Center for

Decolonizing Therapy

Colonialism is one of humanity’s core wounds. Its ripple effect is vast and deep, but often invisible.

When a wound goes unnamed and untended, it will grow and fester — eventually infecting everything around it.

Decolonizing Therapy® shines a bright and loving light on that wound so we can begin to heal.

What is
Decolonizing Therapy?

Decolonizing Therapy® is a paradigm-shifting movement and modality to re-educate therapists, healers, and care workers.

It sits at the intersections of the psychological, political, ancestral, and the collective — focusing on how The Past, The Political, The Psychological, and The People all interact together.

DT shifts us away from traditional Eurocentric models that pathologize individuals and enforce a narrow idea of “normality” and “treatment.” This is a tool to recenter ancestral and cultural norms and healing methods.

“Therapy, as it stands is a colonial, outdated, Eurocentric, misogynistic, ableist, heterosexist and classist paradigm. We can do better.”

— Dr. Jennifer Mullan

Why This
Work Matters

We have a global mental health crisis. Helpers, healers, mental health professionals and those they serve are suffering and dying.

But the dominant Eurocentric lens that guides our practice fails to tell a complete and accurate story of why we are sick and how we get well. Our current approach to mental health is steeped in colonialism. Therefore, it can never lead to true healing and liberation for all people.

Most of us are only taught how to barely survive. How to cope with ongoing trauma and adapt to oppression. And the rest are left behind completely — unable to even access these imperfect systems of care.

We can continue to speak only of the impact of childhood trauma — important, but incomplete — or we can get to the root of the problem: separation. Separation from land, our ancestry, community, and our innate joy.

Our healing and our ancestors’ experiences are deeply tied together. Our wellness plans should reflect that.

The Decolonizing
Therapy Framework

The Decolonizing Therapy® Method framework has 4 dimensions interwoven with each other, the Land and Spirit, and our own capacity.

The Past

We, the People, live with the inherited Past. Decolonizing Therapy was born from my two decades of work with thousands seeking care — work that was initially carried out within harmful systems that retraumatized those most in need. As me and my comrades began to unlearn and disrupt, this movement emerged as a direct response to the historical and ongoing violence of the Mental Health Industrial Complex.

The Psychological

This Past has impacted our Psychology and emotional health. Our commitment is to actively disrupt and transform traditional Western therapy, to challenge the limitations of a system that has long inflicted harm, and to create pathways for true healing — where both “therapists” and “clients” can reclaim their agency and well-being.

The Political

Access to basic needs is inherently Political. We acknowledge the places, spaces, islands, and countries that are still holding the toxins and pollutants of colonization — in their bodies, their foods, their imposed governmental structures, and their ways of walking in the world.

The People

We celebrate the Indigenous peoples who continue to steward, protect, and exist in relationship with the land. We celebrate the resilience and strength that all Indigenous people and descendants of Africa have shown in this country and worldwide. We carry our ancestors in us, and we are continually called to be better as we lead this work.

DT offerings

Join a growing movement of practitioners, organizations, and communities who are hearing the call to decolonize.