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Beyond Coping: Radical Healing in a World Not Built for Us – An Interview with José Rosario

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Beyond Coping: Radical Healing in a World Not Built for Us – An Interview with José Rosario

Curt and Katie chat with José Rosario on cultural trauma, disability, and intersectionality in therapeutic work. We talk about the difference between coping and healing, the role of community engagement, and how therapists can better support clients in marginalized bodies. José shares his personal story, research, and advocacy work that highlight the need for inclusive and justice-oriented mental health practices.

Transcript

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(Show notes provided in collaboration with Otter.ai and ChatGPT.)

About Our Guest: José Rosario

Born to young Puerto Rican parents, José Rosario developed Cerebral Palsy as a premature baby. His family’s journey towards equity deeply impacted his mental health. Currently nearing his PhD in Clinical Psychology, his research focuses on cultural trauma in intersectional communities. He is an Interdisciplinary Minority Fellow for the American Psychological Association, member of the Congressional Diversity and Equality Advisory Board for Congressman James Langevin, and member of the Rhode Island Attorney General Community Advisory Board. He has been honored with the Chris Martin Humanitarian Award and the Victoria Lederberg Award for Excellence in Psychology.

In this podcast episode: Radical Healing Across Intersecting Identities

We invited José on the podcast to deepen our exploration of cultural trauma, disability, and intersectionality. José describes himself as a scholar, practitioner, and activist whose lived experience as a disabled person of color who is also queer informs both his research and his clinical work. His story illustrates the challenges and resilience within marginalized communities, as well as the radical hope that fuels healing and advocacy.

Key Takeaways for Therapists on Radical Healing and Intersectionality

“We’re asking folks to cope with harm, but when it’s identity based, harm, when it’s systemic, are we then asking people to just cope with racism, rather than changing the system that is engaging in racism?” – José Rosario

Radical healing emphasizes moving beyond coping to systemic change and collective healing.
Therapists often miss the distinction between symptom reduction and true healing when working with marginalized clients.
Disability, race, and queerness intersect in ways that compound invalidation, stigma, and systemic barriers.
Community is both a source of hope and a necessary component of healing.
Activism and resistance can take many forms—accessible, creative, and personal.
Therapists must step outside the therapy room and genuinely engage with the communities they serve.
Competency is not enough—curiosity, humility, and willingness to address oppression are essential.
Research on cultural trauma must translate into action, community support, and systemic change.

“I think if you are genuinely wanting to be a part of justice and reform and healing, that will come through. But we need to show ourselves first…I’m a big believer of allowing yourself to show up in appropriate ways in the community, so that people know that you really do mean what you’re saying.” – José Rosario

Resources on Radical Healing, Disability, and Cultural Trauma

The Phoenix Empowered – José’s organization amplifying stories and providing education for systemic change
The Phoenix Unbound Podcast – co-hosted by José Rosario
Follow José Rosario on social media: Instagram @thephoenixempowered

Relevant Episodes of MTSG Podcast

Topic: Special Populations

Meet the Hosts: Curt Widhalm & Katie Vernoy

Curt Widhalm, LMFT

Curt Widhalm is in private practice in the Los Angeles area. He is the cofounder of the Therapy Reimagined conference, an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University and CSUN, a former Subject Matter Expert for the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, former CFO of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, and a loving husband and father. He is 1/2 great person, 1/2 provocateur, and 1/2 geek, in that order. He dabbles in the dark art of making “dad jokes” and usually has a half-empty cup of coffee somewhere nearby. Learn more at: http://www.curtwidhalm.com

Katie Vernoy, LMFT

Katie Vernoy is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, coach, and consultant supporting leaders, visionaries, executives, and helping professionals to create sustainable careers. Katie, with Curt, has developed workshops and a conference, Therapy Reimagined, to support therapists navigating through the modern challenges of this profession. Katie is also a former President of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. In her spare time, Katie is secretly siphoning off Curt’s youthful energy, so that she can take over the world. Learn more at: http://www.katievernoy.com

A Quick Note:

Our opinions are our own. We are only speaking for ourselves – except when we speak for each other, or over each other. We’re working on it.

Our guests are also only speaking for themselves and have their own opinions. We aren’t trying to take their voice, and no one speaks for us either. Mostly because they don’t want to, but hey.

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Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano https://groomsymusic.com/

Transcript for this episode of the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide podcast (Autogenerated):

Transcripts do not include advertisements just a reference to the advertising break (as such timing does not account for advertisements).

… 0:00
(Opening Advertisement)

Announcer 0:00
You’re listening to the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide, where therapists live, breathe and practice as human beings to support you as a whole person and a therapist. Here are your hosts, Curt Widhalm And Katie Vernoy.

Curt Widhalm 0:12
Welcome back, modern therapists. This is the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide. I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy And this podcast for therapists about the things that go on in our work, the things that go on in our profession, and oftentimes, we talk about the communities that we serve. And Katie and I have had several conversations with a variety of guests over the years that have talked about some different aspects of minoritized or marginalized communities. And we’re very much in the spirit of that conversation once again today. And we’re talking with Jose Rosario from the Phoenix Empowered, where we’re gonna maybe go beyond where we’ve talked before a little bit. And we’ll talk about some of the intersectionality issues that we’ve talked about before, but I’m also very excited to talk about some of the topics that might not really come to the front of mind when we think about these communities, those with disabilities, those with other kinds of presenting issues that might be marginalized or otherwise pushed to the side. So thank you so much for spending some time and talking with us today.

Jose Rosario 1:19
Thank you for having me. I’m so excited.

Katie Vernoy 1:21
I’m really excited, too. This is a conversation I’ve been really wanting to dig into, because we’ve, we’ve barely touched the surface on it, and I feel like it’s, it’s near and dear to my heart. So I appreciate you taking time with us. But before we get started, I want to ask you the question that we ask all of our guests, which is, who are you and what are you putting out into the world?

Jose Rosario 1:41
That’s such a great question that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately with the world the way that it is, like, where do I want to sort of situate myself? I’m Jose Rosario. I believe that I am a scholar, practitioner, activist. I believe those identities are not able to be separated. They all have to exist together. And I guess if I have to label what I’m putting out into the world, the words that come to mind are safety, healing and justice. And I think those words are also all sort of linked together and interconnected in that way. I want people to feel like they have a place to land, a place to be affirmed and seen, and then that we have a responsibility now to then value what we’re seeing towards action.

Curt Widhalm 2:24
How do you get into this kind of work? What’s your what’s your clinical background?

Jose Rosario 2:29
Yeah, as cheesy as it sounds, it was quite a left turn for me. I originally trained in like addiction science, and I was very much the scientist that wore suits and thought about randomized controlled trials and data points. And for a while, I started to get really frustrated that we were talking about addiction in a way that just didn’t feel comprehensive, right, like we were working on like weight loss and concurrent smoking cessation, and not having conversations about people not having access to nutritious food or access to transportation, and it just felt very flat. And I started to think, is this what mental health work is going to be like? So I took a break and went to work in a college setting for a little while with students with disabilities, and found out college students are pretty cool. And so I went back to school to really focus on identity and mental health and things kind of all were happening at the same time. It was truly the universe aligning for me, I think.

Katie Vernoy 3:27
What is your personal stake in this?

Jose Rosario 3:31
I believe that I am serving the people who are like me, the people who have navigated an experience of difference. And I think as I get older, I think difference becomes so complicated, like, what does that even mean? But thinking about not feeling seen, not feeling like the world is either physically or psychologically built for you, and wanting to bring voice and bring light and strength to communities that are not served. So I think my mission here is to create the safety that I think I was I was craving as a disabled person of color who’s also queer and navigating so many systems all at once.

Curt Widhalm 4:13
So this is a podcast, and people are hearing us talk about things, and when that lines up with the kind of work that we do. We have clients who show up on screens for telehealth. They come to in our offices. For those therapists without kind of the lived experience. What is it that therapists often miss when they’re working with folks in marginalized bodies?

Jose Rosario 4:38
Yeah, you know, I’m very inspired by radical healing scholars, and the radical healing framework emerged during 2020 after the murder of George Floyd as a way to really understand how do communities of color and by extension, minoritized communities engage in healing. And one of the things that has been really ringing true for me lately is the difference between healing and coping. Traditionally, I think as therapists, we’re taught to support coping, right? We want to reduce symptoms, we want to reduce distress, and I think that’s important, but I think what we miss is that it has to go beyond symptom management. We’re asking folks to cope with harm, but when it’s identity based, harm, when it’s systemic, are we then asking people to just cope with racism, rather than changing the system that is engaging in racism? And so I think healing moves us a step forward. Particularly radical healing moves us to really think about, how are clients engaging with systems, how are clients engaging with their identities in ways that promote healing? And so I think frameworks like radical healing, to me, feel important and need to be a part of the training curriculum, and it’s so cool that we have mentors and people who are guiding the next generation of us to move forward and use this radical healing kind of identity and framework and belief system.

Katie Vernoy 5:57
What does radical healing look like?

Jose Rosario 6:01
Yeah. You know, it’s comprised of five anchors. And to me, I think about these daily. We talk about cultural authenticity, right? Connecting back to who you are, whether that means, like, I have family dinners with my parents on Sundays, like, that’s a part of who I am, right? And so connecting to that part of you, it’s about strength and resistance. Knowing that I talk a lot about how I come from communities of activists right, the disabled community, the queer community, the Latine community, these are activists that runs through me, and so connecting to that strength, connecting to my family, my collective, my community. We talked about connecting back to critical consciousness and an awareness of systems. And then my the fifth one, which is my favorite, is radical hope, right? Being able to see, even when the world is on fire, being able to hope for an equitable future. And so we look at all five of these anchors, and we think through, how is the client engaging with their community? How is the client feeling supported? How much is the client tapping into that inherent strength? And can we move them this way? And I think you’re really not to get too nerdy, but aligns very well with ACT and DBT and sort of these third wave values driven modalities. And so that’s typically how I like to infuse radical healing.

Curt Widhalm 7:18
We’ve had a lot of conversations about folks with marginalized identities, and we’d like to expand this conversation to more consciously include disability. And I can imagine that some of the very engagement with community that you’re talking about here is an extra barrier that might end up being something for especially intersectional folks. What are your thoughts about when disability intersects with other types of marginalization?

Jose Rosario 7:46
Yeah. I mean, in my personal life, right? That was really important to me. When I think about, for example, my Latine identity intersecting with my disability; my parents were young, they came from Puerto Rico, they didn’t speak a ton of English. They had a premature baby, and didn’t know what they were doing, and they were met with a lot of assumptions, right about whether or not they could care for me, whether or not they wanted to care for me. And you know, I was about five or six years old when a doctor looked at my parents with me in the room and said, Your kid’s not going to accomplish anything. If you think he’s going to accomplish something, you need to just like, let go of these dreams you have, because they’re just not realistic, right? And I’m very lucky that, given that we are so collective and so family oriented, that I had parents who were like, We don’t care what you say, we’re going to keep moving forward. But disability was always a part of that, of that racism, right, of that institutionalized invalidation that was happening for me and my family, and the same is true for my queerness, right? Disability and queerness, we know now is very intersectional, but I’ll tell you, growing up, nobody was talking about it, and it felt very isolating.

Katie Vernoy 8:52
Say more about that.

Jose Rosario 8:53
Yeah. I mean, you know, I remember, unfortunately, like having the script of, Oh, nobody wants to date the guy in the wheelchair, let alone the queer guy in the wheelchair, right? And the sort of understanding that I was operating the world differently. Adolescence is hard for everybody, but it’s even harder when you’re not, you know, invited to house parties because they’re stares or feeling like, you know, you don’t feel beautiful in the sort of natural or expected standards of what folks think of.

… 9:20
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Katie Vernoy 9:22
It seems like there’s so many barriers that you have faced in your life, and yet, when you were talking about radical hope, and I’m thinking about current events and all of those things, it feels really challenging. How are you tapping in to hope right now?

Jose Rosario 9:40
I think it comes from community, right? And I think I went through an evolution with my community that saw something in me to kind of claim my voice as a speaker, as a therapist. You know, I got on the stage for the first time in 2017 and told my story of what it was like to be different. And everything in me shifted from that moment on, right. It was like suddenly I could see the different pieces of myself and start to see how they interwove, interwove and and connected with each other to really create something. And so I think my community has been the place where I find hope. To know that I can still exist. I have a right to exist. I have a right to be joyful. I have a right to resist if that’s where I need to be in that moment, but that I can be affirmed in wherever I am in that season of my life. So I think community to me is where I find hope, but also just knowing that there are people that are coming after us, right? Those of us who are putting in the work now are seeing the younger generations being like no, we want to talk about mental health. People on Tiktok are talking about going to therapy. And I’m like, how cool is that? Because when I was growing up, that wasn’t happening, and so we’re seeing a shift, and that, to me, brings me hope, despite the fact that everything feels like a dumpster fire right now.

Curt Widhalm 10:56
For those in your position that were kind of the trailblazers for bringing some of these intersectional barriers more to light, being the first ones out there. What kinds of experiences did you have that were really just kind of unique, that as you’re talking about the kids today, they have the Tiktok and they have the role models. But what was that experience like for you?

Jose Rosario 11:21
Yeah, the immediate thing that comes to mind is, I remember looking at a friend of mine my first year of graduate school, and saying to her, I’m so tired of trailblazing. I’m so tired of always saying I am the first X, Y and Z, or I’m the one that’s bringing up culture and context, or systems of oppression, like it’s exhausting to trailblaze. And I think around that time, it was also around 2020, where I started to feel like I was being really tokenized. And almost like considered that diversity pillar, right? Anytime we wanted to talk about culture, call up Jose and have him come do a talk or a workshop, and it started to feel very draining. And for me, it was about making sure that none of me was erased, right? So I started telling people, like, I’m not a disability or an LGBTQ+ speaker, or even a bipoc oriented speaker, I’m a human rights speaker, I’m a mental health professional, like, there is, there is an umbrella here. And so I think it’s hard, because being at the forefront means there’s a lot of pressure, and it feels like everything’s on your shoulders. And being able to say, No, I’m allowed to exist in my fullness and allowed to play, which is something new that I’ve been thinking about a lot, like, how are we engaging in play to be able to navigate the world? Because it’s a lot of work to engage in activism if we want to be mindful and thoughtful about how we do so.

Katie Vernoy 12:42
That was the question that kind of came to mind for me was, was how you’re taking care of yourself?

Jose Rosario 12:48
Yeah, trying to find play. I’m a reader, and, you know, I purposely read fiction and fantasy fiction to completely leave my job at my job. And that, to me, has been so great. I re-upped my library card a few years ago, and I’m a big proponent of libraries, and I think they’re great, so it’s been fun for me to, like, check out a book and read again. I feel like I’m tapping into that kid.

Curt Widhalm 13:12
I had a client recently echoed some of what you were just saying, that the expression was something akin to, I’m so tired of being resilient, and it sounds like you have found kind of how to take care of yourself alongside this. What was that process like, really being able to sit with yourself and to be able to implement some of these healthy and positive things that you’re talking about?

