So, What’s Wrong with Traditional Psychotherapy?
Psychotherapy has helped countless individuals navigate trauma, mental health challenges, and life’s complexities. Yet, as effective as it can be, traditional psychotherapy often falls short of addressing the broader systemic, relational, and cultural factors that shape our well-being. Grounded in Western frameworks, it tends to view trauma and healing through a lens of individual pathology, neglecting the interconnected realities of relationships, community, and systemic oppression.
This isn’t to dismiss the importance of psychotherapy but to question whether its traditional forms are enough. By expanding our understanding of trauma and healing, we can move toward approaches that honour the complexity of lived experience and the systems in which we exist.
The Limitations of the Individual Focus
Traditional psychotherapy often operates within the dominant ontology, framing trauma as an issue that resides within the individual. This perspective assumes that healing is a personal responsibility, focusing on “fixing” the individual without addressing the relational and systemic forces that contribute to their suffering.
For example, someone experiencing burnout might be taught coping mechanisms like mindfulness or time management. While these tools can be helpful, they don’t address the underlying systemic issues—like exploitative workplace cultures or structural inequities—that are driving the burnout in the first place.
This narrow focus risks isolating individuals in their struggles, reinforcing the idea that their pain is a personal failing rather than a symptom of systemic harm.
Cultural and Historical Blind Spots
Traditional psychotherapy has its roots in Western, colonial frameworks that prioritize individualism, rationality, and control. These frameworks often dismiss or pathologize cultural practices, relational ways of knowing, and Indigenous approaches to healing.
For instance, many non-Western cultures view healing as a communal process, involving rituals, storytelling, and connection to the land. Traditional psychotherapy, with its emphasis on privacy and individual sessions, can inadvertently erase these practices, perpetuating a colonial mindset that prioritizes Western norms over diverse ways of being and knowing.
What’s Missing: Systemic and Relational Perspectives
Healing isn’t just about what happens within an individual’s mind or body—it’s about repairing relationships and addressing systemic harm. Trauma often reflects ruptures in relationality, whether that’s disconnection from family, community, or the land.
Traditional psychotherapy rarely considers these dimensions, focusing instead on individual symptoms like anxiety or depression. A more holistic approach would address the broader context, asking questions like:
How has systemic oppression shaped this person’s experience?
What relational wounds need to be repaired for true healing to occur?
How can community and collective care play a role in their recovery?
Toward Relational and Decolonial Healing
To move beyond the limitations of traditional psychotherapy, we need approaches that are relational, systemic, and decolonial. These methods recognize that trauma doesn’t exist in a vacuum—it’s shaped by histories, systems, and relationships.
Relational approaches centre connection, emphasizing the importance of community, mutual care, and interdependence. Decolonial frameworks challenge the erasure of Indigenous and cultural ways of healing, bringing forth practices that honour diversity, reciprocity, and respect for the land.
By integrating these perspectives, we can create spaces for healing that address not just the individual but the systems and relationships that shape their lives.
An Invitation
What if healing wasn’t just about fixing what’s broken within you but about repairing the connections that sustain you? How might traditional psychotherapy change if it embraced relational and systemic perspectives?
I invite you to reflect on how traditional frameworks of healing have shaped your understanding of trauma and to consider what a more relational and decolonial approach might look like in your life. Together, we can re-imagine healing as a process of connection, care, and transformation—not just for individuals, but for communities and systems as well.
