Exploring Systemic Trauma and Relational Privilege with BIPOC and LGBTQI Couples: An interview with Akilah Riley-Richardson
Curt and Katie chat with Akilah Riley Richardson, MSW about the challenges therapists face when working with BIPOC and LGBTQI couples. Akilah discusses the impact of systemic trauma, how it affects relationships, and the importance of creating therapeutic models tailored to marginalized communities. She introduces The PRIDE Model for therapy and The BIOME Stance for therapists, offering actionable strategies for inclusive, trauma-informed care.
Click here to scroll to the podcast transcript.Transcript
(Show notes provided in collaboration with Otter.ai and ChatGPT.)
An Interview with Akilah Riley-Richardson, MSW, CCTP
Akilah Riley-Richardson, MSW, CCTP is a published researcher, Relational Healing Facilitator, STAIR Method Certified clinician, couples therapist and Certified Clinical Trauma Professional. She has been a helping professional for seventeen years and has experience working with couples and persons practicing consensual non monogamy, both in the Caribbean and internationally. Akilah also specialises in work with sexual minorities and racial minorities. As an educator and facilitator, she has provided consultancy to organizations such as NASTAD (National Alliance for State and Territorial AIDS directors), I-TECH (International Training and Education Center for Health), CARPHA (Caribbean Public Health Agency) and CVC (Caribbean Vulnerable Communities). She has presented in various spaces including the Psychotherapy Networker Symposium, the Academy of Therapy Wisdom, Harvard Medical School and the Black Mental health Symposium. She has been a Social Work Educator at the University of the Southern Caribbean since 2012. She is the founder of the Relational Healing Institute and creator of the P.R.I.D.E model.
In this podcast episode, we talk with Akilah Riley-Richardson about what therapists get wrong when working with BIPOC and LGBTQI couples
Too often, couples counselors take traditional models and make slight tweaks for couples from marginalized backgrounds, with little success. Akilah Riley-Richardson has developed a stance and a new model to help support therapists in doing more effective work with these couples.
Understanding Systemic Trauma in Therapy
“Systemic trauma is what the wider system is inflicting on you. And the thing about systemic trauma that makes it so different from other types of trauma is that it’s chronic. It’s constantly happening…It’s unpredictable, like you never know when it’s going to happen. You can’t protect yourself, which adds to your level of vulnerability.” – Akilah Riley-Richardson, MSW, CCTP
- Defining systemic trauma: Chronic, unpredictable, and disenfranchised trauma caused by systemic forces (education, legal, and healthcare systems).
- Examples of systemic trauma: Microaggressions, mispronounced names, assumptions about authority roles, and misgendering.
- Effects on individuals and relationships: Reduced sense of safety, rejection sensitivity, emotional disconnect, and difficulty setting boundaries.
Challenges in Therapy with BIPOC and LGBTQI Couples
- Common therapist mistakes:
- Ignoring systemic realities and the impact of privilege.
- Adapting existing models without acknowledging their white, cishet origins.
- Failing to create trauma-informed, inclusive frameworks.
- Importance of relational privilege: Self-acceptance, social acceptance, and feeling protected in relationships.
“From my experience, therapists don’t often consider the systemic reality. I think that sometimes therapists believe that they can simply take models that are rooted in white, cis het realities or created by white cis het theorists, etc, and think that they can just adapt a few things and that it can easily be applied.” – Akilah Riley-Richardson, MSW, CCTP
The PRIDE Model & The BIOME Stance from Akilah Riley-Richardson
- PRIDE Model for Therapy (Pivot, Rumble, Imagine, Develop, and Evolve):
- Relational curiosity: Actively exploring the client’s lived experiences.
- Setting intentions: Creating space for safety and vulnerability.
- Trauma work: Addressing systemic trauma’s long-term impact on relationships.
- BIOME Stance for Therapists:
- Bravery: Facing discomfort in recognizing privilege.
- Intimacy: Fostering deep emotional connections.
- Openness: Being receptive to client experiences.
- Micro-liberatory movements: Small but impactful actions toward social justice.
- Epistemic embracing: Validating client knowledge and lived experiences.
How Therapists Can Engage Clients in Systemic Trauma Work
- Transparency in therapy: Clearly communicating the goal of liberation.
