Women of Color

Women of Color and Alternative Mental Health Therapies

A growing number of women of color are seeking alternative mental health services to help cope with stress and other recurrent struggles in their lives more effectively. Many of these women are now utilizing hypnotherapy, breathwork, and reiki as means of effective therapeutic intervention minus psychiatric labels and medications.

One of them is "Maya," a 36 year-old African American woman. Among many things, Maya is a single mom of two pre-teens, and a lawyer. In the past, Maya sought treatment from a psychiatrist and was diagnosed with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). She had been an incest survivor since age 8 and experienced recurrent nightmares, flashbacks, and anxiety attacks. Maya also had difficulty maintaining relationships with men as a result of her childhood trauma. Years of intensive talk therapy and anti-anxiety medication led Maya to see very little improvement in her recovery, until a friend recommended that she try hypnotherapy.

Maya says, "At first, I was skeptical about hypnosis and what it could do for me. But I was frustrated. I felt like I was hitting a wall with my therapist and that she didn't really understand where I was coming from. This had been the eighth therapist I had been to, and I was beginning to feel like talking about my symptoms and my past was beating a dead horse. When was I going to get over it? I just wanted to feel better and stop the panic attacks. . . "

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Words to live by

Poverty is an act of love and liberation. It has a redemptive value. If the ultimate cause of human exploitation and alienation is selfishness, the deepest reason for voluntary poverty is love of neighbor. Christian poverty has meaning only as a commitment of solidarity with the poor, with those who suffer misery and injustice. The commitment is to witness to the evil which as resulted from sin and is a breach of communion. It is not a question of idealizing poverty, but rather of taking it on as it is-an evil-to protest against it and to struggle to abolish it. As Ricoeur says, you cannot really be with the poor unless you are struggling against poverty. Because of this solidarity- which manifest itself in specific action, a style of life, a break with one%u2019s social class- one can also help the poor and exploitated to become aware of their exploitation and seek liberation from it. Christian poverty, and expression of love, is solidarity with the poor and is a protest against poverty. (Fn46) This is the concrete, contemporary meaning of the witness of poverty. It is a poverty lived not for its own sake, but rather as an authentic imitation of Christ; it is a poverty which means taking on the sinful human condition to liberate humankind from sin and all its consequences.

— Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation