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Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. - Guest
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. is a tenured faculty at the Wright Institute in Berkeley and the Clinical Director at the Carl B. Metoyer Center for Family Counseling, East Oakland. There she and her colleagues are piloting a program, the Umoja Reentry Family Unity Project, to support families with formerly incarcerated parents. She has experience working with adults and families, as well as adolescent status offenders, and her theoretical orientation combines developmental, systems, social justice therapy, and narrative therapy perspectives. Dr. Thompson is a past teaching associate for the University of California, Berkeley in general psychology and minority mental health, as well as a fellow in the Berkeley Teacher Training Program. In addition to her work mentioned above, she also maintains a private practice. |
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W. Keith Sutton, Psy.D. - Host
Dr. Sutton has always had an interest in learning from multiple theoretical perspectives, and keeping up to date on innovations and integrations. He is interested in the development of ideas, and using research to show effectiveness in treatment and refine treatments. In 2009 he started the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy, providing a one-way mirror training in family therapy with James Keim, LCSW. Next, he added a trainer and one-way mirror training in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and an additional trainer and mirror in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy. The participants enjoyed analyzing cases, keeping each other up to date on research, and discussing what they were learning. This focus on integrating and evolving their approaches to helping children, adolescents, families, couples, and individuals lead to the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy's training program for therapists, and its group practice of like-minded clinicians who were dedicated to learning, innovating, and advancing the field of psychotherapy. Our podcast, Therapy on the Cutting Edge, is an extension of this wish to learn, integrate, stay up to date, and share this passion for the advancement of the field with other practitioners. |
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (00:24):
Welcome to Therapy on the Cutting Edge, a podcast for therapists who want to be up to date on the latest advances in the field of psychotherapy. I'm your host, Dr. Keith Sutton, a psychologist in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Director of the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy. At the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy, we provide training in evidence-based models, including Family Systems, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, Motivational Interviewing, and other approaches through live in-person and online trainings, on demand trainings, consultation groups, and one-way mirror trainings. We also have therapists throughout the Bay Area and California providing treatment through our six specialty centers, each grounded in an evidence-based approach, with our Lifespan Centers, Center for Children and Center for Adolescents, where all the therapists are working systemically; our Center for Couples, where all the therapists are using Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy; and our specialty issue centers, our Center for Anxiety, where all the therapists are using CBT and EMDR for trauma; and our center for ADHD and Oppositional & Conduct Disorder clinic, where we're integrating those four approaches.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (01:32):
In the institute, we have our licensed, experienced therapists, and for those in financial need, we have an associated nonprofit, Bay Area Community Counseling, where clients can work with associates, psych assistants, and licensed clinicians who are developing their abilities and expertise. Additionally, as part of our nonprofit, we also have the Family Institute of Berkeley, where we provide treatment, training, and one-way mirror trainings in family systems. To learn more about trainings, treatment, and employment opportunities, please go to sfiap.com and to support our nonprofit, you can go to sf-bacc.org to donate today to support access to therapy for those in financial need, as well as training in evidence-based treatment. BACC is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so all donations are tax deductible.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (02:19):
Today, I'll be speaking with Veronique Thompson, Ph.D., who is a psychologist and tenured faculty member at the Wright Institute in Berkeley. She's a clinical director at the Carl B. Metoyer Center for Family Counseling in East Oakland. There, she and her colleagues are piloting a program, Umoja Reentry Family Unity Project, to support families with formerly incarcerated parents. She has clinical experience working with adults and families as well as adolescent status offenders and her theoretical orientation combines developmental, systems, social justice therapy, and narrative therapy perspectives. And she maintains a private practice in addition to her work at the center for family counseling. Veronique is a past teacher associate for the University of California, Berkeley in general psychology and minority mental health, as well as a fellow in the Berkeley Teacher Training Program. Let's listen to the interview.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (03:13):
Hi. Welcome, Veronique.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (03:16):
Hi, how are you?
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (03:17):
Good, good! Glad you could join today. So you and I met some years ago through the Association of Family Therapists, Northern California, which we're both a part of, and you're a current board member as well as myself. And particularly, gosh, I don't even remember, I think it must have been at the Patricia Papernow conference up at Westerbay that we got to know each other some more. And I think --I don't remember if it was you-- we went on some hikes, or we were hanging out, but it's been so nice. We've known each other over the years now, lots of conversation and such when we go to meetings. But I really actually was realizing, I don't know as much about your work. I know that you teach at the Wright Institute, you teach family therapy. And that also you were talking to me recently about an innovative project that you're doing through the place where you're the clinical director when we were taking that family therapy training on trauma. And so I'd love to hear about that, but before even that I'd love to hear a little bit about your kind of path and how you got doing what you're doing.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (04:26):
How did I get to where I am? How far back you want to go? I'm kind of on the old side.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (04:32):
Wherever you want to go, whatever you're kind of -- because I'm always interested, too, in people's progression of experiences and thinking and how that kind of evolves to kind of where they are now.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (04:40):
I was born and raised in Boston -- Boston, Massachusetts. So I feel like I've done almost like a tour of the country, because I was born and raised there, that's where I went to high school. I did my undergrad at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. And the furthest south I had ever been prior to going to Spelman, you know, from Boston, the furthest south I had ever been was Philadelphia. So if you can picture that. So, yeah, I went to Spelman and that was a life changing experience for me, going to Spelman. And even how I got there was kind of interesting, because it's a historically black college, it's an all women's college, and I'd never even heard-- I'm first generation college, so I guess I should say that. I'd never even heard of black colleges. I was part of a teen group at a library, our local library back in the day. My mother, we went to the library and we just hung out at the library. It was like, I would hang out and they had some kind of teen group, and Mr. Mclaughlin, who was a librarian, told us about black colleges and said, you should think about applying to black colleges. And he just introduced us. And I was like, "Black colleges, never heard of that." So I did, I looked into it and I ended up going to Spelman. I actually found Mr. Mclaughlin years later to go back and thank him because he really changed the trajectory of my life in a way.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (06:16):
Spelman was amazing. Being at a school that was all women, all African American people, predominantly African American people, it was just life changing for me. And I did really well, I made lifelong friends of course from Spelman. But I was a psych major, right. So I was one of those kids that was like, "Oh, I like psychology" and then I just kind of stuck with it. A little bit of nerd, a little bit of academic nerd type. So I majored in psychology at Spelman. I got in some program called the MARC program, Minority Access to Research Careers. And they gave me some funding the second half of my undergraduate program. It was called ADAMHA MARC, ADAM meaning Alcohol and Drug Abuse Administration.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (07:13):
And now it's SAMHSA, but anyway, it was called ADAMHA MARC. They gave me some money and that was great. And they exposed me, of course, to research. And I worked with Dr. Weber Levine who was at Morehouse college. Morehouse and Spelman are right across the street from each other. And they're like brother/sister schools. Morehouse, as you know, is all male. And so I was in a special research program for undergraduate minority kids to introduce them to research. And from there, that got me-- they helped us apply to graduate school.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (07:52):
And so I was looking at graduate programs all around the country and I applied for something called the APA Minority Fellowship. And I got that. I don't know if I could get that today because it's so competitive, but this was back in the early eighties. I got a fellowship even before I was accepted to a graduate program. So now when I'm applying to graduate schools, I can look very competitive and very attractive to graduate schools because I'm actually coming with a little bit of money.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (08:27):
So that was great. I mean, the reason I'm sharing this is because I'm a kid who, I was born in 1960, so I was the recipient of all of those programs. You know, those social programs, civil rights, you know, sort of the results of the civil rights I really benefited from all of that. And those kind of programs and money, sometimes that stuff dries up over the years. So I was on it. I mean, I could also mention back in Boston, I went to Project-- I went to Head Start, you know, the Head Start program.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (09:04):
Yeah. I used to-- my first year of practicum was at Head Start.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (09:09):
Okay, well I was a Head Start kid. And I always call it Project Head Start because it was a project when I-- I may honestly have been one of the first kids in that program. I tried to look it up and see when it started, and I may have been like, not the first child, but like very, very early cohort of Head Start. So all those, you know, Head Start and the MARC program and APA minority fellowship, I benefited from all of that and took advantage of it.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (09:41):
Social Programs to be able to help you know, individuals who are minorities to have better chances.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (09:48):
Yeah. Especially first gen kids! Because if you're first generation college, you don't really know like, "How do you do this?" You don't know the path forward. But anyway, went to graduate school at UC Berkeley, so that's what got me out here to California. And, you know, I was in that program, and that is a very research oriented program, but I found really quickly that I was more interested in clinical work than I was in an academic career research, Even though I'm an academic because I'm a professor at the Wright Institute, the Wright Institute has a Psy.D. Program, so that's very clinically focused. So in a way that's the perfect match for me, to be an academic that is more clinically focused than an academic that is just, producing scholarly research. So I went to UC Berkeley, and then I went to the Wright Institute. I was hired by the Wright Institute, right across the street from UC Berkeley. So I wound up there and I've been at the Wright since '89. So for over 30 years I've been there..
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (10:53):
Oh, wow.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (10:54):
And I, as you know, I teach family therapy. And I also teach a number of multicultural diversity classes. So I'd say those are the two main threads for me, multicultural diversity and family work. And I got interested in family work -- I think partly it feels very cultural. I remember being at UC Berkeley and we were learning about transference, right. Transference relationship and counter transference, and a part of me inside felt like, I don't know about this. Okay, I mean, I understood it intellectually. But I was, at Berkeley, very -- coming from Spelman, which was a more African American environment, UC Berkeley, which is a predominantly white institution -- I just didn't quite believe that I would have this transference idea, with a white therapist. Now, I think you can have a transference, but back then I was thinking, "What? What about people's families?" I mean, I'm much more influenced by my own family. So I always had that sort of sense that people's families were really important to them. And I come from a very large family. I'm from Boston, but I'm from a very large extended African-American family. We're like a big clan.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (12:22):
Now question about the transference. Are you meaning the idea, like the therapist is this kind of blank slate and that what is there is only projected by the client? And thinking about, if you were working with a white therapist that there would be-- there's so much more in the context than just a blank slate?
