Anti-Oppressive Practice
Anti-oppressive practice is a framework adopted by many helping professionals to identify and dismantle the various barriers which create inequalities, oppression and social exclusion. Central to anti-oppressive practice is the recognition and active combatting of power dynamics: the social, systemic and cultural contexts and prejudices within which we navigate our lived experience, how these power dynamics shape our perceptions and our personal truth, and how these truths emerge within therapeutic relationships. These often implicitly conditioned power dynamics need to be named to bring them into conscious awareness. However, anti-oppressive practice may not always be something you’re explicitly aware of as a client, but you will likely feel when a practitioner embodies its principles as they are highly relational and support the cultivation of safe spaces – spaces where you can show up in all your humanity without judgement.
How does anti-oppressive practice inform the therapeutic relationship?
Anti-oppressive practice is not only about the therapist recognising the client’s personal context – the therapist must be attuned to their own. Just as your perceptions are shaped by the systems, culture and personal barriers you have been exposed to, mine have, too. My sensitivity to both your and my own contexts inhibits the very human tendency to project expectations, standards or emotional responses and honours the truth of your lived experience.
Therapist Myira Khan has deepened the principles of anti-oppressive practice in her brilliant framework, Working Within Diversity, which I follow closely. Deconstructing the implicit assumptions of the concept of “inclusion”, a central tenet of Working Within Diversity is that, as two fellow humans, I am not your “normative” therapist working with the diversity you bring to sessions and endeavouring to include you in my world – instead I arrive with the knowing that collectively we, client and therapist, are diverse and your world and my world are intersecting within the therapeutic space. Your identity, attributes and lived experiences may differ from my own; likewise, my identity, attributes and lived experiences may differ from yours. One perspective does not supersede the other and, whilst I likely have knowledge and skills that allow me to guide and contribute to your understanding, growth and healing, my lived perspective certainly holds no hierarchy over yours. I aim always to offer openness, recognising that how you relate to any given challenge or circumstance is exactly that – how you relate to it. My role is not to help you relate to things as I do, but to support you in discerning what is no longer serving you and to discover ways in which you can relate to what is that feel healthy, balanced and secure for you.
How does anti-oppressive practice inform equine facilitated therapy?
Anti-oppressive principles apply whether we are working together online or in-person alongside the horses. Tragically, in our culture oppression is engrained and normalised in many human-animal interactions; an emphasis on exerting dominance and control are particularly prevalent in the equestrian world. Whips and ropes are commonplace, force or threat of force a normalised means of manipulating horses’ bodies and minds to perform in accordance with behavioural standards dictated by the human wielding it. A need for safety and respect are often used as justification for subjugating the horse’s expression of their needs. So many of these standards violate the horse’s autonomy and mirror the very systems anti-oppressive practice seeks to counter. Oppression does not only exist in systems external to us; our experiences manifest in our nervous systems, as do our counter-actions. For our work with the horses to be healing, every aspect of my equine facilitated practice – including my training methods and the language I use to describe horses and their behaviour – is shaped through an anti-oppressive lens.
Windrose horses are able to express their innate behaviours throughout our therapeutic sessions. We attentively respond to their behaviour and emotional state; we do not control or coerce them.
The wisdom within
So how does anti-oppressive practice manifest? It materialises in culturally attuned therapy and the levelling of the therapeutic power dynamic: the foundation upon which the pillars of agency, trust and safety are built which in turn fortify empowerment and self-determination. It is revealed in therapists who are committed to lifelong learning, sustained curiosity, the courage to challenge the origins of Western therapeutic paradigms and who possess the humility to know that their clients are the specialists of their lived experience. It manifests in clients who are validated and retain or regain their autonomy over their own healing whilst recognising their distress is not their individual failing but an understandable response to the systemic and cultural biases they are forced to function within. Even if you feel bewildered in your suffering, I maintain that you are the expert of your internal world. Even if you feel terribly lost and isolated, I place my trust in your inner wisdom. Because I know, whether it has been quieted to a barely perceptible whisper, or amplified to a desperate scream, wisdom is held in your body. And when systems of oppression have contributed to your wounding, distorted your beliefs about your value in the world or forced you to suppress aspects of your identity, your personal wisdom will always guide you back to yourself: the you that is embodied, residing in your very tissues, whose authenticity cannot be denied.
References
Working Within Diversity: A Reflective Guide to Anti-Oppressive Practice by Myira Khan
Local Government Association Research in Practice for Adults: Anti-Oppressive Practice Tool