In psychotherapy, we often speak about “the meeting” as if it is neutral. As if two people arrive, present to one another, and something relational unfolds. We are trained to attend to presence, absence, transference, rupture, and repair. We are taught to listen carefully, to notice what is said and unsaid. But far less often do we stay with a more difficult question: who gets to meet whom, and under what conditions?

Because we do not meet outside of history. We meet inside structures that have already organized voice, authority, and legitimacy. We meet inside political realities that shape whose experience is recognized as knowledge and whose is treated as something to be interpreted, translated, or spoken about. And increasingly, I find myself sitting in professional spaces where the encounter feels shaped before it even begins—not only by what is brought into the room, but by who is already authorized to speak within it.

Over the past few years, particularly in the context of ongoing global violence and what many of us are living through as genocide, psychotherapy spaces have shifted. Conversations around decolonization, anti-oppressive practice, and intersectionality have become more visible, more valued, and more professionally rewarded. And yet, something does not sit easily. Because alongside this shift, there has been a rise in voices—often white, Western-trained practitioners—speaking about oppression, and at times, speaking as if from within it. The issue here is not participation; it is position.

There is a difference between engaging with oppression and occupying authority within it. There is a difference between developing awareness and speaking on behalf of. When that difference collapses, the relational field shifts. What presents as dialogue can become, subtly but powerfully, a form of control.

In Transactional Analysis (TA) terms, we might think about this as a kind of contamination—where Adult thinking becomes overlaid with unexamined Parent assumptions about what is right, helpful, or needed (Berne, 1961). It can look thoughtful, informed, and even progressive. But it carries something inherited, something unexamined, that shapes the encounter without being named.

For those of us from the global majority, this is not new. It is familiar. It can feel like being met and not met at the same time. Heard, but translated. Included, but repositioned.

This is where the concept of psychic militancy, as developed by Lara Sheehi (2026), becomes important. Sheehi speaks about how violence is not only something we see—it is something organized psychically. It lives in patterns of identification and misidentification. It shows up in how fear is structured, how confusion is produced, and how subjects are positioned in relation to power.

If we take this seriously, then we also have to consider how quickly taken-up “decolonial” language can participate in this. Because when a system is under pressure, it does not always resist change. Sometimes, it adapts. What we are seeing, at times, is not the undoing of colonial dynamics, but their reorganization.

Decolonization becomes a language that can be learned, performed, and circulated. It becomes something that can be spoken fluently without requiring a shift in position. And in that process, it risks becoming another site of professional recognition—another way of accumulating what might be called symbolic authority. This echoes what Frantz Fanon (1952) warned of: that colonial relations do not disappear easily, but reappear in new forms, often through those who believe themselves to be outside them.

Within a TA frame, we might understand this as a kind of scripted adaptation—where the system appears to change while maintaining its underlying structure. The roles are updated, the language shifts, but the relational positions remain intact. The same voices are centered. The same authority is preserved. And this has consequences for how we meet.

In therapy and supervision, it shapes what is recognized as knowledge and what is treated as experience. It shapes who is allowed to define reality, and who is asked to provide it. It shapes intimacy—not as closeness, but as the capacity to remain with difference without appropriating it. When power is not named, intimacy becomes distorted. The encounter risks becoming asymmetrical in ways that are difficult to challenge, because they are framed as care, as awareness, and as allyship.

So the question is not simply: are we talking about oppression? The question is: what are we doing when we talk about it? Are we creating space—or reorganizing it?

For white-passing practitioners, this requires a different kind of attention. Not performative, not immediate, and not rewarded. It requires noticing the pull to speak, to interpret, to position oneself as informed. It requires resisting the assumption that proximity to these conversations equates to understanding. It also requires recognizing that not all knowledge is accessible through theory.

Some of it is lived. Some of it is carried in the body. Some of it comes through histories that are not optional, not chosen, and not temporary. And this is where I want to be more direct.

This is not a gentle invitation to reflect. It is a call to recognize limits. It is a demand for a different kind of responsibility. A responsibility that requires you to relinquish speaking on behalf of experiences that are not yours. To withdraw from translating realities you have not lived into frameworks that center you. To recognize when your presence moves from engagement into occupation.

This form of “help” risks reproducing the very dynamics it seeks to challenge. If engagement is to mean anything, it has to involve a shift in position, not just a shift in language. It has to involve stepping back, not stepping further in. It has to involve accountability that is measured by consequence—not intention, not effort, not how articulate the analysis sounds.

Because without that, the meeting remains organized in the same way. The same voices carry authority. The same structures remain intact. The same dynamics repeat—only now, under the name of change. So perhaps the question is no longer how do we meet? But: What are you willing to give up in order for a different kind of meeting to become possible?