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (12:40):
That's right. I did not believe that blank slate business. I was like looking at these folks saying, "Okay, I hear what you're saying. Are you aware of your whiteness or your gender or your social class?" I mean, because I'm not from this world. I'm first generation college, so all this-- you therapist person do not look like a blank slate to me. So, I just didn't quite believe that. And I was much more taken with the idea that people carry their families with them and they're influenced by their families, and those relationships are enduring and are very influential.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (13:19):
I had a similar experience, and that's what really, in the beginning essentially attracted me to narrative therapy because the context, and even -- of course when there's two different cultures or two different genders -- but even with same culture, same genders and same sexual orientation, that there is so much that people bring to the room. And that there is not that kind of blank slate. There is really a lot about each one of us that we communicate verbally, nonverbally, and the way we look and the way we react and so on. And so that more postmodern approach of looking at the context you bring is just so important.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (13:56):
That's why I liked family therapy, because family therapy talked about the context, right?
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (13:59):
Yeah, definitely.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (14:00):
And then narrative therapy, as I'm very interested in narrative therapy because I got introduced to that. Oh, I guess that was back in the nineties. I got introduced to narrative therapy and to social justice therapy. And again, those two things, right? The social justice piece, the narrative piece about systems and context and family, those are the two things that always seem to attract me.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (14:28):
Sure.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (14:28):
I get really curious about those. I get very passionate about them. And I was invited to-- Now do you know this, that I went to Australia?
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (14:36):
No, no.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (14:38):
So I went to Australia with a group of other therapists of color. A woman named Linda Kuwatani, a man named John Provo. And... why am I forgetting... Oh gosh, his name... We have a scholarship for him at AFTNC. Rom. Rom Gochle. His name was escaping me. Rom. So Rom, Linda, John and I, we all were invited to Australia to study narrative therapy with Michael White. And we were invited to the family center in Lower Hutt, New Zealand with Kiwi Tamasese and Charles Waldegrave to study social justice therapy. So another big pivotal point. So Spelman was a big pivotal point and then going to Australia and New Zealand. Again, professionally, that really changed my whole perspective.That's what really sort of, you know--
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (15:45):
And when you were in Australia, you were going and meeting with the folks that were in the narrative work there?
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (15:51):
Well, yeah, we were at Dulwich Centre. We spent a few weeks at Dulwich. I knew I was over there for about a month. So I want to say a couple of weeks at Dulwich Centre and a couple of weeks at the family center in New Zealand. And this was, of course, when Michael White was alive. And that was an amazing experience. Michael and Cheryl. It was just an amazing experience.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (16:17):
Wow, that's great!
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (16:18):
Yeah!
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (16:19):
Now I want to take you back because you were talking about being from a large family and how families really made sense to you. And so, you kind of were thinking like, the transference didn't really seem to be kind of grabbing you and fitting, but really that idea of kind of a family, and the connection of family and your large family. Tell me more about that.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (16:40):
Well, you know, I'm from a very large family, and my family is not only large, it's very clannish. Like, you know, I have 32 first cousins.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (16:54):
Wow.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (16:55):
And I, and we all lived around the corner from each other and next door to each other. So, you know, you just spent-- my whole world was, I was immersed in my own family. So I'm very captured, you know, captured by that. What else was I gonna say about that? Maybe it'll come back to me. But yeah, I'm from a large family. And you couldn't really, you know, get away from your family, you know? Oh, the other thing, I think-- what I was gonna say is, I'm also-- my parents were divorced when I was in the eighth grade and that of course was a hard time. And it was the years right before the divorce that were like the most, you know, stressful. And my parents' divorce was you know, in the long run was amicable if you could say.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (17:49):
My father stayed in my life my whole entire life. My mother and my father were involved my entire life. But, in those years right before, I remember thinking-- I tried to be a family therapist. I actually tried to be a family therapist. But, you know, if I could -- you know, there was so much tension and stress -- if I could be good; if I would get good grades; and if I would be compliant; if I would, you know, do my chores; and if I would, you know, sort of please people and not be a problem, then that would help things, right? I thought in my, you know, adolescent mind. And so, I was trying to be a family therapist, but I didn't even know what family therapy was. Of course, I had no training and supervision. It would've really helped. So I think that was my, yeah-- I think I tried to be the family therapist in my family. I'm a middle child, and they say somewhere that middle children often are attracted to family therapy, or there are a lot of family therapy middle children. I don't know. But, research on that. But so, by the time I heard about family therapy later and I got introduced to it, I thought, "Oh my gosh, in those years I was trying to be a family therapist in my own family."
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (19:07):
Yeah, you were trying to help the system. You were trying to help kind of, yeah, have some effect on the system.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (19:13):
Right, right. And I wasn't terribly successful in my-- you know, because my family broke. So then I felt like I had this quest inside of me to figure that out. And I feel like that really fueled my interest in psychology, encouraged my pursuit. There was always something inside myself that said, "Oh gosh, if I could-- if I had this knowledge. If I could help, if I could help other family," you know? So I think that really the seed of where my--
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (19:38):
Oh, interesting.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (19:39):
--yeah, came from.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (19:40):
Yeah. I got interested in working with families and working in the shelters and teen children I was working with, where we'd worked with the kids alone, and then we'd bring the families in and it just like, a lot made sense. And so, you know, that just made sense to me. And I remember coming home over the break, I think it was during grad school or so on, with spending time with my family over the holidays. And I was just thinking, "My gosh, like, as a therapist, like, I couldn't get this family to change if I was gonna, you know, do all these things." And really just kind of realizing too that it's like so much again, about that collaborative effort to create and make that change. But I think oftentimes, you know, with anything that we're doing, whatever approach that people are doing, it's right, that interplay of our own past or our own experience and kind of trying to understand how to, you know, have that effect and so on. But yeah, that's great.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (20:32):
So, while I was at the Wright Institute No, no, before the Wright Institute, one of the practicums that I did you know, in graduate school was-- I was a practicum trainee at the Center for Family Counseling in East Oakland, where I'm now the clinical director. So I'm like, you know, a lifer. I just, when I get at an organization, I stay. I've been at the Wright Institute for over 30 years. I've been at the Center for Family Counseling for even longer than that, around 35 years. But I started at the Center for Family Counseling as a trainee, and my supervisor-- I don't know if you know Paul Guillory, but he was my supervisor, and he is into the EFT. He's a certified EFT. And Paul was my first supervisor, I think-- not my first supervisor at all, but at practicum. He was a family therapist, and he was my supervisor. He's an African American man.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (21:23):
So his influence on me was very profound because he spoke the language I spoke. Like I understood this black man talking context and family, and like, I was like, "Okay, this makes sense. I mean, you know, this other stuff was interesting, but it just didn't make as much sense to me. It didn't resonate as deeply." So I feel like Paul Guillory really you know again, opened my eyes to family therapy. I then did an internship. I did my-- an APA internship in New York at a place called Beth Israel Hospital and they had a family therapy focus. And that's why I chose that. And so I got more family therapy, of course. And so, the Center for Family Counseling, which is in East Oakland, you know, I sort of, you know, I was a practicum trainee at some point after I got my master's degree. I was hired as a staff therapist. I then was a program developer there for doing a little bit of research.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (22:24):
We had a program called the Family Enrichment Network -- FIN -- and I helped develop that program. And then at some point, the clinical director position opened up, and I took that. And so I've been there ever since. So, East Oakland, as you know, is a community with, you know, predominantly people of color -- African American and Latino people -- and that's who the Center for Family Counseling primarily serves. They have a program called De-Institutionalizing Status Offensives -- DPN Network it's called, Delinquency Prevention Network. And we're funded through Alameda County to provide services to help young people. You know, it's a diversion program to divert them from you know, they're getting into trouble in school or family issues, or-- so we do family therapy. And our-- and this is what I learned from Paul Guillory, I'll never forget.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (23:24):
That you really want the parents to be in what-- executive control of their families. Like, it's not-- you know, and I think adolescent, individual work, and child therapy all has a place. But empowering families, particularly families who are under-resourced like our families in East Oakland. And in some ways, families in East Oakland are like all families, right? They want to raise their kids and they want their kids to do well and you know, in school and in life. And they have the same pursuits as any other family, yet they have less resources, right? Underfunded schools and you know, an environment where there's a little bit you know, what they call-- they have food deserts and not as quality food and violence and-- but the families in East Oakland, I think are resilient, are strong, and are like other families, they love and care about their kids.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (24:23):
So I have all-- I always bristle when I hear that people say, "Well, these kids come from families that don't care about--" I get very-- I get very, very sort of fiercely protective because I don't think it's true. The Center for Family Counseling, that's the kind of work that we do, working with young people who have had-- who have had some, sometimes some involvement with the incarceral system and sometimes not. But if they are you know, if they've run away, or they're having over this family violence, or even family conflict and stress, school truancy, I mean, all the kinds of things that would bring a young person to our attention, we try to see them and intervene at that systemic level, taking into account, of course, family dynamics, but also cultural dynamics, right? So they're very interested in, you know, how you know they may have internalized you know things about themselves that frankly are not true. And that kind of gets into narrative work.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (25:31):
Yeah, kind of in the dominant cultural narrative. Like, kind of internalizing that to believe they aren't able, or whatever It might be.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (25:40):
They aren't able, or they're not worthy, or they-- whatever it is, yeah. So we want to interrupt some of those kinds of thoughts and-- So, a couple of years ago, a few years ago, our executive director at the time, a woman named Dina Alkhoury -- this was a few years ago -- you know, money became available for working what are called the re-entry population, right, and the people who were formerly incarcerated. And formerly incarcerated folks who are, you know, coming back into society, so to speak, need a lot of support. I mean, they need a lot of support, like around practical things like getting a driver's license and you know, getting transportation and securing housing, and, you know, they may have a family that they could seamlessly come back into and have all that kind of support.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (26:32):
They may or they may not. I mean, you know, there's a lot of diversity there within that population. So, a lot of people have been paying attention to formerly incarcerated folks and trying to help them and support them. There's an organization called Roots in East Oakland who does this really well. They provide medical care and job information and all kinds of resources to this population. So the Center for Family Counseling, we're out here in East Oakland, we're thinking, "Well, what would people need, you know from the re-entry community by way of family work?" And so the idea came to mind that you know, we think about the formerly incarcerated re-entering society -- what, how might we support them in reentering their own families? Because there's been a disruption there. And ,when someone has been locked away and away from their family there's been a disruption in the system.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (27:33):
Now-- the family system. Now, I don't want to say that everybody who is locked away, is a bad parent, or is somebody whose family's connections are all messed up. That is not necessarily true. And working with this population, that's one of the things that I've learned and that people have strengths and people have challenges, and we're always looking to help them meet their challenges and grow their strength. So, we worked with a consultant, a woman named Ann Adalist, who is really sort of nationally known for her work with formerly incarcerated family. She has a very interesting story herself. I won't go on into her story, but-- She gave us this idea, this concept that we borrowed from Ann and her her group, they called the-- oh gosh, I'm not gonna remember the name of-- like, the National Council on Formerly Incarcer-- Children's Network of Formerly Incarcerated Parents, something like that.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (28:37):
They have this notion that they use called Make, Mend, and Maintain. And I love this concept, Make, Mend, and Maintain. So, some formerly incarcerated families might be really needing to, you know, make new relationships or repair relationships. Some might need to mend those relationships, and some might be really maintaining those relationships. So, again, it's helpful to think of that because then, you know, you're not treating this population as if everyone is the same and everyone needs help or something. So anyway, we got really excited about that. And so then we started, you know, looking who could fund us. You know, we had a consultant who helped us learn all about this population, and then we modeled together, what could we do? How could we, you know, have a program for these families?