- Allowing resistance: Accepting client pushback as an assertion of power.
- Embracing uncertainty: Being comfortable with not having all the answers.
- Participating in decolonization conversations: Learning through community engagement and allyship.
Resources for Modern Therapists mentioned in this Podcast Episode:
We’ve pulled together resources mentioned in this episode and put together some handy-dandy links. Please note that some of the links below may be affiliate links, so if you purchase after clicking below, we may get a little bit of cash in our pockets. We thank you in advance!
Akilah’s website: akilahrileyrichardson.com
Akilah’s social media
Instagram: @akilah.rileyrichardson
Facebook: @akilahrrichardson
Relevant Episodes of MTSG Podcast:
Therapy as a Political Act: An Interview with Dr. Travis Heath
Understanding Polyamory: An Interview with Dana McNeil, LMFT
How Can Therapists Help Couples Recover from Infidelity?: An Interview with Dr. Talal H. Alsaleem
Decolonizing Therapy: A Movement – An Interview with Dr. Jennifer Mullan
Family Therapy: Not Just for Kids – An Interview with Adriana Rodriguez, LMFT
Antiracist Practices in the Room: An Interview with Dr. Allen Lipscomb
Bi+ Erasure, An Interview with Dr. Mimi Hoang, Ph.D.
Who we are:
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.
Stay in Touch with Curt, Katie, and the whole Therapy Reimagined #TherapyMovement:
Consultation services with Curt Widhalm or Katie Vernoy:
Connect with the Modern Therapist Community:
Our Facebook Group – The Modern Therapists Group
Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide Creative Credits:
Voice Over by DW McCann https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW/
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 0:15
Welcome back, modern therapists. This is the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide. I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy, and this is the podcast for therapists about the things that go on in our profession, the things that go on in our world, and the clients that we serve. And we always try to find some things to talk about intersectionality, and Katie and I, being two very white cis het people don’t have a lot of that lived experience ourselves, and we are always thrilled to bring on guests who can help to not only enlighten us, but to share a lot of resources and research and lived experience with all of you. And we are very happy to be joined today by Akilah Riley-Richardson, and thank you so much for joining us here today.
Akilah Riley-Richardson 1:01
Thanks for having me.
Katie Vernoy 1:04
We’re really excited for this conversation, but we’re going to ask you the question we ask everyone before we get started is, who are you and what are you putting out into the world?
Akilah Riley-Richardson 1:12
That’s a good question. I believe I’m a person who strives for four things, alignment, authenticity, abundance and attunement. Those are four words that mean a lot to me. They’re on my website. I’d say that trying to show up in the world in a way that feels authentic is really important to me, and so walking into spaces and walking into this work while trying to foster that for myself and for my clients, for them to feel into their own authenticity and their own abundance, I think, yeah, that’s what I want to put out into the world.
Curt Widhalm 2:00
We start a lot of our episodes with a question that comes from a learning place and not a shaming place. But what do therapists usually get wrong when working with BIPOC and LGBTQI couples?
Akilah Riley-Richardson 2:16
From my experience, therapists don’t often consider the systemic reality. I think that sometimes therapists believe that they can simply take models that are rooted in white, cis het realities or created by white cis het theorists, etc, and think that they can just adapt a few things and that it can easily be applied. And I, and I’m not shaming us for that, because I, too, have done and sometimes still do that. Yes, I want to be very transparent. But even in my own practice, I have experienced myself doing that, trying to take existing models and just simply adapting it, and not realizing that every theoretical frame, every framework, every therapeutic framework, I should say, um, has its own essence, its own way of knowing the world. Yeah, and frames that have a privileged essence, that as a privileged way of seeing the world cannot be easily applied to the realities of BIPOC, LGBTQI. So I found that while, yes, they can be very helpful, I found that sometimes we need to go from the ground up in terms of generating something specifically for these communities. When we ignore the reality of systemic trauma, when we ignore what’s happening for this person on a day to day basis and their lived experience of transphobia or homophobia or racism, then we think that what we’re seeing in the room is just a manifestation of something much smaller, maybe some stuff in their own immediate family, or maybe some couple dynamics or etc. But I think understanding that the that this person is walking into the room with the politics of the world on their back would help us to really understand how they’re showing up in their relationships, or they’re showing up with in the therapy session, how it’s generating so much of their distress on a daily on a daily basis, in ways that they themselves don’t even understand. I think ignoring the politics of the world that this person has to live in is sometimes the error that we often make.
