BIPOC Therapist Los Angeles County
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"I've been looking for a BIPOC therapist for months and they are either too expensive or have massive waiting lists” is a sentiment I hear often. In recent years mental health has increasingly entered mainstream culture, and having a therapist has become a norm versus the exception. While this is encouraging, for many within the BIPOC community, finding a therapist who is humble, culturally fluent, and racially aware continues to be difficult. There have long been disparities between health care for White communities and health care for BIPOC communities, and in many ways the mental health field is no different. This has to change through initiatives such as getting more BIPOC mental health providers connected to BIPOC people, directly naming and addressing racial trauma and systemic disparities, drawing on cultural and community resources and wisdom within BIPOC communities, and engaging psychological practices beyond the western individualistic theories.
Here, I will normalize and explain why it feels difficult for BIPOC people to get access to quality mental health care even once they find a therapist. I will give examples of the types of issues therapy with a BIPOC therapist can help with. I will provide some examples of what you can expect in therapy with a BIPOC therapist, and I will answer some frequently asked questions concerning BIPOC therapy.
Meet Dr. Noah Lau Branson | BIPOC therapist in Los Angeles
My name is Dr. Noah Lau Branson and I am a biracial licensed clinical psychologist providing therapy and counseling services in Pasadena, California. I was born and raised in California. I identify as Hapa (half Chinese/half Caucasian), heterosexual, male, and go by the pronouns he, him, his. I have spent my life in multicultural and diverse communities and thus working to integrate the various worlds I was a part of or came into contact with. I have degrees in music and theology in addition to my degrees in psychology and when applicable bring that experience and knowledge into my work with my clients.
My approach to therapy pulls on Relational Psychodynamic Theory, Emotion Focused Theory, and Internal Family Systems Theory. It is focused on healing versus just symptom management. While modern medicalized western psychology has made significant contributions to our understanding of mental health, it often is too focused on the individual over the systemic, it doesn't pay attention to other sources of wisdom and meaning making, and it has regularly missed BIPOC communities. In therapy I do work to decrease symptoms and lessen suffering that comes with diagnoses such as depression, anxiety, or trauma. However, I also collaborate with you to understand and heal the roots of your pain. This means sifting through things such as generational trauma, the immigration history of your family, how race/ethnicity/culture shaped your identity and experience, how spirituality and religion impacted you in both positive and harmful ways, how love and anger were expressed in your family among many other things. We work to hold a wholistic picture of your story so you can embrace all of who you are both the pain and the joy. This ultimately will help you be more at home within yourself, which will let you have access to deep resources within yourself in your community. This will let you walk through life holding the tension between hope and the realities of life's challenges.
Therapy services I offer
Let me first introduce some of the services I offer within my practice. To all of these forms of therapy I bring my lived experiences and cultural sensitivity to create a competent and safe space to heal.
Individual Therapy
I provide individual therapy for people dealing with a range of issues from depression, anxiety, complex identity, trauma, racial-trauma, religious trauma, men's issues, and family of origin issues to name a few. Therapy with me often looks different person to person because I work to co-create a therapy that helps you as a unique individual heal. Individual therapy is a relationally safe space to help you begin to learn tools to cope with your suffering but also face all parts of your self and your story. We work to ultimately bring healing where you can discover your significant capacities, values, and gifts to live an authentic, genuine, and integrated life.
Couples Therapy
Romantic relationships are both loving and beautiful as well as painful and disorienting. This paradox often needs to the support of others to untangle the conundrum and mystery of what it is to merge two lives together. In therapy, I work to create a space where each of you feels listened to and understood. This will help reset your nervous systems, promote a sense of safety, and increase each of your capacities to be reflective and communicate. We will map out your relationship’s unique patterns: naming your strengths, learning where you get stuck, seeing how you trigger each other, and gaining capacities to communicate and connect in deeper ways. I especially love working with interracial couples due to the both the richness and unique challenges that diversity brings.
