Therapist Spotlight Part 1: Colette Brown

What inspired you to pursue a career as a therapist?

I was working with students as a public school teacher for a really long time.  A lot of my students were first- or second-generation, or very recent immigrants. They were very poor.  And many of them were coming from cultural reference points where their emotional and mental and psychological struggles were seen as character flaws or moral failings.  The students were seen as being disobedient or difficult, or, in some cases, demon-possessed.  

And so working with them, I found myself becoming a much more holistic teacher.  I would ask them about their days.  I would ask them about their beliefs and their thoughts, you know, how they were feeling...I started to realize that teaching them to love literature was one thing.  But I found that my lessons about literature were in many cases analogies my students could carry outside the classroom and apply to their lives. They could use literature to develop themselves ethically, morally, spiritually, emotionally.  

Then I started working as an academic advisor.  I would start with a group of kids in their freshman year and see them all the way through their senior year. I got to know these kids very well.  I got to know their families and their stories, their triumphs and, in many cases, their tragedies.  I was a constant for them, and I started to find that I was holding their stories with me.  I would say, "You know, you may not remember this, but you actually dealt with this issue back in your freshman year."  In holding their stories, I started sharing insight into their narratives.  

This was exciting, but I realized I needed more training.  I had good instincts, but I wanted to work more deeply with young people and their families.  So I left teaching and went to graduate school to become a clinical social worker.  And here I am.

What's a typical session like with you?

I tend to introduce myself. If there's anything about me that should be disclosed, I usually disclose it.  If I'm working with a family, I disclose that I have a family.  If I'm working with a couple, I disclose that I am divorced. I do think that a little bit of self-disclosure goes a long way with building that therapeutic rapport.  

And I disclose a bit more since Covid, now that much of psychotherapy has gone virtual. I mean, I'm talking to you now from my bedroom! [laughter] This is my home.  And I'm in your home.  So, to some extent, Covid has made all of us disclose a bit more of ourselves to service the trust that is needed.  But, I'm a bit of an extrovert, so even when I was in the office with clients, I was comfortable with the questions that they would ask about me.  

Also, for some clients, I am the first person of color they've ever seen in this forum—in this role and in this therapeutic setting.  Plus, a lot of my clients want to talk about race, particularly those who are struggling with issues of racial identity.  They want to talk about it in an incredibly open and transparent way.  I think this is something that has become a feature of what I do.  I do ask my clients about race very explicitly, and it's always interesting what happens when they answer that question. "How do you racially identify?"

Yes, there's greater curiosity and greater imperative to talk about race and identity. What's that been like for you and your clients?

It has been fascinating.  When I was in the office, race would come up specifically with clients who identified as people of color—whether they were talking about some microaggression at work or in their personal lives.  But after Memorial Day—after George Floyd's death—race has been a central issue for me and my clients.  Both for clients who identify as people of color, or for clients who identify as ethnic white—or who identify as white, non-ethnic—it is something that we are desperate to talk about to some extent.  It's in the middle of the dining room table right now, so I just bring it up to see where we are at.  

These conversations about race, identity, and location are also a part of your training, are they not?

I bring these issues up because it is part of my training.  I went to Hunter College for my MSW and then I went to Ackerman for training in Family Therapy.  Social location is central to those curricula, and it is very central to my practice.  I think in terms of systems, and I very much think in terms of how various systems overlap on top of our lives.  And how we negotiate our relationships to those systems in very deliberate ways and also in invisible ways.  We're all doing this to a great extent everyday—navigating, integrating, or pushing up against these narratives and norms or unspoken cultural ideals.  So I think that laying those relationships bare sometimes enables people to examine themselves in a far more thorough way.

What do you imagine it's like for your clients to be with you in a session?

I think when clients encounter me, they notice that I get a little closer, because I'm trying to read a little more of their body language. They experience me as warm...And I'm very quick to assure them that what they're feeling is alright. That their emotional response is a response.  And a response is something happens in a set of circumstances, and it happens out of need.  And so whatever it is they're dealing with, I assure them that it's real, and that it's ok not to feel ok.

What's another thing that's important for anyone to know?

I want people to know that I'm listening.  I'm listening.  

I've been reading a book lately called You're Not Listening.  The book's about listening.  And the prologue starts with this wonderful analogy.  It talks about how in so much of our culture, particularly our Western culture, listening is not a priority.  You know, they don't tend to give out awards for listening like they do for storytelling, debate, or for humor.  The author talked about the Mark Twain Award.  We love Mark Twain because he's such a good storyteller, but we would never give an award to someone who's a really darn good listener. [laughter]  We're in a listening deficit these days.  We're not hearing each other, especially politically.

But it's what we do as therapists, we listen.

It's a beautiful image.  That we as listeners, we can be so concave that the listening is convex.

[laughter]

Sometimes, it's as if the listening actually inspires the speech, or at least whatever it is that needs saying.  That we can serve as an allure for speech, or as muses for words.

Yes, it's the griote!  It's the call-and-response.  We do it everyday.  It's what we do as therapists, the call-and-response.  It's that moment of validation.  It is a very natural part of our practice.  We don't think about it as call-and-response.  But that's what it is.  It's about reassuring the speaker, "I am here. What you just said affected me.”

So yes, I want people to know that I’m listening.