An Audience with Dr Isha - Session 10

This is an online open meeting to discuss: A BLACK EMPATHIC APPROACH TO PSYCHOTHERAPY- GROWING FROM RAGE TO COMPASSION.

Dr Isha Mckenzie-Mavinga. 

This chapter identifies the ways that black women cope with internalised racism, shame and misogynoir. Drivenness leads to unaware exhaustion, compassion fatigue, and commitment to the cause can take her attention too far away from her self-care. She takes on the role of caring for perpetrators, sometimes risking her own well-being and mental health. She becomes silenced and silences herself; she smiles when she wants to cry and often copes by masking her trauma. This chapter acknowledges that nourishing our femaleness, our sexualities, and cultural identities is key to nurturing our power and mental well-being. Essentially all self-care as black women is key to our ability to experience empathic responses both given and received. We have a right to be angry and dream of freedom. This is the key to our liberation and to supporting…