QTTNS members recognize that all therapy is political, that there is an inherent power imbalance by positioning the therapist as the “ultimate expert”. Furthermore, we hold the belief that maintaining neutrality towards personal beliefs can cause and contribute to direct harm. QTTNS members strive to hold the following frameworks/lenses when acting professionally with other providers and our clients. We encourage you to speak with your therapist about their specific framework.
- Anti-ableism (AA) identifies inequalities and disparities in how we value and treat individuals with intellectual, mental, and/or physical disabilities. An AA therapist recognizes that a client cannot simply reframe their thinking to find relief of symptoms but rather helps clients challenge internalized ableism, find supports and community, and navigate systems. AA therapists remain critical of their training, how evidence-based therapies are created, and institutional practices to ensure they are not furthering harm to disabled clients.
- Anti-capitalist (AC) in a sense is working to replace capitalism with another type of economic system, such as socialism or communism. An AC framework in therapy could involve challenging the idea that our self-worth is directly linked to our productivity and what we can earn for others. The therapist may challenge the need for hyper-individualism and help the client learn ways to reconceptualize and engage with their role in their community.
- Anti-colonial is a broader term used to describe an awareness and commitment to aid in various resistance movements directed against imperial and colonial powers. A therapist using this lens may center the need to heal from the dehumanizing, life-threatening, and harmful effects the client might have faced as a a result of colonization.
- Anti-oppressive (AO) aims to lessen the effects of oppression and bring equity to those who are more marginalized and affected by oppressive systems. A therapist working with an AO framework may name how there are social differences in treatment and level of access depending on the client’s intersecting identities of race, gender, social class, sexual orientation, age, disability, and so forth. AO encourages the therapist to develop a critical consciousness of how they engage with, reinforce, and perpetuate harmful structures of oppression, especially when it comes to how they deliver treatment to their clients.
- Anti-racist framework challenges and works to dismantle systematic and institutional racism that is built into our social systems, laws, practices, and treatment of Black people, indigenous people, and people of colour (BIPOC). Working from an anti-racist framework may look different for the therapist and client depending on their individual intersections of identities and racialized experience. For example, a white settler therapist treating another white settler client might challenge the client’s view of racism and acknowledgement of their privileged experience because they have benefited from white supremacy. The therapist might also center how the client’s lived experience as a racialized person has contributed to their current mental health status, and help the client heal from past and ongoing racial trauma.
- Feminist approaches to therapy typically operate from the assumption that marginalized genders and other oppressed groups are at higher risk for mental health issues because of the disparity in how different genders are treated and socially conditioned within our society. A feminist therapist may help the client challenge gender roles, socialization, their self-concept, and empower the client to recognize and change how they are upholding the patriarchy.
- Harm reduction aims to reduce the physical, emotional, relational, and/or financial harm of harmful behaviours, such as substance use or self-harm, without necessarily requiring the client to completely stop or abstain from engaging in that behaviour. HR keeps a non-judgemental and non-coercive stance to allow clients to make their own choices to enrich their lives and maintain stability.
- Queer and Trans affirming (QTA) approach to therapy embraces the client’s gender, sexual orientation, and/or relationship orientation. The therapist normalizes change and fluidity within our different identities and lived experiences without imposing there is one correct way to engage with and experience queerness. QTA therapists encourages clients to self-reflect on how cisgender-heterosexual normativity negatively impacts them and others.
- Trauma-Informed (TI) framework accounts for how the client’s traumatic experiences impact their behaviour, health, ability to progress in treatment, and mental health status, regardless if the current focus is on treating underlying trauma or not. TI therapists take active steps to not re-traumatize the client by actively collaborating with the client, receiving competent training, and taking accountability for seeking treatment for and coping with their own traumatic history. A TI approach may involve psychoeducation on trauma responses, helping the client to build awareness of how the here-and-now often is influenced by the client’s and others’ traumatic history, and teaching coping strategies to establish stability.
Queer and Trans Therapists of Nova Scotia (QTTNS) 