My Lived Experiences & Political Commitments

My philosophy as a therapist is that lived experiences and political commitments are a big part of how I think about our work and show up for you in our relationship. So here’s a bit about what privileges and oppressions I experience personally, and what political commitments I bring to my life and work.

As a white woman-bodied European Christian, I’ve done a lot of racist and colonial harm. In this sense, I have a lot in common with Marsha Linehan, the creator of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT). Her white feminism, Christianity and Eurocentrism are baked right into the DBT model. Don’t get me wrong. Marsha saved my life and is like my favourite racist aunt. And I really mean that with all the genuine affection I have for her. So I continue to love her and the model she created as I engage in lifelong unlearning and dismantling of the racism in Marsha, in DBT, and in me.

As a queer nonbinary and neurodivergent person with a history of BPD traits, I know some things about what it’s like to heal in a hetero and normie world. Having been told to be less angry and more “nice” in response to ableism and anti-queerness, I am not here to impose any of that control and conformity on you. DBT has actually made me more confident and embodied in my anger, my joy. My skillfulness in how I channel these emotions isn’t in making them smaller; it’s about more freedom and friendship with them, and more descriptiveness in the words I use to express my full range of emotions and needs.

As a trans-ethnic Chilean adoptee, I’ve lived out how ethnic discrimination and capitalism can coerce, exploit and alienate folks involved in adoption. And I mean everyone involved in the adoption process: first families and adoptive families, and of course adoptees. I believe in a collectivist world that supports first families so that they can actually choose who will raise their children and whether or not they will parent. And a world that truly educates and supports adoptive families to honour their children’s ancestries, losses and attachment. The “D” in DBT is for dialectical, which is a stance of holding seemingly opposing truths at once, to allow some kind of synthesis. Dialectics are how I’ve come to live with a systemically coercive adoption, without minimizing or erasing its tragedy. In dialectics, we often hold the impossible together: the loss of my upbringing in Chile is truly and unequivocally irreparable; and, I carry my ancestry in my cells, my voice and my name. The synthesis of this “impossible” contradiction is a lifelong resistance that’s as joyful as it is rageful.

As a member of my cross-racial, neurodiverse and unconventional family, I’ve reckoned with and attended to the consequences of my anti-Blackness, misogynoir and allistic ableism on the people I love most in the world. I’ve asserted my own boundaries around ableist and antiqueer patterns in my household. In our home, we often say “intersectionality is a bitch.” And, intersectionality is also wake up call. While there’s often no way to fully repair cross-racial harm, I’m unspeakably grateful for the ways I’ve been welcomed to account for and repair my racism and ableism. I’m proud of my family for the olympic learning and changing we’ve done together intersectionally and relationally. These experiences give me particular precision, understanding and nonjudgement in how I help clients and their loved ones change their own cycles of relational distancing actions (RDAs) with one another, including whatever racism or other isms might influence these actions.

For over 20 years, I have belonged to chosen communities that centre people who are houseless or precariously housed, and who usually live with multiple other oppressions. These friends of mine have shown me some of the most practical, funny and wise perspectives on life, love and community. Too many of them have died and witnessed too much death themselves. In the rhythms of these loves and losses, I’ve grown deep friendships with rage, mourning and dark humour. And I’ve learned that a loved one’s death is both an utter and complete loss and an invitation to keep them in my bones somehow. This existential and emotion-focused reckoning is at the heart of DBT.

Beyond my professional work as a therapist, I volunteer in political organizing work. Currently I organize with the grassroots groups Therapists for Palestine and DBT Providers for Antiracism. I also co-moderate the listserv community Therapists for Equity & Justice — Toronto.

I try to balance humility and drive in my approach to solidarity. In the intersecting privileges and oppressions that I live with, I commit to balancing two stances. I aim to listen and defer to folks with lived oppressions that I don’t experience; and, I aim to take initiative and ownership of my own actions and ideas, so that I’m not imposing extra labour and responsibility on the very folks I’m trying to have solidarity with!

So on the one hand, I do my best to follow to the knowledge and leadership of people who have experienced oppressions different than me. That includes…

Racially minoritized people, like folks who are Black, Indigenous, Brown, Asian, Palestinian, Lebanese and/or SWANA.

And people who experience discrimination for their religion and/or ethnicity, like folks who are Muslim, Jewish, Ukrainian and Roma.

And other people who are strategically marginalized, like folks who are trans, disabled, Autistic, refugees, immigrants, houseless or precariously housed, and people who use drugs. .

On the other hand, I take ownership of my own commitment to solidarity, within a framework of intersectional, decolonial and transformative antiracism. What does this mean?…

My emphasis on the antiracism part of liberation work means that I believe racism is the most powerful oppression and that we can “come at” all other oppressions through practicing antiracism. As a DBT therapist who helps people learn to regulate and free their relationships with their emotions, I consider racism to be a constant factor getting in the way of emotional freedom. So healing racism is healing the person and their surroundings. For example, as a white person with a history of BPD traits, my process of gaining emotional and relationship stability has been inseparable from growing my antiracism.

Intersectional means my stance that antiracism is only antiracism as long as it’s working to dismantle all other oppressions at the same time. So while working against all forms of racism, my commitment is to work at the same time against all forms of ethnic and religious-based hatred, classism, imperialism, antiqueerness, antitransness and ableism. That means for example that as we confront anti-Palestinian racism, we confront antiqueernss at the very same time. In the same opposition of anti-Blackness, we oppose anti-Jewishness (aka antisemitism). In the same unpacking of anti-Asian racism, we unpack misogyny. No one’s liberation happens at the expense of anyone else’s, and no one’s oppressions are ignored.

Decolonial means my position is that colonization and racism each create and reinforce one another. Antiracism is impossible without decolonization, and vice versa. Examples of colonization include the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the so-called Residential Schools, the Holocaust, Partition, the Nakba and South African Apartheid (personal communication, T. Prescod, Sept 2024). So I’m committed to decolonizing movements like Land Back for Turtle Island and BDS for a Free Palestine. This is one and the same as my commitment to antiracism.

Transformative means that I root my antiracist practice in transformative justice. Meaning, no matter how much harm anyone does, racist or otherwise, no one is disposable. In a transformative approach to justice, there are still tough, often heartbreaking, consequences for harm done. But these consequences aren’t about “getting back at,” humiliating, alienating or forcing anything on the person or people who have done the harm. They’re about helping the person or people who were harmed, to heal; and about helping the person or people who did the harm, to change, if they choose to. I’ve done a lot of racialized harm myself as a white woman-bodied person. I’ve reckoned with the irreparable losses and heartbreaking consequences of those harms. And I’m unspeakably grateful I was given opportunities to change and repair the aspects that were reparable. DBT helped me do that. I’m here to support others in this process, too, both to change harmful behaviour and to heal from harming and being harmed.

Alejandra Lindan, MMT, RP (they/them)

Registered Psychotherapist #001976

alejandra@lindan.ca