Tonight I was talking to my kid about the importance of inclusivity in preparation for an activity they were about to attend. I encouraged them to pay attention to who wasn’t part of the in-group and be sure to extend an invite.
They made an interesting point, saying: why should I include someone who is weird or annoying, and make the rest of the group unhappy? Why sacrifice the happiness of many for the inclusivity of one?
It was an interesting philosophical point, and we considered it from different perspectives. We talked about the metaphor of the lost sheep, and about the value of empathy—how we’ve all experienced being left out or judged and know how much it hurts. Neither perspective seemed to make much difference to my child.
Then I said, you know, sometimes someone who seems annoying or weird at first turns out to be someone you really like, once you get to know them. This, at last, gave my child pause. Huh.
I've been thinking about how my conversation with my child applies to our work as clinicians, too. This month’s topic is about culture, identity, and inclusivity. It’s about accessing curiosity as a way to connect and create psychological and relational safety.
Though no longer children, even the most well-intentioned, experienced clinicians among us have automatic responses, preferences, and assumptions. We carry prejudices that have been systemically ingrained in us and reinforced by privilege. Some of these learned responses may show up in our nervous systems before we're even aware of them. We may not get the first vote on how we feel about someone, but we can notice those initial reactions and then move into curiosity about our experience and theirs. Adding to that, cultural humility asks us to consider how our own identities, assumptions, and positions of power shape the way we see, understand, and respond to the people we serve.
We know that the consequences of exclusion and discrimination extend far beyond everyday interpersonal interactions. People lose opportunities, access to resources, safety, and sometimes their lives because of the ways we organize our society around differences in identity, culture, and power.
True inclusivity requires knowledge, accountability, advocacy, and a willingness to recognize and challenge systems of power and oppression, including our own participation in them.
Curiosity alone isn't enough, but it’s a good place to start and return to.
What I’m trying to say is our one-to-one work is to, as often as possible, step into our own humility and curiosity. Let’s just see what we can discover about the person in front of us.
We’ll likely do some deliberate practice around all of this, this month, so please come ready to run through a few of these:
Can you tell me more?
What am I missing or not understanding about your experience?
What assumptions have I made about you that don't fit?
Lastly, how do we muster curiosity, especially when it isn’t coming easily in the moment? Well I guess you'll just have to come to supervision this month to find out.
See you all so soon.
PS: We’ll be drawing from this book: Deliberate Practice in Multicultural Therapy (Harris et al., 2024), and from some parts work concepts around accessing our curiosity. Also, we talked about this last November, and many of the years before, if you want to take a dive.