You finally made the appointment, you sat down, and took a breath and started to say the thing you’d been carrying, the thing that lives at the intersection of your family history, your racialized body, your community, your survival.
And then your therapist said something that made you recoil.
It could have been the way they said something. Maybe you could see that their intention was good but you shouldn’t have to hold the impact of what they said in your therapy session. Or maybe you couldn’t immediately name why it landed wrong. But something shifted, and you spent the rest of the session feeling like you were managing their reaction instead of your own. You left feeling worse than when you arrived, and then spent days wondering if you were being too sensitive.
What Research Shows
Therapy causes harm more often than the mental health field likes to acknowledge, and BIPOC clients experience that harm at disproportionate rates.
Research published in the American Psychological Association’s literature found that approximately 53% of racial minority clients report experiencing a microaggression from their therapist. Not from a stranger on the street. From the person they were paying to help them heal.
A separate study examining the experiences of 288 BIPOC women in therapy found that both racial and gendered microaggressions were associated with worse therapy outcomes, and that when therapists lacked cultural humility, the damage to the therapeutic relationship was significant and measurable.
This is not a fringe problem. It is not a matter of a few bad therapists. It is a structural issue: a field built on Eurocentric frameworks, trained in Eurocentric institutions, that sends practitioners into rooms with BIPOC clients without adequately preparing them for what that encounter requires.
Getting into a therapist’s office is not the same as being safe there.
What Microaggressions in Therapy Actually Look Like
Microaggressions in the therapy room don’t usually announce themselves. They arrive dressed as compliments, as curiosity, as clinical neutrality. That’s what makes them so disorienting, and why BIPOC clients so often leave sessions questioning their own perception rather than their therapist’s competence.
Here are some of the most common forms:
- The resilience compliment that isn’t one. “You’re so strong. I don’t know how you do it.” This sounds like admiration. But it functions as erasure. It positions your survival as exceptional rather than recognizing the conditions that required it. It also closes down the very vulnerability you came to therapy to access.
- The colourblind statement. “I don’t see colour. I just see you as a person.” A therapist who doesn’t see your race cannot hold the reality of what living in a racialized body in a racist society costs you. Colourblindness in a therapeutic context isn’t neutrality, it’s a refusal to engage with a central part of your experience.
- The minimization. “Do you think you might be reading into that? Could it have been unintentional?” When a client describes a racist encounter and a therapist’s first response is to introduce doubt, that therapist has replicated the gaslighting the client came to process. Your therapist’s job is not to defend the people who harmed you.
- The curiosity that centres the therapist. “Where are you from? What’s that like?” Treating your cultural identity as something exotic to be learned about, rather than a context to be held, shifts the labour onto you. You are not there to educate your therapist. You are there to be helped.
- The framework that doesn’t fit. Being encouraged to “set boundaries” with a family structure rooted in collective care. Being told your hypervigilance in white spaces is “anxiety” rather than an intelligent response to a real environment. Having your grief about a homeland in crisis treated as “vicarious trauma” you can opt out of. These aren’t neutral clinical observations, they’re the imposition of a Western, individualist framework onto a life that doesn’t operate by those rules.
- The spiritual or cultural dismissal. When practices, beliefs, or community structures that are central to your healing are treated as obstacles to it, (or simply ignored) by a therapist who only recognizes Western therapeutic modalities as valid.
Why This Happens, And Why “They Meant Well” Isn’t Enough
Most therapists who commit microaggressions are not doing so with conscious malice. They are doing so because they were trained in systems that centred whiteness and didn’t adequately prepare them for the specific knowledge, humility, and accountability that working with BIPOC clients requires.
That context matters for understanding. It does not change the impact.
When a microaggression ruptures the therapeutic relationship, the harm is real regardless of intent. Research is consistent on this: microaggressions from therapists are associated with worse outcomes, damaged trust, and clients leaving therapy altogether, often concluding that therapy simply doesn’t work for people like them.
