Why Representation in Therapy Matters Right Now

Safety, Cultural Humility, and Finding Your Person in Uncertain Times

My client walked in wearing a Sabrina Carpenter hat, a nervous smile on his face. He twisted his fingers in his lap as we exchanged a few polite pleasantries. I offered a smile and my usual introduction.

“I’m Alyssa, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. My pronouns are she/her, and I identify as a queer white woman,” I said, breaking the nervous silence.

He told me he felt relieved that I was queer too. He wasn’t sure about therapy. Most people don’t come to therapy looking for advice. Many aren’t even fully sure why they walked into the room.

Often, without realizing it, people come to therapy because something in them hasn’t felt understood.

In being misunderstood, they experience pain. Maybe they weren’t understood by parents, partners, family, schools, doctors, or past therapists. They arrive carrying the quiet belief that maybe they are “too much,” “too sensitive,” or simply doing healing wrong.

What struck me wasn’t that he shared his connection to me. It was what happened after. His shoulders softened. His hands stopped twisting. The room felt quieter, steadier.

This isn’t a story about representation in the abstract. It’s about what happens in therapy when someone realizes they might not have to explain who they are in order to be helped. Representation didn’t solve anything at that moment. It didn’t take away his anxiety or answer the questions that brought him to therapy. What representation did was create something essential before we continued working: safety.

Safety is pivotal to therapeutic work and to the human experience.

Our brains cannot access deep emotion, meaningful connection, or flexible thinking when we don’t feel safe. When safety is absent, therapy can become another place where people brace themselves, perform, or shut down.

When clients don’t feel represented in therapy, they often spend sessions protecting themselves instead of healing. They scan for misunderstanding. They soften parts of their story. They over-explain reactions that have been questioned or pathologized elsewhere. Therapy becomes another space where they manage perception rather than explore truth.

Over time, this erodes trust, not just in the therapist, but in therapy itself. Clients may begin to believe they are resistant, unmotivated, or incapable of change, when in reality the environment has not been safe enough to hold their full experience. Many people do not leave therapy because they don’t want to do the work. They leave because the work requires a level of safety they have not been offered.

Representation in therapy is not about perfect identity matching.

No therapist can fully mirror every client’s lived experience. Representation is about whether difference is acknowledged rather than ignored, whether curiosity replaces assumption, and whether clients feel permitted to exist without constant self-translation. It is felt when therapists name power, ask instead of assume, and allow clients to define what safety and healing look like for them.

This is where cultural humility matters more than the idea of cultural competence.

No therapist can ever be fully competent in identities or experiences they have not lived. Competence suggests completion, mastery, or arrival. Cultural humility asks something different. It requires ongoing learning, reflection, accountability, and a willingness to name limits. It allows therapists to remain curious instead of defensive, open instead of performative. Most importantly, it prioritizes the client’s lived experience over the therapist’s expertise.

Cultural humility also means recognizing when you may not be the right fit and supporting a client in finding someone who is. Representation is not about being everything to everyone. It is about being honest, informed, connected, and committed to a client’s safety and growth, even when that means helping them find their person elsewhere.

When the world feels unsafe, the need for safety in therapy becomes even more critical.

January is often framed as a time of fresh starts, resolutions, and hope. However, for many people, this January has arrived alongside fear, grief, and uncertainty. We are living in a moment where immigration enforcement is increasingly visible, queer and trans people are facing renewed hostility, and many communities are being reminded that their safety is conditional. For those already carrying trauma, these realities do not stay outside the therapy room. They come in with them, in their bodies, their anxiety, and their vigilance.

Representation and cultural humility are not abstract values in moments like these. They are protective factors. They help determine whether therapy becomes a place of refuge or another environment where people feel misunderstood, minimized, or at risk. In times of collective stress and targeted harm, feeling seen is not a luxury. It is a prerequisite for healing.

As a white clinician, there are many experiences of adversity I will never fully understand, despite my womanhood and my queerness. That reality does not disqualify me from this work, but it does require humility, curiosity, and ongoing accountability. Representation asks therapists to look honestly at who therapy has historically been built for, and who has been expected to adapt themselves to fit it.

When representation is present, something shifts.

Clients take emotional risks sooner. They speak more freely. They allow feelings to surface that were previously guarded. The nervous system settles enough for insight, connection, and change to become possible. Safety does not guarantee healing, but without it, healing rarely happens.

If you have ever felt like therapy “wasn’t for you,” it may not be because you failed at healing. It may be because you were asked to heal in a space that did not yet know how to see you.

As we continue to exist in a world that feels increasingly divided, misunderstood, and unsafe, representation in therapy matters now more than ever.

Find your person.

Find the therapist who makes you feel seen, heard, and valued. Find the space where you know you can exist, stretch, and be fully yourself. A space where you do not have to shrink or explain in order to belong.

And then, know this: when you feel seen, you are safe enough to do the work.

There are people in the world who understand you, who reflect you, who make room for your full experience. You will find them.