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In honor of National Women’s Equality Day, SCV CAMFT Director-at-Large Vidur Malik speaks with Liz Ojeda, AMFT, about the work she does with female clients who have experienced trauma, violence, and oppression. They also discuss the impact of self-disclosure and therapist vulnerability on the therapeutic relationship.
Vidur: Could you introduce yourself and the work you do along with any specialties?
Liz: I'm Liz. I use she/they pronouns and I take a lot of pride in openly acknowledging that I am queer and Mexican American. Currently I primarily work with survivors of sexual assault, who tend to be women. I help my clients get to the roots of where the trauma and violence are coming from and how that’s showing up in their behaviors.
Vidur: What drew you to working with people who have experienced trauma and violence?
Liz: I started this work really at a domestic violence shelter in undergrad and I've built my way from there. I've done some crisis counseling and went back to a domestic violence (DV) agency in San Mateo. Before I ended up at the group practice I'm with now, I worked primarily with students, mostly in environments where there was a lot of community violence. I did a lot of sex education with students.
A lot of it was also personal experience - seeing it within my family, and then within my community. I went through the training and I found it really enlightening because it gave me language for a lot of the patterns I didn't notice.
Vidur: What drew you to working with female clients in particular?
Liz: Rewinding again to like my own personal narrative, it wasn't until I was older when I noticed some patterns from my grandparents, and then my mom, and then how that carried over to myself and my younger sister. When I learned about my grandmother’s history of how she immigrated to America - she's first generation, she wasn't documented - all of these different parts of her identity helped me get a better understanding of what expectations were placed on her. All of this helped shape my understanding of the roots of violence. For female-identified folks, the amount of history and the amount of trauma that we hold and suppress can show up in our bodies, so I do a lot of somatic work.
Vidur: What are some ways that clinicians can build trust and safety with clients, especially early on with a client who's just experienced a lot of trauma and violence, to make sure we’re not perpetuating systemic oppression they may have experienced?
Liz: When I read this question, I first went to, ‘what is safety? What does that mean?’ I think it's the capacity to feel free and to show up with whatever is coming up. I'm not going to push you to talk about one thing or the other. That helps build that safe environment. I let clients know that there's so much that they probably don't feel like they have control over at any given point in time, but when they're with me, at the very least, they should be able to control what's talked about and what's not, and when they talk about whatever they want to talk about. I find that's a really cool intervention.
Vidur: How do you approach self-disclosure in session?
Liz: I'm not here to hide who I am. It’s taken a long time for me to really own the parts that I was ashamed of in the past. I like to think of that as role modeling. I'm a bit more open with self-disclosure, but I'm not telling everything. I'm not here to make it about me.
Especially for female-identified folks, I think it's so important to just say, ‘me too, you're not crazy. What you're feeling makes total sense.’ The world sucks sometimes. I want to walk down the street and feel safe, and I can't always do that.
Vidur: Would you recommend for male-identifying clinicians working with female identifying clients to name that gender difference in session and invite clients to process it? I’m particularly wondering about cases where female-identifying clients have experienced trauma perpetuated by men.
Liz: As we say for everything, it’s on a case-by-case basis. But for male-identified clinicians or really anyone, if you feel like there's some discomfort in naming it, you probably should name it. If you feel if something is telling you to address it, I don't think it would hurt to name that. Be curious about the client’s experience happening in the room, but also pause and reflect on why this is showing up.
Something I really value in this work is also just taking accountability. In relationships, there's always going to be harm done, some kind of rupture. And I think part of that as well is being mindful of our histories. That can lead to the modeling of vulnerability of ‘I messed up and I want to take ownership of that.’
Vidur: In our training, we often hear that we shouldn’t self-disclose. There’s almost an unlearning I’ve had to do of that when I think of self-disclosing in session. I wonder if you’ve had a similar experience.
Liz: Yes. Something in me was like, ‘I'm going to sneak in like who I am’ because that's how we build connection and that sense of belonging. When a client really like tugs on my own thread or if I'm tearing up in session I'm going to let them know, if appropriate, ‘wow, that really touched me. I'm not going to hide that because I think that perpetuates the idea of the client having to suppress it.
Vidur: Was there anything else you wanted to share?
Liz: We can’t do this work alone. Some pain is meant to be felt with another person. We can’t always hold everything alone. That’s when we feel isolated and scared. There’s a lot of unknown. That’s scary, but sitting with that and creating spaces with each other, with ourselves, and with clients helps us bring it back to, ‘how is this showing up for me?’ As we continue to do our own individual healing work, it’s going to help lead to greater shifts within our community.
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