Jose Rosario 13:41
Oh, what a great question. I think that goes back to this idea of healing versus coping, right? It’s almost like resilience versus resistance. I’m Puerto Rican, and after the hurricane in 2017 hurricane Maria, there was a lot of dialog about Puerto Ricans being so resilient and being able to pick themselves up again. And a lot of what I was hearing in my community and from my friends was like, No, we’re angry. We’re tired of having to pick ourselves up after every hurricane because of a failed infrastructure and failed systems that are not here to support the community. And so that really rang true for me, and that started to shift my idea of what it would look like to be a person operating in the world, right? Yes, we do need to care for ourselves and cope. But I think what’s been most helpful to me is saying, okay, the world feels like it’s on fire. What’s the one thing I have bandwidth for right now? And can I put some energy into that one thing? Instead of feeling like I’m carrying everything all at once. It’s not possible to do these things. And so I’ll talk to the clients about is it, is it about being resilient and just saying these things are happening to you and you’re coping through them? Or is it about saying these things are happening to me and I’m angry about them, and I want to honor that anger and put that somewhere, whether it’s having dinner with a neighbor because the neighbor just needs to feel connected with you, or it’s volunteering at a nonprofit. And so from a radical healing perspective. We talk a lot about community engagement, and I’ll talk to clients about getting off social media as an act of resistance too. You know, once or twice a day, no more than that. So I think finding those micro interventions can be helpful.

Katie Vernoy 15:13
I’ve been having a lot of conversations with my clients about, how do you do that assessment of What is the thing I have bandwidth for? And I want to kind of add in the disability angle here, if that’s okay with you right now, because I feel like for myself with my own medical issues and the things that I am facing, you know, my level of competence or my level level of capacity, I find it hard, and I find it oftentimes that that conversation isn’t completely present in thinking about advocacy or resistance, and I don’t know that, I don’t know how to get to the exact question I’m trying to get to, but I guess maybe the question is, How are you doing that assessment, and how do you honor all of the parts of you as you’re doing that assessment?

Jose Rosario 15:51
Yeah, you know, I think that’s a great opportunity. And I’ll be honest and say that I use myself in the room, right? And I’ll even name like as a person who uses a wheelchair, it’s not always going to be likely for me that I can go to a protest for a variety of reasons, right? And one of the things that I’m learning in my research, actually, is that activism is so vastly different. Resistance is so vastly different across individuals. It can look like art. It can look like having conversations. You know, I had, I had someone recently tell me that they’ve been really holding on to this phrase of, like, ‘protest in the morning and dance at night,’ which was part of the civil rights movement. And so I really love that and this idea that we have to figure out, as you said, what is accessible to us in that moment and not shame ourselves right, recognizing that any action has potential for change. Whether it’s making phone calls, whether it’s connecting and providing social media support to smaller nonprofits that are really struggling, and I think I’ve had to really work with myself and with clients to sort of break down the expectation of what is activism, what is community action? It doesn’t have to be the sort of able bodied standard that we live in.

Katie Vernoy 17:14
Thank you.

Curt Widhalm 17:17
What are you hoping that your research is gonna find out?

Jose Rosario 17:20
Yeah, if you would have asked me that a few years ago, I think I was kind of jaded. I would have said, like, why are we doing research? Who even reads the research? But I think now I recognize that people see it right, and that it opens a dialog. But I’m very committed to research not just stopping there. We can’t just collect the information and say, Man, that sucks. Like there has to be something done with it.

Katie Vernoy 17:48
Absolutely.

Jose Rosario 17:49
Yeah. Like, I’m not interested in having dialog about how, you know, queer folks have higher rates of X disorder, or disabled folks are at more risk of X experience, if we’re not talking about how we’re going to actually address these things. And so I’m hoping that my research, I look at the impact of witnessing violence against folks who share your identities, and looking at how folks still endorse trauma symptoms to really understand what can we do on a community level when mass experiences of violence happen, as they happen often, to really support communities. And so my my work translates to my nonprofit work of like, okay, this has happened, and now we’re going into the community, and we’re providing listening spaces and workshops and processing spaces. And what do we need to be doing right now? So I hope there’s a real world implication to the work that I’m doing.