Katie Vernoy 4:40
so when you’re talking about this type of experience, the word that you’ve used to describe it in the stuff that you sent over to us was systemic trauma. And I’m I’m really wanting to dig into what that is and what that looks like.
Akilah Riley-Richardson 4:56
Yeah, systemic trauma is trauma that is perpetuated by the system itself: the educational system, judicial systems, legislative systems, all the systems around this person. That’s systemic trauma. When you walk into university and you realize that because you’re black, you’re treated differently and you have less access. That’s systemic trauma. When you find yourself getting pulled over by police, that’s systemic trauma at the hands of the legislative and judicial system. Yeah, systemic trauma is what the wider system is inflicting on you. And the thing about systemic trauma that makes it so different from other types of trauma is that it’s chronic. It’s constantly happening. You know, other types of trauma sometimes are time bound. Systemic trauma is constantly happening. It’s unpredictable, like you never know when it’s going to happen. You can’t protect yourself, yeah, which adds to your level of vulnerability. It’s disenfranchised and invisibilized. Yeah, it’s often difficult to talk about it, because the persons who hold power in the world don’t want you to talk about it. And when you talk about it, they either dismiss you or they dismiss it, because many times it it is in their best interest to keep it going. Yeah, and I say, it’s not only the persons who hold power, but all of us who sometimes dismiss it. There’s a way in which, when you live in a BIPOC body or an LGBTQI body, or anybody that is systemically marginalized, you have to train yourself how to ignore it in order to survive, you can’t pause. You cannot pause for every moment where you experience a level of microaggression. Yeah, you have to keep moving. You have to keep living. And so over time, you yourself have to ignore it, dismiss it, in order to live in the world, because it’s a type of trauma that is disenfranchised by others, but over time, you find yourself muzzling your own self as well. The thing about it is also socially created, yeah? So you want to feel like human beings rely on other human beings to feel safe. But with systemic trauma through these systems, yeah, you’re experiencing this kind of, I say, pseudo relational harm, because it’s using human beings to harm you in this particular kind of way. So it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s pervasive, chronic, disenfranchised nature that really makes it very, very different from other types. Like I could go into a therapist’s office and be and get so much attention over, but possibly get so much attention over talking about experiences of sex abuse, etc, or childhood of trauma, but when we bring up incidents of racism, I’ve had clients say this to me, and sometimes when they go to a therapist, and they talk about an incident of racism, they feel this need to have to prove to the therapist that it really happened. Yeah, like you have to, and so it’s very, very different sometimes from other types of trauma, because you get disenfranchised in the world, and also sometimes in a therapeutic setting, or you have to prove that you experienced transphobia, or prove that you experienced homophobia.
Curt Widhalm 8:25
I know, for a lot of people and with our audience, even therapists that come from some of the more privileged backgrounds or some of the white cis het backgrounds, you’re giving some examples, like being pulled over by policemore. But what are some of the more subtle things that you’re referring to, like you talk about walking into university. Can you enlighten us a little bit more on what some of those examples might be?