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (29:30):
And we came up with this sort of fantastical-- here's everything we want to do. We have not yet been able to do everything we want to do because we haven't had had the money for all of it, but we've piloted aspects of the program.And the part of the program we've already piloted twice now -- a smaller group, and now we have another group going on right now -- are these healing circles. So we have -- we call them healing circles -- and we have groups for three different groups going on at the same time: one for formerly incarcerated parents, one for children of formerly incarcerated parents, and one for caregivers of the formerly incarcerated parents. So when the parent was incarcerated, somebody was taking care of the kids. Families carry on and go on. And so that's the caregivers group.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (30:30):
Caregivers could be grand-parents, they could be a you know, a spouse, a, you know, a partner, they could be another family member. But somebody was holding it down, taking care of the kids, seeing about the kids, and those are the caregivers. So we want an intervention that doesn't only target the formerly incarcerated parent, but looks at the family.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (30:49):
The entire system there, and it's also true--
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (30:51):
The entire system.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (30:52):
--in, you know, many families like this they've had to bring in, you know, multi-generations to help or that kinship network to get that support during that time.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (31:01):
Yeah, yeah. So people have done the best they could, right? And now this person is re-entering, they're no longer incarcerated. And what is it like for them to re-enter their own family? To make, maintain, or mend relationships with their children and with their and with the caregivers? So we have these three separate groups that run concurrently and we just focus on themes and topics about things like stigma, you know? Like-- well, although not every family who has experienced incarceration, like I said, is you know, has terrible dynamics or, you know, there are a variety of people. And people have very good and strong relationships, but everybody has to deal with stigma. Having a parent that was incarcerated is a stigmatizing kind of a-- So how do they deal with that stigma? What has stigma sort of pushed them to do? How have they-- how can we support them in standing up to stigma? You can hear the narrative therapy focus here.That's just my influence and narrative. So yeah, so we take a theme like stigma, and across the three groups, they'll all be talking about stigma, but from different perspectives.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (32:22):
And do you bring the group together at any point?
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (32:26):
Well, that's the more money. That's the bigger group.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (32:28):
Okay. Yes. Yes.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (32:29):
That's the group that we need more money for. What we really want to do in working with families, we have this idea that we would have, we would work with individual families, then people would also do groups, and then we would work with individual fam-- the individual family again. We really would love to bring together the whole family unit.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (32:48):
Sure.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (32:48):
These three groups with the formerly incarcerated parent, formerly-- the child of the formerly incarcerated parent, and caregiver in that system -- all those people in our groups right now are not necessarily related to each other.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (33:01):
Sure, sure.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (33:03):
But if we did this with, you know, we had a little bit more money, we could have that whole family, each part of that family could be in those separate groups and then bring them together.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (33:14):
Oh, that would be really interesting. That would be great. I mean--
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (33:17):
That would be, that's our full scale pro-- that's the full scale model that we have developed, but we haven't had a chance to run--
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (33:25):
Really implement it yet.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (33:27):
Yeah. Yeah.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (33:28):
Yeah, I think that the piece, I mean-- yeah, there's so many forces kind of at work, right? That I think you keep saying too, like, you know, that, that these, you know, there's the people that aren't bad and so on. Because yes, oftentimes people are like, "Ooh, somebody went to jail. They're bad," or so on. But again, as we know, right, there's the context that plays into all of this. And that, so, you know, really beginning to, you know, understand that and looking at just, you know, even in a, I don't know, somebody really good or great, you know, like, can get into a circumstance, but everybody's gonna have that difficulty and reentry, especially with the, you know, attachment. You know, especially for the kids and losing that attachment with the parent and then attaching to grandparents or whatever it might be in that transition.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (34:13):
You know, I know one client that I was working with, her mother had suffered with drug addiction for many years, and then once she got clean, you know, then the grandmother who had raised her daughter until age 15 said, "Okay, here's your daughter back." And then just kind of stepped away. And it was such, you know, a difficult transition for everybody because, you know, the attachment to the grandparent, and the feelings of abandonment, and the trying to create this new relationship with the mother that really hadn't necessarily been there before. And you know that, yeah, when somebody's taken out of the system and then brought back in, it's not like they just kind of seamlessly pop back in and everything's, you know, big happy family.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (34:53):
Yes. Yeah. I'm a big fan of attachment theory. So we've been using a lot of concepts from the ARC model --Attachment, Regulation, and Competency -- that has influenced. Narrative always sneaks in there because that's just part of my background, but attachment is a big piece of this, right? Just the way you were, you were saying. So, yeah. So, that's what we've been up to. And it's been a terrific learn-- we're really still learning. We got some consultation from a group called RJOY, Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth. They came and taught us a lot about how to hold a healing circle and some of the components of a healing circle. So we've been influenced by them. We have a bit of a partnership with them and trying to work with them as well.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (35:44):
So, this is one of those, you know, community efforts that we are trying to both learn and collaborate with other community partners and how to bring these services to families who have struggled with incarceration. And I mean, because of systemic racism and inequity, a lot of black and brown people find themselves, you know, more involved in the incarceral system than ought to, right? So, it's a real issue within our community and those folks are really deserving, I think, of support.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (36:29):
Definitely. When I think, like you were talking about too, the under-resourced community-- the community being under-resourced, and I think also, again, all those forces -- the societal forces I mean, oppression -- that kind of hit up against. And so, yeah when somebody, of course is coming out of incarceration, it's like just another added, you know, kind of layer of all those barriers.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (36:52):
Yeah, under-resourced and overpoliced.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (36:55):
Yeah. Right? Over policed and yeah, stereotyped and, you know discrimination. I mean, it's like, not only, it's like if we-- if everybody was able to have all the same resources, the person still hitting up against all of that kind of push. And I was actually interested too, on, you know, your work, and I know you're teaching you know, your graduate students and working with clients that are multicultural and also the multicultural work you do with the training your clinicians and your practice and the work that you're all doing. I'd love to hear a little bit about that. And it was actually-- I had totally even forgot, you know, how we like, kind of really connected at that conference. I was like, as we were talking, I was like, I don't know if you recall but yeah, is okay if I share a little of this story?
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (37:47):
Yeah. I remember the story, but yeah. Sure.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (37:50):
Well I think that you know, it was-- and I, you know, I do a lot, you know, of my own work on you know cultural competency and understanding my privilege and, you know, talking about my work in-- I work with a diverse population. But I, and I remember we were hanging out at the hot tub at the conference, the AFTN Conference.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (38:13):
We always hang out at the hot tub.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (38:15):
Super laid back. We do charades, things like that. I remember I'd showed up at the APA conference, like, you know, with a t-shirt and jeans and I was like, "Oh, wait a second. This is not what--
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (38:23):
A different group!
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (38:24):
--this is not how the family therapy conference is that we have. But, we were just kind of hanging out in the hot tub and there was another group there, I think a yoga group--
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (38:32):
A yoga group, yep.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (38:33):
And it was a white woman, and she was talking about something and something about like, "Oh yeah, and the, you know, and people, you know, used to say the N word in the past." And she used the full word and so on. And I was like, I think both of us just kind of are like, got stopped for a moment. And I was like, I was like, "Whoa, like, that's not okay." I was like, "But wait, do I say something here?" I was like, "Wait a second, you know, like Veronique can speak up for herself. I don't want to be kind of a white person saying like, 'that's not--'." And then, you know, and you, I think did end up saying something. Anyways, just thinking about like, after that. And then we, you know, had a whole conversation around afterwards and just how, even though despite a lot of our, you know, personal experience and training and thinking about culture and so on, and just like when instances like that happen, like kind of it all gets spun around.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (39:26):
Well, you know, it-- we get sideswiped. I mean, whenever something happens to me, like, you know, a racial microaggression, or this case might have been a macroaggression--
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (39:34):
I was gonna say, that's a definitely macro.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (39:37):
Yeah. You know, you get kind of like, "Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoah okay, what's happening here?" And you know, depending on the day, I remember thinking very much like, "I don't know this woman and she's not worth my time to engage in this." The best thing that came out of that, for me, was you and I getting to talk about it. You and I are colleagues, we're friends. I'm invested in our relationship professionally, you know? And so that made-- you and I taking a deep dive and talking about that was really useful. I felt very supported. I mean, we were both I mean, I, and we were both exposed, you know? And so the-- I and those kind of decisions, you just make moment to moment, right? So, maybe another time I would've said something. I don't know. But I did not feel moved at all to engage this woman further, to school her, to do anything. I was like, "Oh, okay lady, I'm-- I really, I was just trying to be in the hot tub here, enjoying myself. And then you're bringing all this in." So I didn't choose to at that moment, and maybe another moment I would've made a different choice, but it certainly opened up a whole depth of conversation for you and I to talk about. And that was great. I mean, that, you know--
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (40:57):
And I think kind of applying that to therapists and working with culture and cultural differences in the room with their clients. And just having some of those conversations or having missteps and, you know, talking about those and that I think sometimes myself, even as a white male, cisgender, heterosexual, you know, therapist you know, it ends up-- sometimes I think like, there's a right way to do this or to talk about culture or to work in this way. And I don't know what your thoughts are on that. I mean I think that part that I am always trying to be aware of my culture and what I'm bringing and thinking about both the kind of the emic, you know, aspect and the etic, you know, kind of the larger, you know, cultural differences and then also the family's culture. Yeah, your thoughts on kind of a therapist and bringing that work and kind of understanding into their work with their clients.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (41:58):
Yeah. I think there's lots of right ways of doing it and just a few really bad, awful ways.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (42:04):
Yeah. Yeah.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (42:05):
Yeah, I think we-- all of us get caught up in wanting to do the right thing and in the right way. We're therapists, we want to help people, support people. And it's, you know, it's hard when you misstep or when you harm. I mean, it's just like it-- none of us are in it for that. So I think that always you know, sort of takes us aback when we become aware that we've done some harm as it should. I mean, I'm really glad that people are so pained by their own, you know, that's a good sign, right?
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (42:43):
Yeah.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (42:43):
I think when people move away from that, like, "Oh, you know, that this person's oversensitive," or they are more oblivious to the harm that they've done, that's more problematic. To me it's not so much the harm that happens, it's what happens after that. So any of us can hurt one another's feelings. It could be around cultural things, it could be around something else. We can step on each other's toes, hurt each other's feelings. And we will. I mean, we're human beings and we are going to disappoint, not show up properly, not support in the way the person needed. That's like part of the human condition. So that I take as a given, it's what comes after that.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (43:24):
Yeah.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (43:25):
Like once you are made aware, or once you become aware of some harm that you-- what is it that you do? You know, do you double down and stand your ground, or just defend yourself or, you know, or are you, do you become a little bit more curious about, "Oh my gosh, let me-- I really want to understand this more and I want to see what I did." Because I think people can go from one extreme to the other. Some people are sort of like you know, like, "I did nothing wrong and this was my intention," and, you know, all that. Or people who on the other side, "Oh, I'm so sorry. Oh my God." I actually think that's problematic too, when people are sort of overly afraid and overly conciliatory and-- You know, there's something about that that is not very genuine.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (44:15):
I'm always looking for that kind of balance of being open to, "Okay, what harm have I done? And I want to really understand this." And sometimes that other person who you've harmed is up for really explaining or telling that to you. And sometimes frankly, they're not, you know what I mean? Like, "Okay, go learn it somewhere else." But any way that it happens for the person who's in that position of having committed harm, it is very important to try your best to understand. And if you have a framework for doing this before the harm, then you're like a few steps ahead of the game. So right at the Wright Institute where I teach something called Multicultural Clinical Awareness, and I teach another class called Sociocultural Issues in Psychology.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (45:03):
And those classes we're really trying to sensitize people. Help people develop a stance more of humility, so that when they inevitably make these mistakes that they will make, that we will all make because we're humans, they then have some way to understand that. Again, they don't have to necessarily overly burden the person who they've committed the harm to, but they can then say, "Oh gosh, let me--" You know, if you have some sense of where you hold privilege and you hear people talking a lot about you know, "I hold privilege here. Why are people talking about this?" Well, because if you know where you hold privilege, then you are more aware of where your blind spots may be. And I'm hesitating to say "blind spots" because I'm trying to think of another word, because that's such ableist language. Not, not to just be super, super politically correct. Where your vision is obscured or whatever you, however you want to say it. But you're not able to be as aware in the places where you are privileged, you know, so you should--
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (46:10):
Well, I mean, and part is the definition of privilege.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (46:13):
That's the, is the definition!
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (46:15):
Because I know, like when I was at the AFTA conferences and they had these kind of discussion circles towards the end about, you know, experiences that people might have had in microaggression, so on or macroaggression, and it was a witnessing circle. Like, you know, I just kept being reminded of my own privilege of really how much that I was not even aware of or noticing or so on of-- and I mean, I think that is such a huge piece. So the more aware, of course, like you're saying, you can be of those blind spots, or sorry, the, you know, the privilege essentially, better. But ultimately like yeah the person won't necessarily be always be able to be aware. The way I think about it too is that I need to be attuned. And even, and when I do make a misstep or so on, oftentimes "I'll say, I really want you to let me know, but you're, you know, it's not your job to, you know, educate me or anything like that. Like, it's my job to be aware, to understand and so on. But I do, you know, do want the feedback." And but really it's not-- the onus is not on the other person. It's really--
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (47:18):
Yeah. The onus is not on the other person, and you can still invite them, you know what I mean? Like, "If you're feeling up to it, please let me know. You're not feeling up to it. You don't feel like it, you don't want--" like me with the yoga lady, I just didn't want to. I just wasn't available to her for that. So I like to invite people to do that, but they don't have to. So it's a both/and.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (47:38):
Definitely. Yes, totally.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (47:39):
You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (47:41):
Yeah. Definitely.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (47:42):
Because you do want people to be able to speak up for themselves, to be able to say, you know, whatever they need to say. So it's not-- I again, I'm always leery of going in from one extreme to the other.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (47:54):
Yeah, definitely.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (47:56):
Yeah.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (47:56):
Well, and I think too that the-- I think the aspect also of, like you were saying, that humility and like, I like, you know I think, you know, Becky Pizer also, she was, you know what, telling me a little bit more about the dialogue recently about intention versus impact. And I think that's so important, that piece, because oftentimes people say, "Well, I didn't mean it that way," or, "I didn't--" you know, and it's really the impact is the person's valid experience. And really being able to hear and listen to that and be able to hold that, whether it be you know, culturally kind of you know, situated or even, I mean, this happens in many couples, many families and relationships and so on, that we don't mean to make the other person feel bad or to so on, but it may land that way. And so, but--
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (48:47):
I want to jump in here because I think intent is also important. Again, I don't think it's one or the other, right? So I-- Becky is a dear friend that we have in common, and she teaches the multicultural awareness class. We teach it together at The Wright. Yeah. Yeah. I dunno if you knew that. But anyway, Becky and I, we see each other quite a lot. So this whole idea of intent versus impact. I remember when I first learned that concept too, I said, "This is terrific," right? You know, it doesn't-- it's not about the intent, it is about the impact. How did this land? What was the consequences? What is the effect? Let's pay attention to that. And so we got very excited, all of us, paying attention to impact. But now I think we've let go of the idea of intent, and I think intent is important. I mean, if somebody does intentionally--
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (49:36):
Totally, totally.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (49:37):
I don't give an F about you and-- that, that makes a difference. So I feel like intent and impact are both important. They're not the same thing, and we should understand them differently. But in our zest to, you know, to uphold impact, I think we have acted as if intent makes no difference. And I feel like it does make a difference. And I'm gonna stand out here on a limb maybe by myself and say that because I know you know, I-- the students, we have very healthy, you know, conversations of-- around different ideas. And so I'm gonna stand up for both intent and impact.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (50:18):
Well, I think too, with intent, right? I mean like intent versus impact. If the intent is to like hurt, then that is having an impact, right? That's-- there's no mismatch there. And I think though, that too, as you're talking about, like, you know, the other piece of like not going too far the other way of like, you know you know, validating, but also kind of, you know not also looking at the context, because I think, you know, when I do have that come up with clients, -- whether it be culturally, whether it be, you know, working with a climate trauma or something like that, where it, you know -- that also, you know, kind of really understanding, validating and kind of really, you know, honoring that and, and kind of acknowledging and repairing. And then also, you know, asking if I can also share part of what my own thoughts or so on might be in a way to just again, understand a little bit more, particularly if we have an ongoing working relationship, but also kind of caveating that this is not a defense, or this is not kind of saying what I did was okay, or dismissing or things like that.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (51:22):
Right? Yeah.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (51:22):
And oftentimes helps us grow together. But, also sometimes I think people get so intent on making their intent known because they, you know-- it's so important to them to not be seen as somebody who could be hurtful or so on, and things like that. Then it ends up being kind of more for themselves than necessarily for their clients and really kind of just like--
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (51:46):
More for yourself. But that is, so-- that's human too, right? I mean, to save-- to want to save face, to be seen as a good person, those are normal human qualities, I think shared by every one of us. So I don't think that's a bad thing, but when that takes-- when that is privileged in that sense of the word, when that is the only part that is-- that you are sort of supporting or after then that's not, you know, that's not a good thing. But I think all of us, all of us -- and this is what I teach at The Wright, and, you know, it's not always a popular thing -- but we all have to look at our privilege. So I'm an African American woman. Where are the areas where I hold privilege around being cisgender, woman.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (52:38):
Now of course there's a lot of sort of oppression and still targeted being targeted as a woman. There's plenty of sexism. Sexism is alive and well, is what I want to say. But at the same time, to have the privilege of having a gender identity that matches the inside and the outside. Right? That's a privilege. You know you know, being part of the dominant religious majority. I'm not even a particularly religious person, but I was, you know, raised and grew up Christian. And that is an area where I hold privilege. Certainly I'm educated, I'm first gen, but I'm educated nevertheless. And so I hold privilege there and around sexual orientation. And so there's just a lot of places where I hold privilege and it's really, really, really important when you have a subjugated identity to also be flexible enough, humble enough to look at the areas where you hold privilege.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (53:38):
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, and I think too, that part, that's also part of the, I think the identity development, right? Of kind of, you know, of understanding one's subjugation and also then, you know, kind of integrating one's both subjugation and one's privilege together.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (53:58):
Yeah. That's what we try-- that's what we're trying to teach at The Wright Institute. And those are really-- those kinds of ideas and being able to hold those things -- you know, not only intellectually, but emotionally -- you know, takes a lot of psychological maturity. Takes a lot of working through it. Takes a lot of internal work. And, so yeah, yeah.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (54:19):
Definitely. Well, hey, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. You know, I always love reconnecting with you and talking, and it's always such wonderful conversation, so really appreciate it.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (54:32):
You are welcome. It was like hanging out with a friend.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (54:35):
Great. Well thanks a lot. Take care.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (54:38):
Alright then.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (54:39):
Bye.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (54:40):
Thank you for joining us today. If you'd like to receive continuing education credits for the podcast you just listened to, please go to therapyonthecuttingedge.com and click on the link for CE. Our podcast is brought to you by the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy, where we provide trainings for therapists in evidence-based models through live and online workshops, on-demand workshops, consultation groups, and online one-way mirror trainings. To learn more about our trainings and treatment for children, adolescents, families, couples, and individual adults, with our licensed experienced therapists in-person in the Bay Area, or throughout California online, and our employment opportunities, go to sfiap.com. To learn more about our associateships and psych assistantships and low fee treatment through our nonprofit Bay Area Community Counseling and Family Institute of Berkeley, go to sf-bacc.org and familyinstituteofberkeley.com. If you'd like to support therapy for those in financial need and training and evidence-based treatments, you can donate by going to BACC’s website at sfbacc.org. BACC is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit so all donations are tax deductible. Also, we really appreciate your feedback. If you have something you're interested in, something that's on the cutting edge of the field of psychotherapy, and you think therapists out there should know about it, send us an email. We're always looking for advancements in the field of psychotherapy to create lasting change for our clients.
