Practically Speaking: Behind the Episode “Is There an Elephant in Your Room? What to do When Sociocultural and Political Issues Stomp Into Your EBP”
You can sense it coming, feel it before you see it and hear it. The small tremors in conversation that warn you the elephant is incoming. You brace, trying to keep the focus on your agenda, perhaps cling to the familiar safety of your EBP protocol. But the elephant is coming into your clinical space and now you have to decide what to do.
In this episode of Practical for your Practice, we roll up our sleeves with Dr. Abigail Angkaw to address the topic of what clinicians can do when sociocultural and political issues stomp into their EBP. More specifically, what to do when we clinicians, as humans, have a strong reaction to those issues. THAT, is the elephant in the room.
The last few years have offered tremendous fuel in this area, and it’s no wonder our clients are bringing up tough issues left and right. As Dr. Angkaw points out “It'd be one thing if it was just the pandemic, but between that 2020 and now we're in 2023, not a lot has really let up. There's still a pandemic… racial injustice, the changes that's in laws with the Supreme Courts, changing who's in charge of the country, just the things that hit the news... We should expect people to be bringing up sociocultural, sociopolitical issues. I don't think that's something that we, as mental health clinicians, talk through a lot, and to what extent do we bring up our own beliefs.”
To be clear, this isn’t a new phenomenon and has been a central topic for all clinical orientations of psychotherapy for decades. But it seems like the sheer enormity, frequency, and polarity of sociopolitical and sociocultural events in our lives has perhaps reached new levels. It is on all of our minds much of the time with great divides between many on many fronts. It isn’t IF it comes up for you in your practice, but when. So what to do?
We urge you to “tune in” for some tips to “tune up” on areas like disclosure, self-reflection, microaggressions, finding empathy, context and case conceptualization, and what is best for your client and YOU when those elephants won’t leave your room. A reminder, don’t struggle alone. Check out resources from this episode to include consultation from folks at CDP and NCPTSD who are here to help you cage the elephant and move forward with your EBP work.
Also, whether you are a long-time listener or new to the podcast, we’d love to hear from you! Do you have a question you want to ask our CDP hosts about implementing evidence-based psychotherapies in your practice? A follow-up query from a previous episode? Or perhaps a suggestion for a future podcast topic or guest? Leave us an audio message at https://www.speakpipe.com/CDPP4PE or email us at cdp-podcast-ggg@usuhs.edu. Who knows, your question may be featured in a future episode!
The opinions in CDP Staff Perspective blogs are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Science or the Department of Defense.
Jenna Ermold, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist working as the Assistant Director of Online Training, Technology and Telehealth for the Center for Deployment Psychology at the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, Maryland
You can sense it coming, feel it before you see it and hear it. The small tremors in conversation that warn you the elephant is incoming. You brace, trying to keep the focus on your agenda, perhaps cling to the familiar safety of your EBP protocol. But the elephant is coming into your clinical space and now you have to decide what to do.
In this episode of Practical for your Practice, we roll up our sleeves with Dr. Abigail Angkaw to address the topic of what clinicians can do when sociocultural and political issues stomp into their EBP. More specifically, what to do when we clinicians, as humans, have a strong reaction to those issues. THAT, is the elephant in the room.
The last few years have offered tremendous fuel in this area, and it’s no wonder our clients are bringing up tough issues left and right. As Dr. Angkaw points out “It'd be one thing if it was just the pandemic, but between that 2020 and now we're in 2023, not a lot has really let up. There's still a pandemic… racial injustice, the changes that's in laws with the Supreme Courts, changing who's in charge of the country, just the things that hit the news... We should expect people to be bringing up sociocultural, sociopolitical issues. I don't think that's something that we, as mental health clinicians, talk through a lot, and to what extent do we bring up our own beliefs.”
To be clear, this isn’t a new phenomenon and has been a central topic for all clinical orientations of psychotherapy for decades. But it seems like the sheer enormity, frequency, and polarity of sociopolitical and sociocultural events in our lives has perhaps reached new levels. It is on all of our minds much of the time with great divides between many on many fronts. It isn’t IF it comes up for you in your practice, but when. So what to do?
We urge you to “tune in” for some tips to “tune up” on areas like disclosure, self-reflection, microaggressions, finding empathy, context and case conceptualization, and what is best for your client and YOU when those elephants won’t leave your room. A reminder, don’t struggle alone. Check out resources from this episode to include consultation from folks at CDP and NCPTSD who are here to help you cage the elephant and move forward with your EBP work.
Also, whether you are a long-time listener or new to the podcast, we’d love to hear from you! Do you have a question you want to ask our CDP hosts about implementing evidence-based psychotherapies in your practice? A follow-up query from a previous episode? Or perhaps a suggestion for a future podcast topic or guest? Leave us an audio message at https://www.speakpipe.com/CDPP4PE or email us at cdp-podcast-ggg@usuhs.edu. Who knows, your question may be featured in a future episode!
The opinions in CDP Staff Perspective blogs are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Science or the Department of Defense.
Jenna Ermold, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist working as the Assistant Director of Online Training, Technology and Telehealth for the Center for Deployment Psychology at the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, Maryland