Our Values
We believe that personal change is a political endeavor. We know change cannot occur in the therapy room alone, and that individual commitment and new behavioral practices outside of therapy are required to experience meaningful change long-term. However, we also recognize that commitment and practice may be difficult to sustain without a change in our political systems, communities and cultural centers where we live, work, and heal. Racism is real. Transphobia is real. Islamophobia and antisemitism are real. The Covid pandemic is real and ongoing. Disabled and fat bodies are not yet valued and protected in many spaces. The therapeutic process will include an ongoing power analysis examining the ways our bodies, identities, and experiences are often targeted, blamed, and used against us to deter growth and change. Tandem Columbus commits to creating a world where rest is normal and resilience is unnecessary. We will advocate for institutional change in our communities to help ease and sustain the progress made in the therapy room.
Personal is Political
We believe in centering personal strengths rather than individual shortcomings, and will apply an anti-oppression lens to help identify and understand those strengths that have been overlooked, misunderstood, and undervalued. We believe that most clinical issues are a consequence of the broader social context, and that mental health symptoms can be a reaction to the absence of nurturance and safety in those environments. We also recognize that mental health symptoms can be exacerbated by learned and historically important survival strategies that may no longer be serving us. The therapeutic process may include integrating personal strengths and developing new survival strategies that will help us to live more authentically and wholeheartedly.
Strengths-based
We believe in accountability and a goal-oriented process. As such, we will help define and co-develop realistic, sustainable goals in therapy that will ensure we are working toward the same desired outcome. The goals may change throughout the process, but a shared vision will be maintained throughout to ensure our professional and ethical accountability to you. Ultimately, as therapists, we endeavor to work ourselves out of a job by co-developing goals that will support interdependence, value-based autonomy, and access to pleasure. Similarly, as an organization, we value transparent action and endeavor to align our organizational growth and decision-making with goals that reflect our values.
Goal-Oriented
We believe in interdependence and the liberation of people and bodies through intentional relationship. We view therapy itself as social justice work, and believe the therapeutic relationship can be a space to build collective liberation and access for us all. We understand true liberation can only occur in relationships based on mutual accountability, trust, and acknowledgement of history, bias, and shared experience. Centering the relationship, we will help you harness your own individual power and personal expertise, while respecting your concern; change of mind; and your questions. We will view ourselves as a resource with therapeutic tools rather than experts who require diagnosis, adherence, and control. We will endeavor to be knowledgeable and aware of our own values, biases, and experiences, and will be accountable for the ways we individually perpetuate systems of power and privilege that sustain a culture of supremacy. As an organization and individual practitioners, we will engage in recurring reflection to better understand the ways power, control, and culture are impacting the therapeutic process and our relationships in and outside of this organization.
Egalitarian Relationships
We believe in the value of difference, and recognize the unique wholeness of each individual. We do not believe there is one 'right' way of facilitating or engaging in therapy. We recognize each person brings life experience and expertise that can help guide the therapeutic process. We additionally recognize that all of us are balancing multiple identities (e.g. woman, non-binary, husband, survivor, Central American, Black, Indigenous, educator, sex-worker, queer, Muslim, artist, activist) and that these identities are a gift to our communities, organizations, and the process of therapy itself. We understand that each of these identities may produce sources of strength and vulnerability at different times or in varying contexts, and that our individual identity constellation reflects unique experiences that must be validated and explored with tenderness and respect.
Respect for Multiple Truths & Diverse Perspectives
We believe individual, familial, organizational, and community problems often arise as a result of trauma. We know individual and community trauma can be rooted in oppression that may exacerbate shame and reinforce coping mechanisms that further disconnect people from their bodies and relationships. As an organization, we acknowledge the ways the mental health industry itself has exacerbated human oppression through policy, ethics, research, procedure, protocol, training, supervision, and direct clinical service. We additionally acknowledge the appropriation of spiritual tools and healing practices by the mental health industry from marginalized communities across the globe, and the industry’s use of supremacist ideology to validate a culture of “healthism”, hospitalization, and diagnosis. We recognize how this history and our own provider complicity has traumatized communities, destroyed and appropriated cultural knowledge, and isolated individuals from safe support networks. For this reason, we do not shy away from politicizing your therapy. We believe it is our clinical and ethical obligation to identify experiences of oppression, intervene against the oppression of others, and advocate for the replacement of oppressive systems and institutions in order to heal, grow, and live more authentically. We will endeavor to illuminate the historical contributions to the counseling profession via research, theory, and carework by black, brown, and indigenous communities; trans women; queer folx; people with disabilities; fat, scarred, or medicalized bodies; and those people who have been labeled as ‘crazy’ or ‘mad’. Whenever it is possible, we will identify and recognize those who influence our work and help us to grow.