Katie Vernoy 18:37
Can you talk a little bit more about that, because I feel like we kind of jumped in part way. So I want to really understand your research.

Jose Rosario 18:45
Yeah, so I study hate based violence and cultural trauma. I look specifically at how intersectional communities who witness violence towards one or more of their identities experience distress. And then how do they engage in healing? Right? Because people see these horrendous things all over social media, but they’re not just like piles of goo shuddering in the corner. Like they are, they are reacting and continuing to live life. And so looking at how do people engage with the stimuli over and over and over again, because I do think that trauma is much more widespread than we think. And so being able to wrap around minoritized communities and say this may not have happened to you directly, but it’s still painful. How do we process that? Is really important, and so that sort of feeds into the work that I do in the community, trying to connect with groups and provide education, but also just spaces to validate feelings that you’re allowed to feel distressed even if something did not happen to you directly.

Katie Vernoy 19:41
What do you think therapists should take from what you’re doing at this point with this research?

Jose Rosario 19:46
Oh, I have so many ideas about that. I think, first and foremost, I think we have a narrative that therapists think, oh, people will find us in our therapy rooms, right? They’ll come to our clinics. They’ll come to our practice. I really think therapists need to be out in the community. And I’m not just saying, you know, out in the community, providing educational workshops. I’m talking going to the farmers market, being engaged, having an ear to the ground, being connected to nonprofits in your area. I think that we as therapists are meant to be healers, and to do that, we have to be a part of the communities that we serve genuinely. We have to be listening to what people need, and then we have the responsibility to respond to that, and that’s where the education and processing comes in, but we need to be connected first and foremost. And I also think, you know, healing isn’t going to happen individually all the time. A lot of folks heal in community. A lot of communities heal together. And so can we create community spaces. Like, how cool would it be to connect with your local nonprofit and say, I want to offer a group for moms just to talk about what it’s like to be moms, and immigrant mothers in particular, right in this sort of context that we’re living in now, that would be so cool. What would it be like to have a group for folks with disabilities through telehealth, where people can just process what it’s like to have a chronic health condition? And really creating that communal space, I think, is important. So there was a lot there, but I think about this, a lot about us being engaged and community oriented.

… 21:12
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Curt Widhalm 21:15
In your research, are you finding at all barriers for mental health professionals actually doing what you’re suggesting here.

Jose Rosario 21:24
Definitely, I think what first and foremost, I think we are all stretched very thin. I think the pandemic for, I would say, for a lot of us, but I’ll speak for myself, was exhausting, and it felt like it was constantly going. I was thinking about it the other day, I didn’t take a day off for like, three years from like 2020 onwards. And I think we’re all pretty burned out, and we have limited capacity, and we’re also humans interacting with what’s happening too, right? Like we are also impacted by violence and hate and stress that is happening across the world. So I think bandwidth is a big problem. But I also think our metric of competency, this idea of like being competent in multicultural issues, I think, is also a pretty big barrier, right? I’m not sure that competency fits the bill. I think we need to be we need to be teaching folks to be more curious, to have maybe more poignant conversations about oppression. I can’t tell you that the amount of therapists I meet that are like I wouldn’t even know how to talk about racism in session, and I think that’s a huge barrier, because then we’re sort of glazing over the experience of an entire community.

Curt Widhalm 22:33
A lot of times we find that therapists want to jump in when there is community events going on. We’ve had some episodes earlier this year around responding to natural disaster, kinds of things and some of the more ongoing things like racism, things like disabilities, that people are going to run into more than just kind of a singular event. For getting involved as a mental health professional in those instances where people do end up having time, any suggestions on how to best approach being a visitor if somebody isn’t necessarily aligning with some of those identities themselves from a lived experience?

