216 - Dr. Isha McKenzie-Mavinga - Bringing Compassionate Accountability to White-Dominated Therapeutic Spaces
“There's this silence that happens when you're talking about yourself as a person of color in a white space.” - Dr. Isha McKenzie-Mavinga
For those keeping a tally, Anne has obliterated any thought of her suffering a “sophomore slump” with this second real-life guest interview. When I say there’s a palpable spiritual quality running through her chat with Dr. Isha McKenzie-Mavinga, it’s not me getting all woo-woo as I’m wont to do. Dr. Isha is an integrative transcultural psychotherapist, trainer, and supervisor in the UK with over three decades of professional experience. She’s a lecturer, writer, and Reiki master as well as a published author, poet, editor, and, as Anne puts it so well, an amazing human.
The profoundly intimate cadence of this conversation no doubt stems from Dr. Isha’s role as Anne’s mentor. But the mentee has to meet the mentor halfway; they have to pick up what the mentor is putting down. My hope is that we’ll all carry forward Dr. Isha’s legacy of compassionate accountability and that white therapists especially will confront the institutionalized racism we perpetuate to the detriment of the Black and brown clients and the communities we want to support. “What I noticed happening as soon as talking about racism or being a person of color came onto the table, there was a silence,” Dr. Isha says. “The white students did not know how to respond.” She invites white practitioners to replace the performative and false redemption of white guilt with the discomfort of intra - and interpersonal investigation.
Anne can attest to feeling agitated by the rigors of Dr. Isha’s inquiry. “[Dr. Isha’s] transcultural supervision group was, without question, probably one of the most challenging experiences of my whole life. Not because [she was] particularly provoking, but because she was asking very simple questions that no one had ever asked me.” That’s what compassionate accountability does: it chafes at the ties that have bound white people to racist philosophies for centuries. Dr. Isha invites people to test those painful limits and move beyond them for the greater good. Anne agrees. “I felt uncomfortable, and she held me in that space.”
Near the end of their conversation, Dr. Isha tells Anne, “You've had this transformation, and in doing so, you're transforming others. If it worked once, it will always work.” I gotta believe that!
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
GUEST CONTACT AND BIO
Dr. Isha McKenzie-Mavinga has thirty-three years experience as a Transcultural Psychotherapist, Supervisor, Lecturer, Writer, and Reiki Master. As a published writer & poet, she is the author of ‘Black Issues in the Therapeutic Process’ (2009) and ‘The Challenge of Racism in Therapeutic Practice’ (2016). She also co-authored an autobiography, contributed papers and poetry to several anthologies, and most recently co-edited and presented in ‘Therapy in Colour’ (2023).
Let’s be friends! You can find me in the following places…
Website:
www.headheartbiztherapy.com/podcast
Facebook: