About Me

This is certainly not meant to be an exhaustive or detailed list, but it is a beginning. While all these theories, concepts or frameworks are things that I have spent a lot of time thinking about, I do not by any means hold them all as equal influences. In fact, there are a lot of contradictions between them. This list does not contain my personal critiques as this is beyond the scope of this website. You will find that some of the older, more traditional theories or concepts need re-working in terms of how they understand things like culture and oppression, but I have included them anyway if I have found them of any value at all. What I have given you are very brief definitions. I make this available to you as a starting off point from which you can understand a bit about where I am coming from and from which you can further research things that pique your interest.

Attachment Theory

Attachment theory, as studied by John Bowlby and later Mary Ainsworth, aims to explain how our relationships as infants with our caregivers predict how we connect (or don’t connect) with others in our future. Ainsworth developed the study called “Strange Situation” where she watched the behaviours of infants as they interacted with their mothers, strangers, and played by themselves. This experiment was based on heterosexual, nuclear family arrangements. Ainsworth concluded that people are either securely attached or insecurely attached. Insecurely attached people fall into the categories of disorganized, avoidant (dismissing), and ambivalent (pre-occupied). Many people believe that attachment styles are also impacted by things like intergenerational trauma and the result of living under oppressive systems. This is, however, beyond the scope of traditional attachment theory.

Psychodynamic Theory

There are three main parts of psychodynamic theory: the primacy of the unconscious, the importance of early life experiences, and psychic causality. The first part, the primacy of the unconscious, states that most of our mental activity is outside of our consciousness. The importance of early life experiences is exactly that (these experiences affect us many years later). Psychic causality means that no thoughts or feelings or emotional responses or ways in which we behave or are motivated to behave, are random. Psychodynamic theory has evolved over time and has many different approaches.

Polyvagal Theory and Neuroception

Polyvagal theory was developed by Stephen Porges and is relevant to human biological understandings. It gives us knowledge about how our physiological state has evolved overtime and how it adapts under different circumstances. Our autonomic nervous system acts differently when we are in danger than it does when we are safe. The term neuroception was coined to describe the way our autonomic nervous system scans for safety or danger outside of our consciousness. This response to safety and danger takes place inside the body, outside in the environment, and between people. The vagus nerve is part of our autonomic nervous system, specifically our parasympathetic nervous system which is the system that calms the body after stress. The vagus nerve is responsible for helping a person get out of fight or flight mode.

Intersubjectivity Theory

Intersubjectivity Theory explains that things do not happen in isolation. Relatedness impacts every experience we have. Subjectivity itself is a fluid construct built by interfacing subjectivities. We exclude, in our experiences, what we cannot tolerate. In therapy, the relationship and interactions between client and therapist is one of interacting experiential worlds. The conscious meets the unconscious in a way that is not fixed. They are not intrapsychic structures. We cannot observe the world in a way that is necessarily in isolation and real.

Epistemological Hybridism

Epistemological Hybridism is a term that comes from post-colonial thinking. It evolved from bringing marginalized group knowledge and worldviews from Africa to the center of curriculum. It challenged the hegemony of Western thought. The truth can be seen in more than one way. More than one belief can be held at the same time, without contradiction. Beliefs stem from imperfect humans and humans that are amid changing. Some truths need to be seen as valid simply because they are. A diversity of epistemologies can be woven together.

Anti-Saviour

Anti-Saviourship calls for people to consider their own social location and to critique their own motivations when in the role of helper to communities other than their own (the therapist-client relationship qualifies). When one takes the role of saviour to a community, they ignore the fact that they may want things for that community that the community does not see as being best for them. The very experiences of those they are trying to help often get ignored by saviours. Saviours may have mixed motivations and may help for the wrong reason. They may consider their own ideas as superior and often cause harm to the communities they claim to be saving by invalidating these communities.

Internal Family Systems

This theory assumes that the natural state of the mind (the one we are born into) is subdivided into internal parts. A person is the sum of these parts, plus the Self. Parts are defined as being a mental system that has some independence inside of us. These parts have their own thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. Parts are not pathological, and all parts should be welcomed in this theory. Internal Family Systems seeks to heal injured parts and to embody more of our Self.

Self Psychology and Self Object Theory

Heinz Kohut saw the self as “the center of the psychological universe.” The theory of self-psychology centres around self-object needs for mirroring, idealization, twinship and additionally around how these needs can go unacknowledged. Intrapsychic structures are seen as regulating our self-esteem and calming ourselves. When we do not receive these from our parents when we are young, we end up unable to do these things ourselves and must rely on others in the surrounding environment to regulate ourselves. A self object in this theory is a developing child and those caregivers of the child that allow the child to maintain self structure and cohesion. Kohut used self psychology and unmet self-object needs to study narcissism.

