultural disconnection, and rupture without defaulting to avoidance or defensiveness. The session bridges critical theory with clinical application, offering trauma-sensitive, actionable strategies to strengthen relational accountability and ethical responsiveness across differences in social location.

Learning Objectives

• Define identity-conscious psychotherapy and articulate how epistemic justice, systemic oppression, and power dynamics construct the therapeutic relationship.
• Apply the CuRReNTS-C framework to notice and navigate assumptions, emotional responses, and relational ruptures during moments of difference.
• Trace the historical evolution of "resistance" in psychotherapy to identify its colonial underpinnings and expert-driven assumptions.
• Reframe behaviors traditionally pathologized as "resistance" or lack of differentiation as legitimate protective responses and epistemological self-preservation.
• Formulate identity-conscious, trauma-sensitive strategies to facilitate relational repair, accountability, and safety in clinical, supervisory, and community-based settings.

Each topic can be adapted to your audience, timeframe, and delivery format, with a minimum of 1 hour of instruction. The summary on this page is intentionally brief; detailed descriptions, learning objectives, and sample agendas are available upon request.