Welcome to Therapy on the Cutting Edge, a podcast for therapists who want to be up to date on the latest advances in the field of psychotherapy. I'm your host, Dr. Keith Sutton, a psychologist in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Director of the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy. At the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy, we provide training in evidence-based models, including Family Systems, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, Motivational Interviewing, and other approaches through live in-person and online trainings, on demand trainings, consultation groups, and one-way mirror trainings. We also have therapists throughout the Bay Area and California providing treatment through our six specialty centers, each grounded in an evidence-based approach, with our Lifespan Centers, Center for Children and Center for Adolescents, where all the therapists are working systemically; our Center for Couples, where all the therapists are using Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy; and our specialty issue centers, our Center for Anxiety, where all the therapists are using CBT and EMDR for trauma; and our center for ADHD and Oppositional & Conduct Disorder clinic, where we're integrating those four approaches.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (01:32):
In the institute, we have our licensed, experienced therapists, and for those in financial need, we have an associated nonprofit, Bay Area Community Counseling, where clients can work with associates, psych assistants, and licensed clinicians who are developing their abilities and expertise. Additionally, as part of our nonprofit, we also have the Family Institute of Berkeley, where we provide treatment, training, and one-way mirror trainings in family systems. To learn more about trainings, treatment, and employment opportunities, please go to sfiap.com and to support our nonprofit, you can go to sf-bacc.org to donate today to support access to therapy for those in financial need, as well as training in evidence-based treatment. BACC is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so all donations are tax deductible.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (02:19):
Today, I'll be speaking with Veronique Thompson, Ph.D., who is a psychologist and tenured faculty member at the Wright Institute in Berkeley. She's a clinical director at the Carl B. Metoyer Center for Family Counseling in East Oakland. There, she and her colleagues are piloting a program, Umoja Reentry Family Unity Project, to support families with formerly incarcerated parents. She has clinical experience working with adults and families as well as adolescent status offenders and her theoretical orientation combines developmental, systems, social justice therapy, and narrative therapy perspectives. And she maintains a private practice in addition to her work at the center for family counseling. Veronique is a past teacher associate for the University of California, Berkeley in general psychology and minority mental health, as well as a fellow in the Berkeley Teacher Training Program. Let's listen to the interview.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (03:13):
Hi. Welcome, Veronique.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (03:16):
Hi, how are you?
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (03:17):
Good, good! Glad you could join today. So you and I met some years ago through the Association of Family Therapists, Northern California, which we're both a part of, and you're a current board member as well as myself. And particularly, gosh, I don't even remember, I think it must have been at the Patricia Papernow conference up at Westerbay that we got to know each other some more. And I think --I don't remember if it was you-- we went on some hikes, or we were hanging out, but it's been so nice. We've known each other over the years now, lots of conversation and such when we go to meetings. But I really actually was realizing, I don't know as much about your work. I know that you teach at the Wright Institute, you teach family therapy. And that also you were talking to me recently about an innovative project that you're doing through the place where you're the clinical director when we were taking that family therapy training on trauma. And so I'd love to hear about that, but before even that I'd love to hear a little bit about your kind of path and how you got doing what you're doing.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (04:26):
How did I get to where I am? How far back you want to go? I'm kind of on the old side.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (04:32):
Wherever you want to go, whatever you're kind of -- because I'm always interested, too, in people's progression of experiences and thinking and how that kind of evolves to kind of where they are now.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (04:40):
I was born and raised in Boston -- Boston, Massachusetts. So I feel like I've done almost like a tour of the country, because I was born and raised there, that's where I went to high school. I did my undergrad at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. And the furthest south I had ever been prior to going to Spelman, you know, from Boston, the furthest south I had ever been was Philadelphia. So if you can picture that. So, yeah, I went to Spelman and that was a life changing experience for me, going to Spelman. And even how I got there was kind of interesting, because it's a historically black college, it's an all women's college, and I'd never even heard-- I'm first generation college, so I guess I should say that. I'd never even heard of black colleges. I was part of a teen group at a library, our local library back in the day. My mother, we went to the library and we just hung out at the library. It was like, I would hang out and they had some kind of teen group, and Mr. Mclaughlin, who was a librarian, told us about black colleges and said, you should think about applying to black colleges. And he just introduced us. And I was like, "Black colleges, never heard of that." So I did, I looked into it and I ended up going to Spelman. I actually found Mr. Mclaughlin years later to go back and thank him because he really changed the trajectory of my life in a way.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (06:16):
Spelman was amazing. Being at a school that was all women, all African American people, predominantly African American people, it was just life changing for me. And I did really well, I made lifelong friends of course from Spelman. But I was a psych major, right. So I was one of those kids that was like, "Oh, I like psychology" and then I just kind of stuck with it. A little bit of nerd, a little bit of academic nerd type. So I majored in psychology at Spelman. I got in some program called the MARC program, Minority Access to Research Careers. And they gave me some funding the second half of my undergraduate program. It was called ADAMHA MARC, ADAM meaning Alcohol and Drug Abuse Administration.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (07:13):
And now it's SAMHSA, but anyway, it was called ADAMHA MARC. They gave me some money and that was great. And they exposed me, of course, to research. And I worked with Dr. Weber Levine who was at Morehouse college. Morehouse and Spelman are right across the street from each other. And they're like brother/sister schools. Morehouse, as you know, is all male. And so I was in a special research program for undergraduate minority kids to introduce them to research. And from there, that got me-- they helped us apply to graduate school.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (07:52):
And so I was looking at graduate programs all around the country and I applied for something called the APA Minority Fellowship. And I got that. I don't know if I could get that today because it's so competitive, but this was back in the early eighties. I got a fellowship even before I was accepted to a graduate program. So now when I'm applying to graduate schools, I can look very competitive and very attractive to graduate schools because I'm actually coming with a little bit of money.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (08:27):
So that was great. I mean, the reason I'm sharing this is because I'm a kid who, I was born in 1960, so I was the recipient of all of those programs. You know, those social programs, civil rights, you know, sort of the results of the civil rights I really benefited from all of that. And those kind of programs and money, sometimes that stuff dries up over the years. So I was on it. I mean, I could also mention back in Boston, I went to Project-- I went to Head Start, you know, the Head Start program.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (09:04):
Yeah. I used to-- my first year of practicum was at Head Start.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (09:09):
Okay, well I was a Head Start kid. And I always call it Project Head Start because it was a project when I-- I may honestly have been one of the first kids in that program. I tried to look it up and see when it started, and I may have been like, not the first child, but like very, very early cohort of Head Start. So all those, you know, Head Start and the MARC program and APA minority fellowship, I benefited from all of that and took advantage of it.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (09:41):
Social Programs to be able to help you know, individuals who are minorities to have better chances.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (09:48):
Yeah. Especially first gen kids! Because if you're first generation college, you don't really know like, "How do you do this?" You don't know the path forward. But anyway, went to graduate school at UC Berkeley, so that's what got me out here to California. And, you know, I was in that program, and that is a very research oriented program, but I found really quickly that I was more interested in clinical work than I was in an academic career research, Even though I'm an academic because I'm a professor at the Wright Institute, the Wright Institute has a Psy.D. Program, so that's very clinically focused. So in a way that's the perfect match for me, to be an academic that is more clinically focused than an academic that is just, producing scholarly research. So I went to UC Berkeley, and then I went to the Wright Institute. I was hired by the Wright Institute, right across the street from UC Berkeley. So I wound up there and I've been at the Wright since '89. So for over 30 years I've been there..
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (10:53):
Oh, wow.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (10:54):
And I, as you know, I teach family therapy. And I also teach a number of multicultural diversity classes. So I'd say those are the two main threads for me, multicultural diversity and family work. And I got interested in family work -- I think partly it feels very cultural. I remember being at UC Berkeley and we were learning about transference, right. Transference relationship and counter transference, and a part of me inside felt like, I don't know about this. Okay, I mean, I understood it intellectually. But I was, at Berkeley, very -- coming from Spelman, which was a more African American environment, UC Berkeley, which is a predominantly white institution -- I just didn't quite believe that I would have this transference idea, with a white therapist. Now, I think you can have a transference, but back then I was thinking, "What? What about people's families?" I mean, I'm much more influenced by my own family. So I always had that sort of sense that people's families were really important to them. And I come from a very large family. I'm from Boston, but I'm from a very large extended African-American family. We're like a big clan.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (12:22):
Now question about the transference. Are you meaning the idea, like the therapist is this kind of blank slate and that what is there is only projected by the client? And thinking about, if you were working with a white therapist that there would be-- there's so much more in the context than just a blank slate?