Pre-marital and Pre-engagement Therapy
Engagement and marriage are amazing opportunities for growth and transformation. Some couples come in and are asking questions about whether a relationship is right for them and want help figuring that out. Others have committed to each other but want to gain insights into various factors that come with weaving their worlds together such as family of origin, communication style, religion, raising children, holidays, and sex. Coming to therapy at this point in your relationship can often set you up for success down the road.
What BIPOC therapy can help with
Therapy with a BIPOC clinician can take into account your experience as a person of color that may be contributing to or nuancing your psychological distress. Below are some examples of how BIPOC therapy can help you explore important issues that may get missed in White-majority spaces.
Family Dynamics
"My last therapist told me to just sit my parents down and set some boundaries with them. My parents are immigrants from Asia, there is no way that conversation goes well." This is an example of how not understanding the cultural dynamics of a client can lead to mis-attuned interventions that erode trust and contribute to the therapy being unhelpful. BIPOC therapists often have more experience with different cultural dynamics due to their own background and experiences of having to code switch to be accepted in different spaces. These experiences lead them to explore family dynamics from a place of curiosity without making assumptions. This stance allows you as the patient be the expert on your culture. Our job as the therapist is to help you listen more deeply to yourself and collaborate with you to come up with solutions that are both culturally sensitive and psychologically healthy.
External Racism
Racism is something that members of the BIPOC community inevitably face in one way or another. This can be individual experiences of racism or systemic experiences of racism. It can be a subtle as a microaggression from a colleague or as overt as a racial slur from a stranger. Because of experiences in their own lives, BIPOC mental health providers are often actively anti-racist and do not question your experiences or ever defend perpetrators. As a BIPOC psychologist, I will empathize, validate, and hold space for your experiences and even feel with you all the feelings associated with the experience, including pain, anger, fear, and sadness. We will hold the existential weight of racism and help you find ways to act and take back your agency and humanity. This can be as personal as having a conversation with that colleague or as global as starting a group to fight a specific social justice issue. We will help you walk forward in hope and strength while holding the tension of pain, anger, and grief.
Internal Racism
As people of color, we live in a country that has a set of standards and norms that were created for White communities. These include standards of beauty, professionalism, communication, and family rhythms. Living in a culture where you get constant messages that you need to change to meet the "standard" is exhausting and damaging, yet we often take in these messages out of self-preservation. Processing external racism is important, but to process it effectively, treatment needs to also focus on healing your internal wounds, which come from the ways you have contorted yourself, your beliefs, your values, and your expectations in order to fit in. This kind of internalized racism can lead to anxiety disorders, depression, and trauma, as well as make it harder to cope with future racist experiences. In a BIPOC therapy space, we can help you begin to listen to your indestructible and beautiful internal self, your BIPOC community, and your supportive family members to shift those internalized standards and norms. This frees you to live authentically, resiliently, and from a place of increased mental wellness.
Benefits of working with a BIPOC therapist
There a number of potential benefits to working with a BIPOC therapist. One of the most important is that working with a BIPOC therapist can facilitate a better relational fit between you and your therapist. The relational therapeutic relationship is key for healing. Research has consistently shown over the past 50 years that the relationship between therapist and patient is the biggest indicator of therapy being effective. Here are some ways BIPOC therapy can cultivate that healing relationship.
Code Switching
Many BIPOC people experience the need to code switch, the practice of acting and communicating differently in BIPOC spaces versus White-majority spaces. This can often be exhausting, but is done out of necessity. BIPOC therapy provides a space where you do not have to code switch. It is similar to being able to speak your primary language in therapy instead of having to speak a secondary language.
Shared Cultural Experiences
Similarly to not needing to code switch, therapy with a BIPOC therapist reduces the need to explain yourself. Shared cultural experiences between therapist and client can reduce the need to overly explain details, cultural norms, or dynamics. It can also create a stronger sense of feeling seen and safe, which is essential to beginning to open up and heal.
Expertise and Real Life Experience of Living as a BIPOC Person in the U.S.