Jose Rosario 23:22
Yeah, I once had a mentor to say this, and I think it’s so true. She always said, lean on your training. You are trained to collect data on psychological well being, assess data and then make decisions based on that, to promote healing. We are trained to write, we are trained to assess and train to treat like there are ways in which our training naturally isn’t is connected to activism. We can easily write a policy brief or, you know, serve and to provide testimony in in legislative moments, in our cities or in our communities. And so I think for those of us who don’t share identities, and even those of us who do right because two people with the same identity, specifically disability, right? Disability is so broad and so and so wide that I can’t speak for every single person with a disability, which is why I’m not a disability speaker, right? And so I think knowing your training, bringing that in, but then allowing the community to tell you how your training can be used, rather than coming in saying, I’m ready to take on, you know, the the system, or take on the man. It’s, it’s, it’s not going to happen that way. We need to listen and then use the skills that we have. So don’t discredit your skills and allow the community to tell you what they need from you. I think are the important takeaways there.

Katie Vernoy 24:39
I’m hearing the expansion of curiosity, using your skills and being really present and not necessarily discounting what you actually can offer. I think that there are folks that I’ve seen in conversations in the past who feel very cautious, or potentially even scared of folks that don’t share minoritized identities or don’t have some of the same lived experiences coming in and potentially doing harm. And so that my question is kind of based in that, which is, how do we how do we step forward, and how do we make sure that we’re avoiding harm?

Jose Rosario 25:24
Not to get on my soapbox again, but I think that’s the perfect example of why we want to be engaged in the community and connected and visible, and to listen and learn and to really establish ourselves as part of a community, not with the sort of nefarious view of like, oh, once I’m in the community, I’m gonna get to do all these things. But more so just recognizing that, like we as therapists, have caused harm, right? Like people with disabilities have been institutionalized, for example, because of assessments done by mental health professionals in the past, or maybe even presently, right? And so I think being aware of the harm that we’ve caused and then allowing folks to get to know us and to build some street cred, right? And to be human and to be connected. I think if you are genuinely wanting to be a part of justice and reform and healing, that will come through. But we need to, we need to show ourselves first. And I think oftentimes we’re trained to kind of hide behind the veneer, right, the sort of blank slate of a therapist, and I’m a big believer of allowing yourself to show up in appropriate ways in the community, so that people know that you really do mean what you’re saying.

Curt Widhalm 26:34
With a lot of the current day issues, at least the zeitgeist of the news, as we’re recording today, and a lot of hate based violence, a lot of cultural trauma is not only happening, it’s bringing up long present cultural trauma. What are you seeing, as far as folks engagement with this, both in kind of the general population, as well as some of the advocates, the mental health professionals who are trying to jump in?

Jose Rosario 27:09
Yeah, I think I’m really excited by the discourse around trauma. I think for a long time, our view of trauma as mental health professionals has been very narrow. And what I’m seeing now is more of an understanding of the vertical nature of like generational trauma, but also the horizontal nature, right of community trauma. When something happens to my uncle, neighbor friend, that ripples out, and people are really starting to understand that. I mean, we have decades and decades of research behind racial trauma and thinking about the impact of witnessing and ex and being aware of racial trauma, and that, to me, feels like we’re moving in a place now where we’re serving communities where they need to be served. And I think I’m excited to see more therapists doing things like podcasts and social media, quite honestly, being so transparent and so real, it is sometimes a little bit off putting. You’re like, oh, I don’t know if I want to be so present and so forward facing. And it’s scary, because it it feels like you want to, like, retain that, that privacy a little bit sometimes. But I think it’s important for us to be out here and dialoguing and also just showing that we’re human too, and can can think about what’s happening in the world. We’re not just sitting in our office being like, tell me how you feel. That’s not at all what this work is in the modern day.

Katie Vernoy 28:33
What have we not talked about that we should be talking about right now?