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (12:40):
That's right. I did not believe that blank slate business. I was like looking at these folks saying, "Okay, I hear what you're saying. Are you aware of your whiteness or your gender or your social class?" I mean, because I'm not from this world. I'm first generation college, so all this-- you therapist person do not look like a blank slate to me. So, I just didn't quite believe that. And I was much more taken with the idea that people carry their families with them and they're influenced by their families, and those relationships are enduring and are very influential.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (13:19):
I had a similar experience, and that's what really, in the beginning essentially attracted me to narrative therapy because the context, and even -- of course when there's two different cultures or two different genders -- but even with same culture, same genders and same sexual orientation, that there is so much that people bring to the room. And that there is not that kind of blank slate. There is really a lot about each one of us that we communicate verbally, nonverbally, and the way we look and the way we react and so on. And so that more postmodern approach of looking at the context you bring is just so important.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (13:56):
That's why I liked family therapy, because family therapy talked about the context, right?
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (13:59):
Yeah, definitely.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (14:00):
And then narrative therapy, as I'm very interested in narrative therapy because I got introduced to that. Oh, I guess that was back in the nineties. I got introduced to narrative therapy and to social justice therapy. And again, those two things, right? The social justice piece, the narrative piece about systems and context and family, those are the two things that always seem to attract me.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (14:28):
Sure.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (14:28):
I get really curious about those. I get very passionate about them. And I was invited to-- Now do you know this, that I went to Australia?
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (14:36):
No, no.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (14:38):
So I went to Australia with a group of other therapists of color. A woman named Linda Kuwatani, a man named John Provo. And... why am I forgetting... Oh gosh, his name... We have a scholarship for him at AFTNC. Rom. Rom Gochle. His name was escaping me. Rom. So Rom, Linda, John and I, we all were invited to Australia to study narrative therapy with Michael White. And we were invited to the family center in Lower Hutt, New Zealand with Kiwi Tamasese and Charles Waldegrave to study social justice therapy. So another big pivotal point. So Spelman was a big pivotal point and then going to Australia and New Zealand. Again, professionally, that really changed my whole perspective.That's what really sort of, you know--
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (15:45):
And when you were in Australia, you were going and meeting with the folks that were in the narrative work there?
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (15:51):
Well, yeah, we were at Dulwich Centre. We spent a few weeks at Dulwich. I knew I was over there for about a month. So I want to say a couple of weeks at Dulwich Centre and a couple of weeks at the family center in New Zealand. And this was, of course, when Michael White was alive. And that was an amazing experience. Michael and Cheryl. It was just an amazing experience.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (16:17):
Wow, that's great!
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (16:18):
Yeah!
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (16:19):
Now I want to take you back because you were talking about being from a large family and how families really made sense to you. And so, you kind of were thinking like, the transference didn't really seem to be kind of grabbing you and fitting, but really that idea of kind of a family, and the connection of family and your large family. Tell me more about that.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (16:40):
Well, you know, I'm from a very large family, and my family is not only large, it's very clannish. Like, you know, I have 32 first cousins.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (16:54):
Wow.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (16:55):
And I, and we all lived around the corner from each other and next door to each other. So, you know, you just spent-- my whole world was, I was immersed in my own family. So I'm very captured, you know, captured by that. What else was I gonna say about that? Maybe it'll come back to me. But yeah, I'm from a large family. And you couldn't really, you know, get away from your family, you know? Oh, the other thing, I think-- what I was gonna say is, I'm also-- my parents were divorced when I was in the eighth grade and that of course was a hard time. And it was the years right before the divorce that were like the most, you know, stressful. And my parents' divorce was you know, in the long run was amicable if you could say.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (17:49):
My father stayed in my life my whole entire life. My mother and my father were involved my entire life. But, in those years right before, I remember thinking-- I tried to be a family therapist. I actually tried to be a family therapist. But, you know, if I could -- you know, there was so much tension and stress -- if I could be good; if I would get good grades; and if I would be compliant; if I would, you know, do my chores; and if I would, you know, sort of please people and not be a problem, then that would help things, right? I thought in my, you know, adolescent mind. And so, I was trying to be a family therapist, but I didn't even know what family therapy was. Of course, I had no training and supervision. It would've really helped. So I think that was my, yeah-- I think I tried to be the family therapist in my family. I'm a middle child, and they say somewhere that middle children often are attracted to family therapy, or there are a lot of family therapy middle children. I don't know. But, research on that. But so, by the time I heard about family therapy later and I got introduced to it, I thought, "Oh my gosh, in those years I was trying to be a family therapist in my own family."
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (19:07):
Yeah, you were trying to help the system. You were trying to help kind of, yeah, have some effect on the system.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (19:13):
Right, right. And I wasn't terribly successful in my-- you know, because my family broke. So then I felt like I had this quest inside of me to figure that out. And I feel like that really fueled my interest in psychology, encouraged my pursuit. There was always something inside myself that said, "Oh gosh, if I could-- if I had this knowledge. If I could help, if I could help other family," you know? So I think that really the seed of where my--
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (19:38):
Oh, interesting.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (19:39):
--yeah, came from.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (19:40):
Yeah. I got interested in working with families and working in the shelters and teen children I was working with, where we'd worked with the kids alone, and then we'd bring the families in and it just like, a lot made sense. And so, you know, that just made sense to me. And I remember coming home over the break, I think it was during grad school or so on, with spending time with my family over the holidays. And I was just thinking, "My gosh, like, as a therapist, like, I couldn't get this family to change if I was gonna, you know, do all these things." And really just kind of realizing too that it's like so much again, about that collaborative effort to create and make that change. But I think oftentimes, you know, with anything that we're doing, whatever approach that people are doing, it's right, that interplay of our own past or our own experience and kind of trying to understand how to, you know, have that effect and so on. But yeah, that's great.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (20:32):
So, while I was at the Wright Institute No, no, before the Wright Institute, one of the practicums that I did you know, in graduate school was-- I was a practicum trainee at the Center for Family Counseling in East Oakland, where I'm now the clinical director. So I'm like, you know, a lifer. I just, when I get at an organization, I stay. I've been at the Wright Institute for over 30 years. I've been at the Center for Family Counseling for even longer than that, around 35 years. But I started at the Center for Family Counseling as a trainee, and my supervisor-- I don't know if you know Paul Guillory, but he was my supervisor, and he is into the EFT. He's a certified EFT. And Paul was my first supervisor, I think-- not my first supervisor at all, but at practicum. He was a family therapist, and he was my supervisor. He's an African American man.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (21:23):
So his influence on me was very profound because he spoke the language I spoke. Like I understood this black man talking context and family, and like, I was like, "Okay, this makes sense. I mean, you know, this other stuff was interesting, but it just didn't make as much sense to me. It didn't resonate as deeply." So I feel like Paul Guillory really you know again, opened my eyes to family therapy. I then did an internship. I did my-- an APA internship in New York at a place called Beth Israel Hospital and they had a family therapy focus. And that's why I chose that. And so I got more family therapy, of course. And so, the Center for Family Counseling, which is in East Oakland, you know, I sort of, you know, I was a practicum trainee at some point after I got my master's degree. I was hired as a staff therapist. I then was a program developer there for doing a little bit of research.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (22:24):
We had a program called the Family Enrichment Network -- FIN -- and I helped develop that program. And then at some point, the clinical director position opened up, and I took that. And so I've been there ever since. So, East Oakland, as you know, is a community with, you know, predominantly people of color -- African American and Latino people -- and that's who the Center for Family Counseling primarily serves. They have a program called De-Institutionalizing Status Offensives -- DPN Network it's called, Delinquency Prevention Network. And we're funded through Alameda County to provide services to help young people. You know, it's a diversion program to divert them from you know, they're getting into trouble in school or family issues, or-- so we do family therapy. And our-- and this is what I learned from Paul Guillory, I'll never forget.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (23:24):
That you really want the parents to be in what-- executive control of their families. Like, it's not-- you know, and I think adolescent, individual work, and child therapy all has a place. But empowering families, particularly families who are under-resourced like our families in East Oakland. And in some ways, families in East Oakland are like all families, right? They want to raise their kids and they want their kids to do well and you know, in school and in life. And they have the same pursuits as any other family, yet they have less resources, right? Underfunded schools and you know, an environment where there's a little bit you know, what they call-- they have food deserts and not as quality food and violence and-- but the families in East Oakland, I think are resilient, are strong, and are like other families, they love and care about their kids.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (24:23):
So I have all-- I always bristle when I hear that people say, "Well, these kids come from families that don't care about--" I get very-- I get very, very sort of fiercely protective because I don't think it's true. The Center for Family Counseling, that's the kind of work that we do, working with young people who have had-- who have had some, sometimes some involvement with the incarceral system and sometimes not. But if they are you know, if they've run away, or they're having over this family violence, or even family conflict and stress, school truancy, I mean, all the kinds of things that would bring a young person to our attention, we try to see them and intervene at that systemic level, taking into account, of course, family dynamics, but also cultural dynamics, right? So they're very interested in, you know, how you know they may have internalized you know things about themselves that frankly are not true. And that kind of gets into narrative work.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (25:31):
Yeah, kind of in the dominant cultural narrative. Like, kind of internalizing that to believe they aren't able, or whatever It might be.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (25:40):
They aren't able, or they're not worthy, or they-- whatever it is, yeah. So we want to interrupt some of those kinds of thoughts and-- So, a couple of years ago, a few years ago, our executive director at the time, a woman named Dina Alkhoury -- this was a few years ago -- you know, money became available for working what are called the re-entry population, right, and the people who were formerly incarcerated. And formerly incarcerated folks who are, you know, coming back into society, so to speak, need a lot of support. I mean, they need a lot of support, like around practical things like getting a driver's license and you know, getting transportation and securing housing, and, you know, they may have a family that they could seamlessly come back into and have all that kind of support.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (26:32):
They may or they may not. I mean, you know, there's a lot of diversity there within that population. So, a lot of people have been paying attention to formerly incarcerated folks and trying to help them and support them. There's an organization called Roots in East Oakland who does this really well. They provide medical care and job information and all kinds of resources to this population. So the Center for Family Counseling, we're out here in East Oakland, we're thinking, "Well, what would people need, you know from the re-entry community by way of family work?" And so the idea came to mind that you know, we think about the formerly incarcerated re-entering society -- what, how might we support them in reentering their own families? Because there's been a disruption there. And ,when someone has been locked away and away from their family there's been a disruption in the system.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (27:33):
Now-- the family system. Now, I don't want to say that everybody who is locked away, is a bad parent, or is somebody whose family's connections are all messed up. That is not necessarily true. And working with this population, that's one of the things that I've learned and that people have strengths and people have challenges, and we're always looking to help them meet their challenges and grow their strength. So, we worked with a consultant, a woman named Ann Adalist, who is really sort of nationally known for her work with formerly incarcerated family. She has a very interesting story herself. I won't go on into her story, but-- She gave us this idea, this concept that we borrowed from Ann and her her group, they called the-- oh gosh, I'm not gonna remember the name of-- like, the National Council on Formerly Incarcer-- Children's Network of Formerly Incarcerated Parents, something like that.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (28:37):
They have this notion that they use called Make, Mend, and Maintain. And I love this concept, Make, Mend, and Maintain. So, some formerly incarcerated families might be really needing to, you know, make new relationships or repair relationships. Some might need to mend those relationships, and some might be really maintaining those relationships. So, again, it's helpful to think of that because then, you know, you're not treating this population as if everyone is the same and everyone needs help or something. So anyway, we got really excited about that. And so then we started, you know, looking who could fund us. You know, we had a consultant who helped us learn all about this population, and then we modeled together, what could we do? How could we, you know, have a program for these families?