BIPOC therapists can provide you the benefit of their lived experiences as being BIPOC people in the U.S. who also have training and expertise in how to cope and live well with that reality. For example, a BIPOC therapist who has experienced microaggressions can draw on both their psychological and cultural expertise to help you make meaning of that experience and come up with proper ways to respond.
Diverse Therapeutic Techniques
Modern psychology has largely been born out of western individualistic perspectives and values. These theories and techniques have expanded our understanding of emotional and mental wellness, but they often don't incorporate the wisdom and healing practices of other cultures. These other healing practices, ways of viewing the world, and ways of viewing people are necessary to create mental health care for BIPOC that is holistic and not just western-centric.
FAQs about therapy for BIPOC in Los Angeles
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BIPOC mental health care faces unique challenges compared to White populations. One of the obvious challenges the BIPOC community faces is the stress of various types of racism everything from individual instances of racism to more systemic racism such as mass incarceration, racial profiling, and redlining. This contributes to overall stress and increase risk of mental illness. Here are some stats from Mental Health America about BIPOC mental health. Adults who are black are 20% more prone to reporting severe psychological distress compared to adults who are white. Mixed race people are more likely to report mental illness than any other racial group. Native and Indigenous people in the U.S. are more likely to experience PTSD and alcohol dependence than any other racial group. Mental illness is more likely in the criminal justice system which is disproportionately made up of BIPOC Americans. Black men are 4 times more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia than a White man presenting with the exact same symptoms.
These are just some of the stats that pain a picture of why BIPOC mental health is important and unique. We need clinicians who are anti racist, culturally humble, and commit to entering into the cultures and realities of the BIPOC community.
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There is already a shortage of mental health resources in this country that shortage is exponentially larger for quality mental healthcare for the BIPOC community. Here are some of the barriers that BIPOC community faces in receiving access to quality and culturally competent mental health resources.
There are simply a lack of BIPOC mental health professionals. In 2021 the American Psychological Association published an article saying that roughly 80% of working psychologists are White.
Cost is another major barrier. Therapy Den posted an article in 2021 breaking down the average cost of therapy in each state with therapy in California averaging $175 per session, which depending on where in California can be much higher. People may turn to their insurance but finding a good fit with a therapist that also takes your insurance that can also understand your BIPOC experience becomes a logistical nightmare.
The BIPOC community's historical mistrust of of the mental health community is another barrier due to a multitude of factors such as systemic misdiagnoses, psychological assessments being normed on White populations, and a lack of cultural competency leading to general inadequate mental health care.
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The search for a therapist can be difficult. There are groups and resources that are working to provide mental health resources of different kinds to BIPOC communities. An exciting recent development is the rise of teletherapy as an accepted form of therapy, which gives BIPOC people access to BIPOC therapists throughout the state they live in. You of course can always reach out personally to me to work with me or ask for a referral to another specific type of BIPOC provider and I would be happy to help. I always want to make sure to remind people that virtual therapy services can be accessed throughout the state of California, which has been an excellent way to connect BIPOC people to BIPOC mental health services. Below I have listed a number of resources both local and national that can help you get connected to a BIPOC therapist near you.
Innopsych
Inclusive Therapists
Asian Mental Health Collective
Asian American Psychological Association (AAPA)
Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective (BEAM)
Love Land Foundation
LatinxTherapy
WeRnative
Institute for Muslim Mental Health
National Queer & TransTherapists of Color Network
Hold space for your joys and challenges with a BIPOC therapist in Los Angeles.
As a BIPOC psychologist my goal is not just to be culturally competent but culturally aware and humble. I constantly work to grow in order to honor and hold all aspects of my clients’ narratives and lived experiences. My relational, depth-focused approached to therapy ultimately helps my BIPOC clients not just cope, but heal. It is an incredible honor to walk alongside my clients on their road to live a more full and whole life. If anything in this article resonated with you or peaked your curiosity, do not hesitate to reach out for a free consultation.