North London Group Therapy

News

Black Lives Matter

We are proud to stand in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and the international protest against all aspects of racism resulting from the brutalisation and murder of George Floyd and many others.

We recognise the profound impact that this racially motivated violence has on Black people and that the reality of racial injustice that Black people have to navigate every day is unacceptable.

We recognise that words of support must be accompanied by concrete and meaningful action. And that those who have privilege hold the obligation to use that privilege to improve diversity and inclusion, challenging racism in their lives and insisting on dismantling racism in the culture and structures around them.

Racism is a treacherous phenomenon with many faces, and it shows a remarkable capacity to co-exist with support for ethnic and cultural diversity. Its character is subtle, sly, and cunning, and like a chameleon can transform itself in ways that make it difficult if not impossible to prove its existence. In its visible forms it can be a mean-spirited absence of reciprocity or mutuality—or something more violent, seeking only to appropriate, to colonise the fruits of others’ labour, attacking potency in mind and body. To be at the receiving end of this type of animosity is to experience something that cuts deep and gnaws away subtly at your sense of self, sometimes signalled by a visceral response that something is not quite right, a feeling in the guts that one has been, or is being, misused. Racism can curtail the fullest freedom of the mind of the individual, group, and society.  (Keval, 2018)

We recognise that there is a need to directly challenge and confront racism in our practice, our trainings and all our policies and procedures. We know that we need to dig deep in order to do this, and that it will take time to work out everything that we need to do.

We want to draw from our own and other's theoretical frameworks to understand and explain how the racist violence and discrimination witnessed today is in fact a continuation of centuries of trauma, understanding of racism and its impact on individuals and communities and to identify and eradicate the barriers in psychotherapy which are faced by Black people as therapists and as clients.

We believe this has been perpetuated generationally since the beginning of slavery and imperialism with present day re-enactments painfully alerting us that we remain a long way from reparation. This is the responsibility of us all and not solely practitioners and trainees of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) heritage.

This practice believes that Black Lives, Black Bodies, and Black Minds Matter.

KEVAL, N. 2018. Racist states of mind: Understanding the perversion of curiosity and concern, Routledge.