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (29:30):
And we came up with this sort of fantastical-- here's everything we want to do. We have not yet been able to do everything we want to do because we haven't had had the money for all of it, but we've piloted aspects of the program.And the part of the program we've already piloted twice now -- a smaller group, and now we have another group going on right now -- are these healing circles. So we have -- we call them healing circles -- and we have groups for three different groups going on at the same time: one for formerly incarcerated parents, one for children of formerly incarcerated parents, and one for caregivers of the formerly incarcerated parents. So when the parent was incarcerated, somebody was taking care of the kids. Families carry on and go on. And so that's the caregivers group.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (30:30):
Caregivers could be grand-parents, they could be a you know, a spouse, a, you know, a partner, they could be another family member. But somebody was holding it down, taking care of the kids, seeing about the kids, and those are the caregivers. So we want an intervention that doesn't only target the formerly incarcerated parent, but looks at the family.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (30:49):
The entire system there, and it's also true--
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (30:51):
The entire system.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (30:52):
--in, you know, many families like this they've had to bring in, you know, multi-generations to help or that kinship network to get that support during that time.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (31:01):
Yeah, yeah. So people have done the best they could, right? And now this person is re-entering, they're no longer incarcerated. And what is it like for them to re-enter their own family? To make, maintain, or mend relationships with their children and with their and with the caregivers? So we have these three separate groups that run concurrently and we just focus on themes and topics about things like stigma, you know? Like-- well, although not every family who has experienced incarceration, like I said, is you know, has terrible dynamics or, you know, there are a variety of people. And people have very good and strong relationships, but everybody has to deal with stigma. Having a parent that was incarcerated is a stigmatizing kind of a-- So how do they deal with that stigma? What has stigma sort of pushed them to do? How have they-- how can we support them in standing up to stigma? You can hear the narrative therapy focus here.That's just my influence and narrative. So yeah, so we take a theme like stigma, and across the three groups, they'll all be talking about stigma, but from different perspectives.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (32:22):
And do you bring the group together at any point?
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (32:26):
Well, that's the more money. That's the bigger group.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (32:28):
Okay. Yes. Yes.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (32:29):
That's the group that we need more money for. What we really want to do in working with families, we have this idea that we would have, we would work with individual families, then people would also do groups, and then we would work with individual fam-- the individual family again. We really would love to bring together the whole family unit.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (32:48):
Sure.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (32:48):
These three groups with the formerly incarcerated parent, formerly-- the child of the formerly incarcerated parent, and caregiver in that system -- all those people in our groups right now are not necessarily related to each other.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (33:01):
Sure, sure.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (33:03):
But if we did this with, you know, we had a little bit more money, we could have that whole family, each part of that family could be in those separate groups and then bring them together.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (33:14):
Oh, that would be really interesting. That would be great. I mean--
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (33:17):
That would be, that's our full scale pro-- that's the full scale model that we have developed, but we haven't had a chance to run--
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (33:25):
Really implement it yet.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (33:27):
Yeah. Yeah.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (33:28):
Yeah, I think that the piece, I mean-- yeah, there's so many forces kind of at work, right? That I think you keep saying too, like, you know, that, that these, you know, there's the people that aren't bad and so on. Because yes, oftentimes people are like, "Ooh, somebody went to jail. They're bad," or so on. But again, as we know, right, there's the context that plays into all of this. And that, so, you know, really beginning to, you know, understand that and looking at just, you know, even in a, I don't know, somebody really good or great, you know, like, can get into a circumstance, but everybody's gonna have that difficulty and reentry, especially with the, you know, attachment. You know, especially for the kids and losing that attachment with the parent and then attaching to grandparents or whatever it might be in that transition.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (34:13):
You know, I know one client that I was working with, her mother had suffered with drug addiction for many years, and then once she got clean, you know, then the grandmother who had raised her daughter until age 15 said, "Okay, here's your daughter back." And then just kind of stepped away. And it was such, you know, a difficult transition for everybody because, you know, the attachment to the grandparent, and the feelings of abandonment, and the trying to create this new relationship with the mother that really hadn't necessarily been there before. And you know that, yeah, when somebody's taken out of the system and then brought back in, it's not like they just kind of seamlessly pop back in and everything's, you know, big happy family.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (34:53):
Yes. Yeah. I'm a big fan of attachment theory. So we've been using a lot of concepts from the ARC model --Attachment, Regulation, and Competency -- that has influenced. Narrative always sneaks in there because that's just part of my background, but attachment is a big piece of this, right? Just the way you were, you were saying. So, yeah. So, that's what we've been up to. And it's been a terrific learn-- we're really still learning. We got some consultation from a group called RJOY, Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth. They came and taught us a lot about how to hold a healing circle and some of the components of a healing circle. So we've been influenced by them. We have a bit of a partnership with them and trying to work with them as well.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (35:44):
So, this is one of those, you know, community efforts that we are trying to both learn and collaborate with other community partners and how to bring these services to families who have struggled with incarceration. And I mean, because of systemic racism and inequity, a lot of black and brown people find themselves, you know, more involved in the incarceral system than ought to, right? So, it's a real issue within our community and those folks are really deserving, I think, of support.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (36:29):
Definitely. When I think, like you were talking about too, the under-resourced community-- the community being under-resourced, and I think also, again, all those forces -- the societal forces I mean, oppression -- that kind of hit up against. And so, yeah when somebody, of course is coming out of incarceration, it's like just another added, you know, kind of layer of all those barriers.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (36:52):
Yeah, under-resourced and overpoliced.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (36:55):
Yeah. Right? Over policed and yeah, stereotyped and, you know discrimination. I mean, it's like, not only, it's like if we-- if everybody was able to have all the same resources, the person still hitting up against all of that kind of push. And I was actually interested too, on, you know, your work, and I know you're teaching you know, your graduate students and working with clients that are multicultural and also the multicultural work you do with the training your clinicians and your practice and the work that you're all doing. I'd love to hear a little bit about that. And it was actually-- I had totally even forgot, you know, how we like, kind of really connected at that conference. I was like, as we were talking, I was like, I don't know if you recall but yeah, is okay if I share a little of this story?
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (37:47):
Yeah. I remember the story, but yeah. Sure.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (37:50):
Well I think that you know, it was-- and I, you know, I do a lot, you know, of my own work on you know cultural competency and understanding my privilege and, you know, talking about my work in-- I work with a diverse population. But I, and I remember we were hanging out at the hot tub at the conference, the AFTN Conference.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (38:13):
We always hang out at the hot tub.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (38:15):
Super laid back. We do charades, things like that. I remember I'd showed up at the APA conference, like, you know, with a t-shirt and jeans and I was like, "Oh, wait a second. This is not what--
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (38:23):
A different group!
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (38:24):
--this is not how the family therapy conference is that we have. But, we were just kind of hanging out in the hot tub and there was another group there, I think a yoga group--
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (38:32):
A yoga group, yep.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (38:33):
And it was a white woman, and she was talking about something and something about like, "Oh yeah, and the, you know, and people, you know, used to say the N word in the past." And she used the full word and so on. And I was like, I think both of us just kind of are like, got stopped for a moment. And I was like, I was like, "Whoa, like, that's not okay." I was like, "But wait, do I say something here?" I was like, "Wait a second, you know, like Veronique can speak up for herself. I don't want to be kind of a white person saying like, 'that's not--'." And then, you know, and you, I think did end up saying something. Anyways, just thinking about like, after that. And then we, you know, had a whole conversation around afterwards and just how, even though despite a lot of our, you know, personal experience and training and thinking about culture and so on, and just like when instances like that happen, like kind of it all gets spun around.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (39:26):
Well, you know, it-- we get sideswiped. I mean, whenever something happens to me, like, you know, a racial microaggression, or this case might have been a macroaggression--
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (39:34):
I was gonna say, that's a definitely macro.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (39:37):
Yeah. You know, you get kind of like, "Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoah okay, what's happening here?" And you know, depending on the day, I remember thinking very much like, "I don't know this woman and she's not worth my time to engage in this." The best thing that came out of that, for me, was you and I getting to talk about it. You and I are colleagues, we're friends. I'm invested in our relationship professionally, you know? And so that made-- you and I taking a deep dive and talking about that was really useful. I felt very supported. I mean, we were both I mean, I, and we were both exposed, you know? And so the-- I and those kind of decisions, you just make moment to moment, right? So, maybe another time I would've said something. I don't know. But I did not feel moved at all to engage this woman further, to school her, to do anything. I was like, "Oh, okay lady, I'm-- I really, I was just trying to be in the hot tub here, enjoying myself. And then you're bringing all this in." So I didn't choose to at that moment, and maybe another moment I would've made a different choice, but it certainly opened up a whole depth of conversation for you and I to talk about. And that was great. I mean, that, you know--
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (40:57):
And I think kind of applying that to therapists and working with culture and cultural differences in the room with their clients. And just having some of those conversations or having missteps and, you know, talking about those and that I think sometimes myself, even as a white male, cisgender, heterosexual, you know, therapist you know, it ends up-- sometimes I think like, there's a right way to do this or to talk about culture or to work in this way. And I don't know what your thoughts are on that. I mean I think that part that I am always trying to be aware of my culture and what I'm bringing and thinking about both the kind of the emic, you know, aspect and the etic, you know, kind of the larger, you know, cultural differences and then also the family's culture. Yeah, your thoughts on kind of a therapist and bringing that work and kind of understanding into their work with their clients.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (41:58):
Yeah. I think there's lots of right ways of doing it and just a few really bad, awful ways.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (42:04):
Yeah. Yeah.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (42:05):
Yeah, I think we-- all of us get caught up in wanting to do the right thing and in the right way. We're therapists, we want to help people, support people. And it's, you know, it's hard when you misstep or when you harm. I mean, it's just like it-- none of us are in it for that. So I think that always you know, sort of takes us aback when we become aware that we've done some harm as it should. I mean, I'm really glad that people are so pained by their own, you know, that's a good sign, right?
