Why I hate decolonising psychotherapy seminars
I’ve sat through too many of these so-called “decolonising psychotherapy” seminars, and each time I leave with the same bitter taste: nothing is decolonised. The same colonial dynamics play out under a new name.
The Pattern
A white host — moderately intellectual, moderately fluent in the jargon — sets the tone. A few Black and Brown presenters are sprinkled in, but most speakers are white, and the host is almost always white.
Soon enough, someone white offers a confession:
“I once told a Zimbabwean man he spoke English well. I’m not sure if that was racist.”
He chuckles, waiting for absolution. A black co-facilitator responds: “Well, it depends on context.”
And there it is: racism becomes about the white man’s feelings, not the Zimbabwean man’s harm. The black co-facilitator rescues him. The script is set — Black man saves white man. No one interrupts. No one names it.
The Silence
Meanwhile, Black and Brown participants sit in silence, carrying the weight of harm yet again.
Imagine if the topic were rape: would survivors be asked to sit quietly while perpetrators described their “mistakes”? Would facilitators soothe them? Would anyone dare say it “It depends on context”?
Unthinkable. Yet with racism, this is exactly the set-up.
The Arrogance of “Research”
Audre Lorde warned us in “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House”: it is academic arrogance to discuss liberation without centering the voices of the poor, Black, Third World women, and lesbians.
But these seminars repeat that arrogance.
Presenters are not asked who they are, how their bodies respond, or how they live in the world. They are asked only what they have researched. Research becomes confession: this is who I am, this is what I have found about others.
Without research, there is no legitimacy. Without proof, there is no care. The message is chilling: until the evidence is “proven,” we will not act, and we will continue to license ourselves to go on hurting you.
And So We Sit There
Adaptive.
Polite.
Contained.
We are in white spaces, under white rules.
No one dares to disrupt.
No anger.
No grief.
No embodied truth.
We leave our bodies at the door; only the intellect is allowed inside.
We hold ourselves tight, nodding along.
Racism — one of the most violent forces on the planet — is discussed as theory, never felt in the body. Occasionally there is polite laughter, but never rage, never tears.
The Truth
When white people confess, there’s space.
When white people cry, there’s compassion.
When white people feel guilt, there’s community.
But when we hurt — truly hurt — the room goes cold.
Some of us even stand up and defend them. We become translators of their guilt, mediators of their shame.
Because we’ve learned survival.
We’ve learned how to adapt to white spaces.
We’ve learned that our pain must never be louder than their comfort.
Why I Hate These Seminars
They do not decolonise psychotherapy.
They re-enact it.
They protect white fragility and erase Black and Brown pain.
They call it dialogue, but it is adaptation.
They call it healing, but it is harm.
If this is “decolonising,” then the word itself has already been colonised.
Imagine a Different Space
Imagine a room where this is different.
Where Black and Brown and white bodies are felt,
not just studied.
Where we speak not to prove research, but to be known.
Where the comfort of the oppressed is not negotiable.
Where white fragility is held accountable, not centred.
Where healing is embodied, not a lecture.
Imagine a space …
Where rage is allowed.
Where grief is witnessed.
Where trembling is honoured.
Where the pain we carry is no longer ignored,
dismissed, or contained.
Imagine a space …
Where white comfort is not the measure of safety.
Where psychotherapy starts to face the harm it causes.
Where it looks into the mirror and meets itself — not through its own reflection, but in the trembling, bearing souls of those it wounded.
-Charmaine McCaulay
Step out of your head.
Feel what racism has long placed in your body.
Begin the work of decolonising yourself —
come to Racism in Real Time.
I invite you to listen.
Your body speaks in soft, hushed tones,
with the bang of anger or rage,
and in vibrations of joy —
a precious message that belongs only to you.