3 Ways Therapy Helps You to Cope with Injustice

Too many people have faced injustice in their lives. Perhaps this applies to you, also.

Although injustice is a problem that affects a whole society, it is also profoundly personal. Injustice is rooted in the interactions and experiences of millions of people.

These happen in large and small events, to individuals and large populations, and the young and old.

All of these experiences have a lasting impact throughout your life. These experiences can be the motivation for effecting change — but it can also be a burden.

However, therapy can help you to cope with injustice healthily. Here are three ways that treatment helps.

1. The Validation You Need

When you hear about the benefits of therapy, it’s that therapy is an opportunity to be “heard.” You can interpret that to mean several things, such as feeling:

• Listened to

• Acknowledged

• Respected

These are all critical concepts about therapy and coping with injustice. However, they are not enough. Also, people who are struggling with injustice must be validated.

Think of validation as being able to express your truth and lived experience without being discounted, ignored, or told to go away. All too often, this happens to people who have faced injustice.

It’s almost as if what you lived through didn’t even happen. But that’s not true, and you know it! A therapist will be able to listen to you and validate your reality. That is very empowering.

2. A Safe Place for Anger

This approach might sound counterintuitive. After all, why would you need or even want a safe place for your anger?

Too often, our society discourages or fears the expression of anger. At the very least, it’s uncomfortable for the other person. Many people have learned over time not to release anger.

Perhaps you, too, keep it hidden deep down inside. Yet, injustice has a way of bringing that anger to the surface. Fortunately, that type of anger is justified.

In therapy, you can have permission to let that anger out. Your therapist will understand that the anger you hold is the direct result of something wrong. To heal, it’s crucial to express the anger.

3. Finding Hope and Possibilities

It can feel as if there is no hope at all when you face injustice. All of the negativity keeps pushing you down. Even in the direst of circumstances, people have found hope against injustice.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”

Sometimes, it will seem that injustice is more powerful, and yet, hope is endless. It is the strength that people draw on. Time and again, individuals stand up against oppression, unfairness, and injustice.

However, sometimes we feel that all hope is lost. We feel trapped in this dark tunnel, with no idea whether it will ever end. A therapist can guide you back toward hope. They help you realize the possibilities that you weren’t even aware of. That guidance can mean all the difference between standing up to injustice or letting injustice win.

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Everywhere you turn, it seems as if injustice is rearing its ugly head. For some, they are realizing for the first time that these things exist. For others, they know all too well the meaning of injustice and its impact on their lives.

Regardless of your path in life, therapy will help you voice your thoughts, express what you truly feel, and find your hope again. Reach out to today to learn how diversity, equity and inclusion consulting and counseling can help you.

Please contact me for support on how to cope with injustice. I want to help.