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (42:43):
Yeah.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (42:43):
I think when people move away from that, like, "Oh, you know, that this person's oversensitive," or they are more oblivious to the harm that they've done, that's more problematic. To me it's not so much the harm that happens, it's what happens after that. So any of us can hurt one another's feelings. It could be around cultural things, it could be around something else. We can step on each other's toes, hurt each other's feelings. And we will. I mean, we're human beings and we are going to disappoint, not show up properly, not support in the way the person needed. That's like part of the human condition. So that I take as a given, it's what comes after that.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (43:24):
Yeah.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (43:25):
Like once you are made aware, or once you become aware of some harm that you-- what is it that you do? You know, do you double down and stand your ground, or just defend yourself or, you know, or are you, do you become a little bit more curious about, "Oh my gosh, let me-- I really want to understand this more and I want to see what I did." Because I think people can go from one extreme to the other. Some people are sort of like you know, like, "I did nothing wrong and this was my intention," and, you know, all that. Or people who on the other side, "Oh, I'm so sorry. Oh my God." I actually think that's problematic too, when people are sort of overly afraid and overly conciliatory and-- You know, there's something about that that is not very genuine.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (44:15):
I'm always looking for that kind of balance of being open to, "Okay, what harm have I done? And I want to really understand this." And sometimes that other person who you've harmed is up for really explaining or telling that to you. And sometimes frankly, they're not, you know what I mean? Like, "Okay, go learn it somewhere else." But any way that it happens for the person who's in that position of having committed harm, it is very important to try your best to understand. And if you have a framework for doing this before the harm, then you're like a few steps ahead of the game. So right at the Wright Institute where I teach something called Multicultural Clinical Awareness, and I teach another class called Sociocultural Issues in Psychology.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (45:03):
And those classes we're really trying to sensitize people. Help people develop a stance more of humility, so that when they inevitably make these mistakes that they will make, that we will all make because we're humans, they then have some way to understand that. Again, they don't have to necessarily overly burden the person who they've committed the harm to, but they can then say, "Oh gosh, let me--" You know, if you have some sense of where you hold privilege and you hear people talking a lot about you know, "I hold privilege here. Why are people talking about this?" Well, because if you know where you hold privilege, then you are more aware of where your blind spots may be. And I'm hesitating to say "blind spots" because I'm trying to think of another word, because that's such ableist language. Not, not to just be super, super politically correct. Where your vision is obscured or whatever you, however you want to say it. But you're not able to be as aware in the places where you are privileged, you know, so you should--
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (46:10):
Well, I mean, and part is the definition of privilege.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (46:13):
That's the, is the definition!
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (46:15):
Because I know, like when I was at the AFTA conferences and they had these kind of discussion circles towards the end about, you know, experiences that people might have had in microaggression, so on or macroaggression, and it was a witnessing circle. Like, you know, I just kept being reminded of my own privilege of really how much that I was not even aware of or noticing or so on of-- and I mean, I think that is such a huge piece. So the more aware, of course, like you're saying, you can be of those blind spots, or sorry, the, you know, the privilege essentially, better. But ultimately like yeah the person won't necessarily be always be able to be aware. The way I think about it too is that I need to be attuned. And even, and when I do make a misstep or so on, oftentimes "I'll say, I really want you to let me know, but you're, you know, it's not your job to, you know, educate me or anything like that. Like, it's my job to be aware, to understand and so on. But I do, you know, do want the feedback." And but really it's not-- the onus is not on the other person. It's really--
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (47:18):
Yeah. The onus is not on the other person, and you can still invite them, you know what I mean? Like, "If you're feeling up to it, please let me know. You're not feeling up to it. You don't feel like it, you don't want--" like me with the yoga lady, I just didn't want to. I just wasn't available to her for that. So I like to invite people to do that, but they don't have to. So it's a both/and.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (47:38):
Definitely. Yes, totally.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (47:39):
You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (47:41):
Yeah. Definitely.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (47:42):
Because you do want people to be able to speak up for themselves, to be able to say, you know, whatever they need to say. So it's not-- I again, I'm always leery of going in from one extreme to the other.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (47:54):
Yeah, definitely.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (47:56):
Yeah.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (47:56):
Well, and I think too that the-- I think the aspect also of, like you were saying, that humility and like, I like, you know I think, you know, Becky Pizer also, she was, you know what, telling me a little bit more about the dialogue recently about intention versus impact. And I think that's so important, that piece, because oftentimes people say, "Well, I didn't mean it that way," or, "I didn't--" you know, and it's really the impact is the person's valid experience. And really being able to hear and listen to that and be able to hold that, whether it be you know, culturally kind of you know, situated or even, I mean, this happens in many couples, many families and relationships and so on, that we don't mean to make the other person feel bad or to so on, but it may land that way. And so, but--
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (48:47):
I want to jump in here because I think intent is also important. Again, I don't think it's one or the other, right? So I-- Becky is a dear friend that we have in common, and she teaches the multicultural awareness class. We teach it together at The Wright. Yeah. Yeah. I dunno if you knew that. But anyway, Becky and I, we see each other quite a lot. So this whole idea of intent versus impact. I remember when I first learned that concept too, I said, "This is terrific," right? You know, it doesn't-- it's not about the intent, it is about the impact. How did this land? What was the consequences? What is the effect? Let's pay attention to that. And so we got very excited, all of us, paying attention to impact. But now I think we've let go of the idea of intent, and I think intent is important. I mean, if somebody does intentionally--
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (49:36):
Totally, totally.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (49:37):
I don't give an F about you and-- that, that makes a difference. So I feel like intent and impact are both important. They're not the same thing, and we should understand them differently. But in our zest to, you know, to uphold impact, I think we have acted as if intent makes no difference. And I feel like it does make a difference. And I'm gonna stand out here on a limb maybe by myself and say that because I know you know, I-- the students, we have very healthy, you know, conversations of-- around different ideas. And so I'm gonna stand up for both intent and impact.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (50:18):
Well, I think too, with intent, right? I mean like intent versus impact. If the intent is to like hurt, then that is having an impact, right? That's-- there's no mismatch there. And I think though, that too, as you're talking about, like, you know, the other piece of like not going too far the other way of like, you know you know, validating, but also kind of, you know not also looking at the context, because I think, you know, when I do have that come up with clients, -- whether it be culturally, whether it be, you know, working with a climate trauma or something like that, where it, you know -- that also, you know, kind of really understanding, validating and kind of really, you know, honoring that and, and kind of acknowledging and repairing. And then also, you know, asking if I can also share part of what my own thoughts or so on might be in a way to just again, understand a little bit more, particularly if we have an ongoing working relationship, but also kind of caveating that this is not a defense, or this is not kind of saying what I did was okay, or dismissing or things like that.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (51:22):
Right? Yeah.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (51:22):
And oftentimes helps us grow together. But, also sometimes I think people get so intent on making their intent known because they, you know-- it's so important to them to not be seen as somebody who could be hurtful or so on, and things like that. Then it ends up being kind of more for themselves than necessarily for their clients and really kind of just like--
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (51:46):
More for yourself. But that is, so-- that's human too, right? I mean, to save-- to want to save face, to be seen as a good person, those are normal human qualities, I think shared by every one of us. So I don't think that's a bad thing, but when that takes-- when that is privileged in that sense of the word, when that is the only part that is-- that you are sort of supporting or after then that's not, you know, that's not a good thing. But I think all of us, all of us -- and this is what I teach at The Wright, and, you know, it's not always a popular thing -- but we all have to look at our privilege. So I'm an African American woman. Where are the areas where I hold privilege around being cisgender, woman.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (52:38):
Now of course there's a lot of sort of oppression and still targeted being targeted as a woman. There's plenty of sexism. Sexism is alive and well, is what I want to say. But at the same time, to have the privilege of having a gender identity that matches the inside and the outside. Right? That's a privilege. You know you know, being part of the dominant religious majority. I'm not even a particularly religious person, but I was, you know, raised and grew up Christian. And that is an area where I hold privilege. Certainly I'm educated, I'm first gen, but I'm educated nevertheless. And so I hold privilege there and around sexual orientation. And so there's just a lot of places where I hold privilege and it's really, really, really important when you have a subjugated identity to also be flexible enough, humble enough to look at the areas where you hold privilege.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (53:38):
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, and I think too, that part, that's also part of the, I think the identity development, right? Of kind of, you know, of understanding one's subjugation and also then, you know, kind of integrating one's both subjugation and one's privilege together.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (53:58):
Yeah. That's what we try-- that's what we're trying to teach at The Wright Institute. And those are really-- those kinds of ideas and being able to hold those things -- you know, not only intellectually, but emotionally -- you know, takes a lot of psychological maturity. Takes a lot of working through it. Takes a lot of internal work. And, so yeah, yeah.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (54:19):
Definitely. Well, hey, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. You know, I always love reconnecting with you and talking, and it's always such wonderful conversation, so really appreciate it.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (54:32):
You are welcome. It was like hanging out with a friend.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (54:35):
Great. Well thanks a lot. Take care.
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. (54:38):
Alright then.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (54:39):
Bye.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (54:40):
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