That conclusion is understandable. It is also not true. What often doesn’t work is therapy delivered without cultural competence, without anti-oppressive practice, without the humility to hold a BIPOC client’s full experience.
You Are Allowed To Leave
To leave a therapist who has harmed you. You do not owe them an explanation. And you do not need to give them the opportunity to learn from your pain. You do not need to stay because finding someone else feels impossible or because you’ve already invested sessions in this relationship.
A therapeutic relationship that requires you to manage your therapist’s discomfort around race, to educate them about your culture, or to minimize your experience to keep the session moving — is not a therapeutic relationship. It is labour. And you are not there to do that labour.
Some things it is reasonable to expect from a therapist:
- They do not require you to explain why racism is real
- They do not treat your cultural practices, family structures, or community ties as pathology
- They recognize that your emotional responses to racialized experiences are proportionate, not disordered
- They can sit with your anger, your grief, and your complexity without steering you toward resolution before you’re ready
- They understand that healing does not mean adapting to systems that harm you
Finding Anti-Oppressive Therapy in Calgary, Edmonton and across Alberta
In Calgary, Edmonton, and across Alberta, the search for culturally responsive, anti-oppressive therapy has historically been difficult. The concentration of BIPOC therapists trained in frameworks that can actually hold the complexity of racialized experience has been thin, and the mainstream mental health system has been slow to address that gap.
That is changing, and we can help/
Ready to find a therapist who won’t require you to defend your experience first? Browse BIPOC therapists in Calgary and Alberta at Healing in Colour →
What to look for when searching:
Anti-oppressive practice as an explicitly named framework, not just “multicultural competence,” which can mean very little in practice. Anti-oppressive therapy names systems of power and works with clients to navigate them, not to adapt to them.
Lived experience alignment, therapists who share or deeply understand your cultural context won’t require the same level of explanation before the real work can begin. That matters enormously for how quickly and safely you can access what you actually need.
A direct conversation before committing. Ask a prospective therapist: How do you work with clients who have experienced racism? What does anti-oppressive practice look like in your sessions? Have you worked with clients from [your specific community]? Their answer will tell you a great deal.
Sliding scale availability, because the financial barriers are elevated in BIPOC communities, and a therapist committed to equitable access will have thought about how to address it.
Your Bad Experience Was Not a Reason to Stop
If a therapist said something racist, minimized your reality, imposed a framework that didn’t fit, or made you feel like the problem rather than the person being helped, that experience does not mean therapy doesn’t work for you. It means you had a therapist who lacked the skills for this work.
The difference between a therapist who causes harm and one who can genuinely hold your experience is significant. BIPOC clients who access culturally responsive, anti-oppressive care report meaningfully different outcomes — not because the therapy is easier, but because they don’t have to fight for the validity of their own experience before the healing can begin.
You deserve to walk into a room and be believed before you even start speaking.
That room exists. Healing in Colour will help you find it — in Calgary, across Alberta, and across Canada.
Additional Resources
Browse BIPOC therapists in Alberta
- Find a therapist on our Therapist Directory
Related Reading
- What Is Intergenerational Trauma? And How It Shows Up in Immigrant Families
- How to Find a BIPOC Therapist in Canada: A Guide
- Is AI Therapy Safe for BIPOC Communities? What the Research Actually Says
Not ready for therapy yet?
- Explore our Resources page for community organizations and mental health tools
- Follow us on Instagram for culturally sensitive mental health content
- Join our newsletter for monthly immigrant mental health resources
About Healing in Colour
Healing in Colour connects BIPOC clients across Canada with therapists and allied professionals who practice from anti-oppressive values. We believe BIPOC people, in all our intersections, deserve therapy that supports our healing and liberation.
If you are in crisis, please reach out to Crisis Services Canada: 1-833-456-4566 or visit crisisservicescanada.ca
Learn more: About Us |Our Statement of Values