Culturally Sensitive Therapy

Alison has a background in providing psychotherapy in an urban setting at a major hospital in Bronx, NY. Alison strongly believes understanding a client’s background and belief system is paramount for optimal treatment as it relates to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, or other important elements of culture and/or identity.

We have a diverse staff with different backgrounds that help understand your unique experiences based on the intersectionality of your identities.

I have not only education and training but lived life experiences.

Each person on staff receives training in this area multiple times a year. Culture sensitivity is also part of our mission.

It is important for me to be culturally sensitive in my work as I have worked and will continue to work with people from different cultural backgrounds, values and traditions. Learning, respecting and implementing this into the therapeutic relationship is most important for clients to receive the highest benefit of services and feel seen, heard and understood. I am not an expert on all cultures but I am sensitive to cultural differences that will be welcomed and discussed as needed.

Social justice and advocacy are core pieces to a therapist's identity. They have to be able to navigate complex cultural issues that transcend race and cultural identity. These issues are often the source of a lot of the issues our clients are struggling, and a therapist must be able to identify the impact of culture and identity on the presenting issue.

Many of the clients who see me experience identity issues or trauma symptoms related to racially based or intergenerational traumas. My professional training and experience as an activist and advocate spanning decades underlies much of my focus on racial and social justice. I'm particularly attuned to issues of "difference" among those whose experiences do not reflect dominant thinking regardless of whether that experience reflects marginalization: Mixed-race, interracial and multicultural.

As a therapist, I recognize the importance of honoring and respecting diverse cultural backgrounds and identities. I understand that cultural factors can significantly influence an individual's beliefs, values, and experiences, including their mental health and well-being. I aim to provide therapy that is sensitive to the unique needs and perspectives of each individual, fostering a sense of validation, empowerment, and cultural pride.

My life experiences as an Asian-American who has lived abroad in various socio-economic settings has helped me see and understand people as unique individuals in their own communities.

Ethical counseling is necessarily multicultural and culturally sensitive. I tailor sessions to your unique cultural background, including your race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and language of origin. I have lived and worked in several countries, having spent most of my career in Latin America. I provide fully bilingual services in English and Spanish, and also speak French and Italian.

I keep a close eye on what role the environments you have inhabited may have played on your current views about yourself, others, and the world at large, and I constantly invite you to do the same. It can be very empowering to realize how you came to embrace your beliefs, and with that information, be able to decide which of them you want to keep or reject.

I do not know everything about your culture, and I will not act as if I do. I will take time to get to know you and how your culture impacts your desire to make changes.

To paraphrase Ignacio Martin-Boro, for psychology to be truly emancipatory it must first sever itself from its own idealogical chains, from psychology itself. Dominant psychologies implicitly serve the status quo by defining health as adjustment to white, middle class, heteronormative, colonialist social norms, without interrogating the structural and systemic forms of oppression embedded in those norms. I aim to support you in a deep integration of heart, body, spirit, story, & culture.

To paraphrase Ignacio Martin-Boro, for psychology to be truly emancipatory it must first sever itself from its own idealogical chains, from psychology itself. Dominant psychologies implicitly serve the status quo by defining health as adjustment to white, middle class, heteronormative, colonialist social norms. I aim to support you in reconnecting to your own cultural-historical-ancestral sources of health, healing, & resilience towards a deep integration of heart, body, spirit, story, & culture