Culturally Sensitive Therapy

Operating from a culturally sensitive model is important in creating a safe space for expression. I seek to understand your specific cultural needs as they appear in the therapy space, politically, socially, and within the family of origin cultural system. I welcome clients from any diverse background, and will strive to ensure my work is culturally informed and sensitive. I specialize in LGBTQIA+, non-monogamous, and kink orientations.

I believe we are all complex beings who hold multiple identities at once, including our sex, gender, race, ethnicity, class, and more. These identities intersect with each other in complex ways, and they can have a profound impact on our experiences of the world. I strive to be curious about and affirming of all of your identities and experiences. I believe that you are the expert on you, and I want to learn from you.

Operating from a culturally sensitive model is important in creating a save space for client expression. I seek to understand your specific cultural needs as they appear in the therapy space, politically, socially, and within the family of origin cultural system. I welcome clients from any diverse background, and will strive to ensure my work is culturally informed and sensitive.

Alison is a native New Yorker and believes understanding a client’s background and belief system is paramount for optimal treatment as it relates to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, or other important elements of culture and/or identity.

In a culturally responsive and humble approach, I work to bring all aspects of your identity as strengths in the counseling environment. I believe that when we are in touch with all aspects of our identity, we are better able to proactively address the challenges that are facing us.

I use a culturally sensitive lens to allow clients to be the experts in their own lives, as coming from a place of non-judgement and understanding.

Personal life experience and 6 years professional experience

For someone who holds an identity that is a cultural other, it is important that therapy is a space that is protected from further cultural othering. Culturally sensitive or Culturally humble therapy is a space that prioritizes and centers someone's cultural experience. Meaning, you don't have to defend why your family was the way it was - rather, you can experience acceptance for your cultural parts and process healing in therapy together.

It is important for me to be culturally sensitive in my work as I have worked and will continue to work with people from different cultural backgrounds, values and traditions. Learning, respecting and implementing this into the therapeutic relationship is most important for clients to receive the highest benefit of services and feel seen, heard and understood. I am not an expert on all cultures but I am sensitive to cultural differences that will be welcomed and discussed as needed.

As a therapist I not only welcome but celebrate all the “stuff” that comes with my clients’ identities and I will work within my professional role and in my personal life to advocate for the needs of my clients living in marginalized communities. Which is why I operate from a fat positive, sex positive, social justice, anti-oppression, and allyship framework.

Culturally Sensitive Therapy

Alison has a background in providing psychotherapy in an urban setting at a major hospital in Bronx, NY. Alison strongly believes understanding a client’s background and belief system is paramount for optimal treatment as it relates to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, or other important elements of culture and/or identity.

Culturally sensitive therapy is an approach to psychotherapy that takes the client’s cultural background into consideration12. This can include any cultural element, including ethnicity, race, religion, gender, and sexual orientation2. The approach emphasizes the therapist's understanding of a client’s background and belief system as it relates to their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, or other important elements that make up someone’s culture.

You have a cultural identity that is unique and complex. I bring in my own experience of being bicultural to help in empathizing and understanding your experience.

Much of my graduate school training was in cross-cultural psychology, including understanding how culture is important in helping clients who struggle with various mental health problems. I use a cultural lens to view each of my clients and consider how culture has shaped them over time.

I am a queer, feminist therapist and coming from a systems background, believe that the environments and systems we are surviving within impact our sense of safety and our sense of self. I work hard to deconstruct and unpack the ways our shitty cultural norms negatively impact my clients and connect them back to an internalized sense of self-worth, self-esteem, self-validation, and safety.

As a bicultural/bilingual therapist, I am attuned to the profound impact of my clients‘ cultural background on their communication.