Akilah Riley-Richardson 8:51
Yeah, something as simple as, I remember being my first time when somebody said to me, Oh, you speak so well. Like, you know, and as you speak so well, for a black woman from the global itself, oh, your English is so good, that’s a form of systemic trauma, and that’s harmful. And if I were to name and say, You know what? What does that mean? What are you implying? What is, what is well, first of all? Well, it’s how well I could speak this, this, this privileged language, then I’d have to fight to prove that. Also, there’s a way in which I can speak, because I work with the with the LGBTQI community here in Trinidad. Yeah, that there’s subtle things people would say to you in the workplace. Yeah, for example, using derogatory I don’t even want to say the words, but using derogatory language to refer to persons who are queer. Yeah, and those words are very painful, but people use them all of the time. Or assuming, if I walk into a professional space seeing that I’m coming to present, and there’s a white woman with me who’s part of my team, people assuming that the white person is the presenter, and I’m the help. Yeah, I’m the person who’s supposed to carrying the projectors. It was the person who’s actually doing the presentation. People anglicizing or just not trying to learn how to pronounce the names of people who are non English speakers or non Native American or non American. So for example, if somebody’s at a friend of mine, her name was Sara, yeah, and her American colleagues would insist on calling her Sarah, but that’s not her name. Name is Sara? Something as simple as that, learning how to pronounce someone’s name, yeah, making sure that you that you use people’s pronouns and not insist that it is problematic or too stressful on you to use someone’s pronouns. Yeah? So these are little ways, subtle ways, so if I were to go to complain that somebody didn’t address me by my right pronouns, I’d be dismissed as being too sensitive. Yeah, if I were to say that somebody didn’t attempt to try to learn how to pronounce my name. I remember once being in a space much earlier in my career where I was working with a powerful white man, and he’d always mispronounced my name, and because of my internalized I would say, Yeah, I’d call it internalized xenophobia and possibly internalized racism at that point in time, I’d never correct him. I’d never say my name is Akilah, and you couldn’t just butcher my name because you don’t know how to pronounce it. So there are little things that we do as well, you know, dismissing things like DEI dismissing access that should be given to BIPOCc. You know, saying that these things are unfair in a world where BIPOC, especially have been systemically harm and systemically marginalized and are not starting in the same place as the rest of the population, seeing those things as being unfair, those are the different ways in which you know we practice systemic harm and systemic systemic trauma.
… 11:56
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Katie Vernoy 12:00
I know that in reaching out to us, you had wanted to talk about the impacts on couples, and I’m just starting to imagine whether it’s intercultural couples or or folks even just different culturally from the therapist who’s sitting across from them. And I’m really curious to hear how you’re putting forward education around how to navigate not just kind of the systemic trauma that can happen, but there’s so much intersectionality here as well.
Akilah Riley-Richardson 12:31
I have this term that I call relational privilege, yeah, and relational privilege, which is a term I conceptualized after I realized that the definitions of intimacy and relationality that we use for couples who have privilege and white cis het identities don’t always obtain for persons who don’t who like those identities and systemic trauma can actually affect your ability and probably even your willingness to be relational and to feel safely intimate in a relationship. So the work starts just to answer your question. The work starts by acknowledging that there are conditions that limit intimacy here, and that these conditions are outside of the couple. And what these conditions do, because I said there are four elements of relational privilege; they are being able to live your truth, self acceptance and self belonging, social acceptance and social belonging, and the fourth being, a sense of feeling protected in the world. And when we are not living in a world where we feel those things, as is often the case for BIPOC and LGBTQI persons, those things form the architecture that allow us to be able to walk into intimacy, yeah, safely. And I found that sometimes, as therapists, when we’re trying to work with couples to develop these things, we don’t think about the fact that so, for example, I remember working with a gay woman, a lesbian woman, who said to me that she’s very sensitive to rejection from her partner, like everything she could not everything, she’d have this heightened degree of rejection sensitivity. And when we delved in this rejection sensitivity to her partner was because of the rejection in the wider world. Now this is a woman in a same sex relationship who is always rejected, of course, in a wider cis het society by persons who have cis het identities, but that felt sense of the world was seeping into the relationship. And so everything the partner said was underlined that was was amplifying that female rejecting me, you’re not accepting me, even though the partner was queer as well. Another client speaking to me about not being able to connect with her partner emotionally. Like she would only be able to connect sexually but never be able to connect emotionally. And when we tracked back, this was tied to her coming out story, that when she came out, there was so much shame, you know, because of her parents reactions to it. And so she associated being being queer with a shameful identity. And so when she would try to engage and be vulnerable and be intimate with partners, she could not connect with them emotionally. She could only do it on a sexual level, because the queer identity in itself was stained for her. And I know that might sound strange, but these are the very peculiar ways in which it would affect persons. I I’ve had some people on the other end, who have sex-less relationships because of queer phobia. Yeah, they can only connect emotionally because they can’t connect that way. I’ve had persons as well who I had a I was working with a partnership once a black couple in the UK and and the female partner was constantly on edge, being afraid of being harmed because of racism and xenophobia, and that obstructed her ability to be with her partner, listen to her partner. She was often very aggressive, you know, she didn’t feel to be intimate, and it took him a while to understand what was happening. So this and other examples I have from my work where I’m seeing the ways in which people are not able to connect, or sometimes the other end of it, they can’t even erect healthy boundaries in relationships. They can’t say what they don’t want, because they’ve been taught that who I am, I can’t live in my truth. I can’t be who I am. So being able to even walk away from a relationship might be hard. I remember once I was working with a male client who said to me, even, it was a gay man, that some connection is better than no connection at all. So he talked about being in relationships, intimate partner relationships, where there would be abuse or harm in different kinds of ways, but he couldn’t walk away because, you know, outside of the of that sphere, outside of that relationship, he can’t survive financially, yeah? Because in some in some parts of the world, for example, in my part of the world, yeah, a lot of gay men sometimes are put out of their homes. Yeah, some are homeless. So they so, so they enter, some enter relationships, not all, some enter relationships, romantic partnerships where they can’t get out because they can’t get a job because they’re gay. So they remain in these relationships where they can’t erect boundaries, they can’t leave because of that. So all the different ways in which we have this wider context at shaping these dynamics.
Curt Widhalm 17:46
Maybe to over simplify the next question, what do you do as a therapist in these situations? What kind of a stance do you use? What kind of interventions do you use to help tease this out?
Akilah Riley-Richardson 17:59
Yeah, I’ve developed, but I think each therapist will find their way. I’ve developed a model of work called the PRIDE Model, right? And I’ve also developed as a therapist. So I have pride model, which I’ll tell you about shortly, and also I have the stance that I call the BIOME, which an acronym is, B, I, O, M, E, the BIOME, right? I came to that over because of my own practice, and admittedly, a lot of reading and and sitting with the work of Resmaa Menakem, Ken Hardy, these people, right? B is for bravery. As a therapist, you have to name systemic trauma when you think it’s showing up. Yeah, you name it, because it’s disenfranchised so much because in the sense it’s invisiblized, so much you need to name and you think it’s shaping the relationship. Yeah, I is for is for intimate, intimate and intense. Ken Hardy says that as therapists, we have to sometimes be ready to engage in relational risk taking. And I love that. I love the fact that, as a therapist, sometimes I show my anger, sometimes I cry when I need to, like yes, I do when people talk about their experiences of systemic trauma. Why do I do that? It’s not a performance. I’m not performing cry. I’m not performing tears. I’m being with them in an authentic way, because I want them to know that this thing that you’re told is normal is abnormal, and this thing that the world tries to invisibilize, it’s visible, and my emoting, this helps to make it visible. Always for openness, this is important that we must, we make a lot, we can do a lot of harm in therapy. Yeah, yeah. And we have to from upfront say to our people that I hold various privileged identities, and this is a way that I may unintentionally harm, and if I harm, I want to be held accountable. Yeah. I want to be held accountable. And as the person had as a therapist, you actually hold more power in the room, and people feed into that dynamic. And the person who holds more power in the room has the responsibility of doing the repair. And I think people need to experience that. And if you want to learn more, you can read Ken Hardy’s work on that is really, really good in terms of how to repair. The openness is also about demystifying the therapeutic process. So when I’m working with with persons now, I’m very clear to tell you exactly what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. That is done deliberately, especially when working with marginalized people, I want them to feel into their power through the knowledge of what we are doing. The M is for micro liberatory movement. I want to know that everything I do is about restoring power. Restoring power. My colleague and dear friend Joe Winn says the clinical is political. And I think about the fact that when I sit with this person, if I’m all about liberatory work and I’m all about undoing systemic trauma, I have to be mindful about how I show up in the room and be very, very clear everything I do either reinforces hierarchy and marginalization or doesn’t. There is no in between. Yeah, I’m either an upholder or I’m a fighter. So I have to be deliberate in that way. The last one is Epistemic embracing, which is really embracing people’s epistemologies. So epistemology is how you know what you know, and I want to be with how people know the world, how people define intimacy, like I can’t come in with my white cis het, global North definitions of intimacy. I want to hear from you what this means. Yeah, and then I move into the PRIDE Model. I’ll pause in case any questions here. But what I before I move in more into the PRIDE Model? And I said a mouthful there.
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Katie Vernoy 22:06
With the episteme the piece. I can’t say that word epistemology. It sounds like that’s asking a lot of questions and really just understanding, what kind of questions do you ask to help to understand how someone sees the world, how someone sees the relationships that they are in?
Akilah Riley-Richardson 22:26
I would ask, how would you define intimacy? How do you define love? How do you define relationality? And you’re right, that could be, that could feel a lot. So what you can do then is use the language of of people’s systems, or the supportical regions of the brain, which is sensation, imagery, behavior, affect. Sometimes you ask people to draw, they don’t have to articulate it with words, like when you say intimacy, draw what comes up for you. It’s not art class. It’s not an art exam. Just draw anything. Just draw. Or you can have play dough. And you see, when you think intimacy, craft, what you think that means. So anything that can feel like, oh, boy, this you’re asking about epistemology, you can get it. You can get it in really simple ways, just being with people and drawing and art and sensation, sensing in their bodies. It really is a lot easier than that. These huge words, these five syllable words.
Curt Widhalm 23:25
Tell us about the pride model.
Akilah Riley-Richardson 23:26
Oh, gladly, because this is my baby right now. PRIDE stands for Pivot, Rumble, Imagine, Develop and Evolve. PRIDE is an opportunity to work with people and to walk them through moving looking at their relationships from relational curiosity. So relational curiosity is the first phase where I have people look at their dynamics and try to figure out, how is the system playing a role here. So I use strategies such as something I call the theater of oppression, relational terrain, habits of survival. So for example, with the theater of oppression, I ask people you know, think about your interaction with the system as being theater. You know, what would be the theme of this theater? What role are you cast in? Yeah, what roles were you forced to play? And how are those roles now showing up in your relationship? And whenever I talk about the theater of oppression, I always need to refer to Augusto Boal, who had a different modality called the Theater of the Oppressed, which is also phenomenal. It’s different to what I have created. But I always want to give a nod there, because of of his phenomenal work in liberation, and using arts in liberation, right? But we use, but when in relational curiosity, we’re trying to have people rumble and get curious about how the system is influencing their lives. Then I engage in in something called I’m setting intentions, which is your relational intentions, but also your systemic intentions? Yeah, what’s your intention for your relationship? And this part is important to me. How do you see these shifts contributing to shifts in the wider system and shifts in the world? So sometimes, when I talk about, you know, if we are able to interact in this way, how do we see that addressing homophobia on a wider scale? Because I want people to always be thinking systemically and their unique role in influencing the system. And we have responsible externalizing. Responsible externalizing is where the practitioner steps in and really unequivocally names the role of the system. Yeah, with courage and bravery. Yeah and and allows this space for grief. So grief is a huge part of my work, because we talk about this, but the reality is, it’s not going to change. It’s changing, but it’s not going to disappear. That’s what I should say. We will continue have incidents of racism, we’ll continue to have homophobia. So we talk about in responsible externalizing. We also do grief work, and what the grief work means and the tenderness. And then the fourth step is trauma work, yeah. And I have various strategies. I use intergenerational compassionate network, create relational healing circles, etc. And then the fifth stage is the relational imagination, where I have nine techniques, I think eight or nine techniques I can’t remember, and they’re all about creating the path forward. So stuff like identity cherishing, where you think about what is identity and interpersonal cherishing, sorry, when you look at the relationship and say, You know what? What are the unique features of black love that make it something that we should cherish and grow, and how do we grow this? I remember, I was working with an African American couple. We were doing identity cherishing and interpersonal cherishing, and they talked about the fact that having to always have each other’s backs and develop a sibling like relationship with their partner. It’s meant that they’ve had to to cherish. You know, I was working with a queer couple once, and it was a similar what on one partner talked about the fact that being queer allows you to see the world as gray, and the beauty of that, yeah. So we find different ways to help the couple to be with the beauty of where they’re at and then plan for the way forward for their relationship. So that essentially is what PRIDE is.
Katie Vernoy 27:29
With models that work differently than what people see on TV or what people typically think of as therapy. I think there can oftentimes be pushback for the work in some ways. For some folks, I’m sure there’s a lot of relief. This is what I’ve been looking for. But there might be some folks who, for whatever reason, might not understand how to really engage in the work, because it’s more systemic than they are expecting, or whatever their objections might be. How do you explain the work. How do you help to orient clients who this work would be most helpful for?
