Anti-Racism in Group Psychotherapy

In this episode, Dr. Marcia Nickow talks about anti-racism, DEI, and white privilege.

Marcia shares how her upbringing as the child of Holocaust survivors influenced her interest in these topics. She discusses how she approaches racially charged issues in therapeutic contexts, including group therapy and clinician DEI groups. She also talks about what it is to be a white-presenting clinician in DEI spaces.

We talk through difficult questions: What does it mean to acknowledge white privilege as someone who has fair skin, but whose life story and history don’t align with the archetype of the white oppressor? We also touch on the Israel–Gaza war, and how each of us relate to it as people who hold a Jewish identity.

If you’re someone who is sensitive to injustice and the suffering in the world around you, you will likely have strong reactions while listening. Those reactions are valuable, and I want to make space for meaningful conversation around them.

Because of this, I’d like to begin recording reaction episodes. These will be open to both clinicians and non-clinicians and will focus on exploring listener reactions to concepts from prior episodes.

Two points to note:

1. We will be exploring your personal story as it relates to the topic, rather than debating the truth or legitimacy of particular positions. For example, if you are reacting to something that I said in this episode, rather than each of us bringing in proof and data to support our own positions, my goal is to understand your story and the values, life experiences and emotions that are contained within your reaction.

2. To keep this a safe space, one of my guiding principles is: talk to me, not about me. This applies to myself and my guests. If you are responding to a point made by a prior guest who is not present, we’ll extract the concept you are reacting to and explore your response to that concept rather than critiquing the individual guest.

Marcia Nickow, Psy.D, CADC, CGP, is a clinical psychologist and group psychotherapist specializing in treating multi-generational legacies of trauma and addiction. She designed and implemented an intensive group psychotherapy program in her private practice and leads 16 weekly ongoing process groups: men’s, women’s, multigender, professionals, artists/writers, and clinical supervision groups. She also co-leads couples’ groups.

Her clinical interests include manifestations of racial and historical trauma; legacies of family and community trauma and healing; thriving after trauma; pedagogies of oppression; and anti-racist clinical practice.

Marcia serves as an organizational and clinical consultant at a Residential and Outpatient Treatment Center where she co-leads supervision groups for clinicians and staff of color. Marcia has presented nationally and internationally on trauma (complex, intergenerational, historical, collective); the full spectrum of addictions and eating disorders; de-colonizing approaches to treatment; group dynamics and group processes; and, more recently, on collective trauma including sequelae of COVID-19, racial violence, and mass shooting pandemics.

Marcia has co-presented intensive experiential workshops on the link between intergenerational addiction and historical trauma at American Group Psychotherapy Association conferences and at Haymarket House in Chicago.

I met Dr. Marcia nearly a decade ago, soon after completing my undergraduate in psychology and am grateful to consider her a teacher and mentor.

Resources mentioned in episode:

The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond https://pisab.org/

My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies book by Resmaa Menakem

To connect with Marcia, visit https://marcianickow.com/

To connect with Elka, visit https://elkacubacub.com/ and https://www.psychologytoday.com/profile/1155490

If you would like to be interviewed in a future episode, please complete this form: https://forms.gle/rzCYiAwUNtWX6AFu9