A colleague of mine recently asked me how to integrate “privilege awareness” into a discussion regarding how a client may not feel comfortable with a therapist of a different social group. The issue that arose was that therapists tend to be blind to their own privilege; that is, we tend to believe in our modalities and training, but we tend to forget our own backgrounds and whether those backgrounds are privileged.
By definition,”privilege” is any social advantage a person has by belonging to certain social identity groups (for more information, please visit this website). The thing is that unless we go through the exercise of recognizing how our groups provide privilege, we will all be blind to that privilege. Therapists are especially at risk of being blind to privilege because our intentions are to help our clients find healthier lives. However, our education alone provides social advantages as we cannot be independently licensed unless we hold a graduate degree. Only thirteen percent (13%) of all Americans hold a graduate degree, which means that therapists are in a small minority of people. In my opinion, therapists are more employable because of this alone and therefore have more economic capability than most people. Don’t get me wrong, I think many therapists are grossly underpaid, however, we can find jobs even in under-performing economies. This is just one of other aspects of privilege that therapists possess.
Other layers of privilege are race/ethnicity, gender, language spoken, etc. I think it’s critical that therapists engage these layers and understand their advantages such that they can better relate with clients. If we don’t we will not be able to establish rapport with our clients, which by all accounts is the most salient variable for positive treatment outcomes. I think the best way to engage these layers is by going through the list within the image that I’ve included within this post.. really, in recognizing our own privilege, we can better understand where we can best apply whatever social advantages we possess towards the betterment or our clients.
