Why “Respectability” is Harmful in Therapy 

Our unconscious brain is impacted by our experiences with racial categories and social class structures.

Source: Purchased by the author, Lyrica Fils-Aime

Therapists, like anyone else, have beliefs about education, working hard, raising children, criminal justice, and social policies. We all enforce them in our personal lives, perhaps via advice to a friend or a nephew. These beliefs can enter therapy without the intention of causing harm.

We all adopt, for example, certain etiquette for the dinner table, workplace, and communication. Therapists who are working towards anti-oppression and anti-racism are not shielded from incorporating so-called "respectability politics" in their practice. Even if we strive to be the kind of people who are released from those norms, there are things we can think of that are unacceptable in those settings.

Respectability or respectability politics is a belief that the more respectable or decent one is, the more deserving of leniency or regard they are. A person who abides by the social rules of a class system can be found less deserving of a punishment or rule than a person who does not abide by the explicit or implicit rules. The more in line with dominant values—in other words, the more professional or respectable a person is conducting themselves—the more power they have.

A person who speaks more “professionally,” for example, could likely get away with making an error in their writing while a person who participates in non-dominant cultural language and accents is much more likely to be seen as “unprofessional.” This can be African American Vernacular English, for instance, or having an accent from another geographical location (such as, within the U.S., having a New York accent vs. a Southern accent vs. a California accent; or outside of it, United States vs. Canadian vs. Gambian vs. Filipinx). There are accents we implicitly deem to be higher on the social status totem pole and those that we unconsciously deem less intelligent.

Many therapists believe we can be open to different ways of speaking, especially with clients. We say “The client is the expert” and value open-mindedness as a clinical virtue. We call it cultural competence. But the truth is that many of us implicitly hold these respectability ideals in our heads towards clients—including, often, BIPoC and/or LGBTQ clinicians. Our own experiences impact what we think is acceptable and what is not.

Reina, a client I have been seeing for two years, often spoke about how her family was making comments about how different she was becoming from them. She was the only one of her siblings to graduate from college and work a city job. She was a vegan who wanted to get a graduate degree.

One day in a therapy session, she talked about a big fight with her sister about their parenting styles. We discussed how respectability politics played into her beliefs about the social class she was entering due to her job, new apartment building, and interests. These experiences were now intersecting:

• Her decision to parent her daughter without the yelling or physical punishments that she experienced as a child.
• Her relationship with her sister and their disagreements about parenting their children.
• Her upbringing in foster care and with parents who used substances.
• Her knowledge of navigating city systems.

As a clinician, I had to be careful with my quickness to agree with her parenting style, as my countertransference is impacted by her experiences. I had to be aware of my own cultural and socio-economic expectations for clients and for myself. I named respectability politics for her, we defined it, and together we examined its relationship in her situation. She felt stronger with language to describe the dynamic. I acknowledged my implicit encouragement to meet my hopes and expectations for her life. I knew I was encouraging her, without using my words to do so, to move closer towards my social status.

Clinicians want therapy rooms to provide an escape from respectability ideals, but also have their own experiences of being brought into or excluded from varying socioeconomic statuses. Each therapist has developed their standards and expectations for themselves and the people in their racial category—and this impacts what we accept and do not accept in therapy. We accept these experiences explicitly and implicitly, through our questioning and our non-verbal reactions.

We have to always be looking at our identities in order to recognize our beliefs. Asking ourselves these questions can help:

• What respectability ideal am I enforcing by encouraging a client to _______?
• What respectability ideals do I hold for myself but not for my clients?
• What respectability ideals do I expect clients to enter the therapeutic space already participating in?