Akilah Riley-Richardson 28:07
That’s a really good question. If I’d be trying very transparent. I haven’t experienced push back, but maybe it’s because, from the start, I think it’s the bravery, I think it’s the BIOME piece. Now that I’m thinking about it. I think it’s the fact that I state what that my desire is liberation, and I want people to experience that. I think it’s you, you as a therapist or essence, and you really wanting this, and you communicating this to the person, but not in a dogmatic, oppressive sort of way, where you’re forcing it. Because I’ve experienced, I’ve had to push my pull myself back from that as well, trying to force people to see things and push for their own freedom when they’re not ready for that, or it’s scary to be in that place or, quite frankly, dangerous. So I think it’s you employing the BIOME and embodying that from the start that allows you to find the exact things you need to say that will support this person. And I think you also need to be okay with pushback. I think you have to be comfortable with no. No is, I don’t see no as problematic. I think it’s powerful when people who don’t have power in the world tell me no, even if I don’t like it. Yeah. So I have children, and when they know it irritates me, but I understand that they need to. That’s how they need to feel power.
Curt Widhalm 29:42
As therapists who are not part of either of these communities, maybe working with us, one of the big takeaways that I’m getting from this is that you would really have to embrace living in this model as well. That it’s leading the conversations to actively deconstruct some of those very systemic things that you were talking about, to as you were saying name that those structures are there and actively work together. And that’s not something that you can turn on and off on a session by session basis. That’s something that you actively have to embrace as a therapist in your own life and in your own work as well.
Akilah Riley-Richardson 30:22
Yeah, you said that you’re giving me the ideas then that I need to start. We set it up at my brain. My brain went, Oh, I should do free community calls. Yeah, I think you’re so right. Thanks, Curt. Sorry, I’m sitting on the aha, because we share these things. But there’s a shift that needs to take place before that that’s hard. And I think actively accessing communities that speak about decolonization, allyship, or allyship, I think that becomes important familiar is familiarizing yourself with the literature. I think that becomes important. Otherwise, it just becomes a very performative exercise, you know. And I think that maybe the space this step, before getting trained is being in community and having these hard conversations. I think that is really important. So I just want to acknowledge to say thanks after the idea.
Curt Widhalm 31:29
Well, just thanks right back, because you are the one who inspired that idea. So we’ll just continue to thank each other at this.
Katie Vernoy 31:39
This work feels very important, and it feels like it would apply to so many couples, because there’s such diversity in the couples that show up in our offices at this point. And so we’re going to talk about your work and training so in a second. But for folks who are listening to this and are thinking, I want to take a baby step. I want to do what is at the the most important piece of this, what do all therapists who are working with folks relationally really need to take away from this and try to try to apply the next their next session.
Akilah Riley-Richardson 32:18
that they don’t know, that they don’t know, that they need to sit in true epistemic embracing and let people tell them, and that a million DEI courses or a million trainings will be useful and helpful, and it is so important to walk in with a not knowing stance, because everybody is experiencing this differently and uniquely, and they need to sit and listen and know that they do not know.
Curt Widhalm 32:53
Where can people find out more about you and the work that you do?
Akilah Riley-Richardson 32:58
Yeah, well, you can check out my website: akilahrileyrichardson.com. If you want to access trainings that I’ve done, you can check out the Academy of therapy wisdom. I have a course there called Systemic Trauma in Couples Therapy. And very excited to say that I’m writing a book Norton Publishing House. Yeah, it’s unbelievable that offer key was like, okay.
Katie Vernoy 33:24
That’s amazing.
Akilah Riley-Richardson 33:25
I was like, Oh, me. So, yeah. So right now I’m writing and should be submitting soon, so the book on this topic will be coming out soon, and, and, yeah, and you could also have a couple articles with the Psychotherapy Network. You can check that out there as well. But yeah, and you can subscribe on the website and keep up with what, what, what’s been happening. Yeah.
Curt Widhalm 33:52
And we will include links to all of Akilah’s work in our show notes over at mtsgpodcast.com. Follow us on our social media, join our Facebook group, the Modern Therapist Group to continue on with these and other conversations, and until next time, I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy and Akilah Riley-Richardson.
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