Jose Rosario 28:37
I think something that that you said, Katie, really rang true for me, this idea of like representation of groups. And I think we as therapists, particularly therapists who do hold minoritized identities and feeling like trailblazers, may really bring the pressure to really understand a group and speak for a group. And I think it’s really important for us to also recognize that we are not monoliths, right? Like we we cannot possibly, because of intersectionality, speak for all people, and so we are trained to be curious and to listen and to ask those questions that dig a little deeper. And I think we’re very fortunate to to hear stories. But I think the buck doesn’t stop there, right? If we’re hearing the pain happening in a community, I believe it’s our ethical duty to respond. It’s our ethical duty to be engaged and to act and to serve the community, at least that’s the kind of therapist that I hope to be and hope to see others be. So I think it’s important to recognize that we all have blind spots, and we can all continue to learn, even when we feel like, Oh, this is my experience, too. It’s never gonna be the experience of the person sitting across from you. 100% of the way.

Curt Widhalm 29:47
Can you tell us about the Phoenix Empowered and what it is that the organization does?

Jose Rosario 29:56
Yeah, yeah. What a great segue, actually, because the mission is sort of two pronged, right? It started with me sharing my story, but I always knew that I never wanted it to be the Jose show. That’s just not comfortable for me, and it’s just not important enough to me, right? I wanted this to be a space where we amplify stories of all minoritized communities and talking about how identity based experiences, identity based hate impacts psychological well being. So the first part, to me, is all about amplifying stories, but then our second prong is really about education and action, right? So going out into the community with the stories that we’re hearing and saying, This is what we need to do to create an inclusive mental health conversation. So going into corporations and talking about inclusive policies for mental health, or talking to schools and universities about, how do we think about identity based experiences within a mental health model? And really trying to engage in systemic change. So that’s sort of what we do. We amplify stories and educate the public to make some change.

Katie Vernoy 30:57
I love that if you could wave a magic wand and accomplish one thing that would create big change. What would Phoenix Empowered be doing?

Jose Rosario 31:11
Oh, man, what a great question. I mean, there’s so many things I have, so many dreams. I definitely want to see more inclusive and more thoughtful mental health conversations in mainstream media. And I’m not really, I have ideas of what that could look like, but I think there’s so much room here to engage in art as a form of education, as a form of of activism. So that would be exciting to me. But I also think, and this is more sappy, but we’re therapists, so I guess that’s okay. I would really love to see a world where people were able to self validate their experiences and say, like that experience was painful to me and it wasn’t okay, and the system can change. I think there’s so much hopelessness in the world, and so what I if I could wave a magic wand, it would be radical hope everywhere, right? The belief that even though things are difficult, there is a potential, and there is a right for an equitable future, and that we all are moving forward and fighting for that in any way that we possibly can, you know, to our best ability.

Curt Widhalm 32:19
Where can people find out more about you the work that you’re doing, Phoenix Empowered?

Jose Rosario 32:25
Yeah, yeah. So you can find us at the Phoenix Empowered everywhere. We also have a blog on our website that we’re always willing to share stories on. And then, most recently, we’ve relaunched our podcast, the Phoenix Unbound, and I’m going to be so honest, I talked to you all about the sort of trajectory of being very serious and academic and trying to engage in more playfulness. And the first season of our podcast, I didn’t even realize it, but I went back to, like, the serious academic, and it was, frankly, so boring. We are back now with some new energy. I have a co host who’s one of my best friends now, and we’re just having more fun and talking, and it feels more like me now. So if you want to check out the Phoenix Unbound, that’s our fun, exciting project, and we have a couple of other things we’re working on, too.

Curt Widhalm 33:14
And we will include links to those in our show notes over at mtsgpodcast.com. And follow us on our social media. Join our Facebook group, the Modern Therapist Group, to continue on with this and other conversations, and until next time, I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy and Jose Rosario.

… 33:33
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