What Is Decolonization Anyway?
“Decolonization” is a word we hear more and more. But what does it actually mean, and what does it have to do with therapy? Let’s break it down.
Colonization shaped almost everything
When we think of colonization, we often picture land being taken. That happened, and on these lands it is still happening. But colonization also shaped the systems we live inside every day: education, work, agriculture, healthcare, and of course, therapy.
Colonization decided whose knowledge counted, what “normal” looked like, and which ways of living, healing and being were valued.
What this looked like in my own training
So much of my own training in counselling was based on research conducted largely by white researchers, often studying people from the same privileged, mostly white groups. Those findings were then applied to everyone, whether they fit or not.
That means many of the tools I learned were never designed with people like me, or many of the people I work with, in mind. When a model doesn’t fit, it’s easy for clients to feel like they are the problem. Often, the model is.
What decolonizing therapy means
Decolonizing therapy, sometimes called liberation therapy, challenges the Western, Eurocentric assumptions at the heart of many traditional psychological theories.
Here’s how it differs:
Mainstream therapy often focuses only on the individual and what’s happening inside them.
Decolonizing therapy also values community, connection to community resources, healers, and social justice.
What it looks like in practice
In our sessions, a decolonizing approach might look like:
Seeing distress as a response to real conditions, such as racism, displacement or poverty, not as personal failure
Honouring cultural, spiritual and familial ways of healing alongside therapy
Questioning labels and “norms” that pathologise difference
Sharing power, because you are the expert on your own life
Is decolonization only for BIPOC folks?
No.
Colonial systems shape everyone, including white people. They show up in ideas about constant productivity, extreme individualism, keeping emotions hidden, and narrow definitions of what counts as “normal.”
Everyone can benefit from therapy that questions those assumptions.
But a decolonizing approach doesn’t treat everyone’s experience as the same. It centres the people most harmed by colonization, especially Indigenous communities, rather than making the idea about everyone equally.
Bringing it together
Decolonizing therapy is not one technique. It’s a way of seeing. It asks where pain comes from, whose voices are missing, and how healing can honour the whole person and the communities they come from.
If you’ve ever felt that therapy asked you to fit into a mould that was never made for you, you’re not alone.
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