Liberatory Harm Reduction

“Liberatory Harm Reduction is a philosophy and set of empowerment-based practices that teaches us how to accompany each other as we transform the root causes of harm in our lives. We put our values into action using real life strategies to reduce the negative health, legal, and social consequences that result from criminalized and stigmatized life experiences such as drug use, sex, the sex trade, sex work, surviving intimate partner violence, self injury, eating disorders, and any other survival strategies deemed morally or socially unacceptable. Liberatory harm reductionists support each other and our communities without judgment, stigma, or coercion. And we do not force others to change. We envision a world without racism, capitalism, patriarchy, misogyny, ableism, transphobia, policing, surveillance, and other systems of violence. Liberatory harm reduction is true self determination and total body autonomy.”
-A workshopped, evolving definition by Shira Hassan.

Trauma-informed

The definition of “trauma informed” will change from therapist to therapist. Below is general and excellent definition written by two people who are not therapists:
“Trauma-informed word demands that you have a basic understanding of the psychological, neurological, biological, social and spiritual impacts that trauma and violence can have on people. Being trauma-informed means that we are genuine, authentic, and foster compassionate relationships with survivors.”
–Fumbling Towards Repair, Mariame Kaba & Shira Hassan

Critical Race Theory

Critical Race Theory emerged from several American legal scholars’ writings in the mid 1970’s. It is an academic field that acknowledges that science shows that race is socially constructed and not biologically based. Race, as a category, exists to oppress people of colour. Critical Race Theory sees racism as something that is embedded in the systems and institutions of American society, for example in its legal systems and in public policy. It also proposes that the epistemologies of people of colour should be centred in research.

Intersectionality

This term was coined by Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, a legal scholar, in 1989. Intersectionality is a framework that looks at identity, power, and privilege. Crenshaw was specifically looking at the identities of Black women, and at how race and sex could not be separated when understanding their oppression. The term has grown since this time and relates to how different forms of oppression interact to expose structural advantages and disadvantages. A person’s various forms of oppression stemming from these structural advantages and disadvantages are seen as being dependant on one another. Crenshaw writes about how intersectionality is “a lens where you can see how various forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate each other.” Where we land with our intersecting oppressions impacts our access to either the positive or negative things in life. 

Mad Activism and Mad Studies

These are radical ways of challenging and critiquing the current mental health system, specifically the biomedical model of mental health, which includes the psychiatric system and by extension the pathologizing of people’s experiences. Mad activism and scholarships move beyond things like diagnosis. The power relationships between those accessing services and those providing them, lead to the oppression and violence of those accessing services. The case for simply reforming the current system is often argued against. Non-carceral and non-coercive forms of assisting people in distress are seen as necessities, and the emergence of survivor narratives are given priority.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness involves identifying with the present. This is done by attempting to leave the the past and future behind in such a way that a person can get to a state where reality can be experienced without unconscious fears leading the way. Purpose and attention to moment-by-moment experiences allow the present to unfold nonjudgmentally.

Existential Therapy

Existential therapy is an experiential approach to therapy. Interventions are philosophical in nature and are based on views about human nature. Client and therapist may talk about universally human concepts like anxiety, freedom, responsibility, isolation, identity, meaning and death. This type of therapy aims to help clients realize their autonomy and by extension their ability to freely make choices. Talking about authentic existence, self-awareness, choice, and responsibility for choice, may be part of the therapy, as are overcoming fear and working to establish better relationships.

Healing Justice

Healing Justice is a term that was taken from the work of Cara Page and the Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective. The term “healing justice” is one that describes a political movement that redefines healing by fighting colonial concepts of what healing is. The movement was created by indigenous, queer and trans, Black and brown, disabled femmes. Healing and organizing are not seen as two distinct categories. Care is collective. People are seen as needing healing from many different things including trauma (and the reactivation of trauma from doing justice work), abuse and oppression. Healing justice is anti-ableist and fights against the medical industrial complex’s perceptions of what it is to be sick or disabled, and against its perception that sick and disabled people want to be cured. It sees survivor-led approaches as integral to healing. Healing Justice includes transformative justice, harm reduction, disability justice, reproductive justice, and environmental justice.

Lived Experiences (past and present): Biracial (Black and white), Transgender, Queer, Polyamory, Substance Use/Addiction