“It is an incredible honour for me to be standing here, to share with you the experience of successfully completing the Master of Arts Counselling Psychology program. Graduates, congratulations.

On behalf of the graduating class, I would like to extend a sincere and heartfelt thank you to the faculty for their commitment to our academic success, and to our loved ones who have supported us along the way, thank you for your love and encouragement.

I want to acknowledge the honour in standing up here today, to address you, my peers, who have worked tirelessly to earn you master’s degree. Despite the challenges you faced, the enormous time commitment that it required, and the dedication needed to develop your expertise, you navigated this experience with courage and a ferocity that has culminated in the completion of your academic journey and earning your diploma. Again, congratulations.

I can appreciate that for each and every single one of you there was a complexity of motivations, influenced by your personal experiences and relationships, that uniquely inspired you to pursue an education in counselling psychology. Your personal motivations are honourable and virtuous, undoubtedly.

But, underlying our personal reasons for pursuing this work, to help others navigate their challenges and heal their wounds, is a dark truth about the state of the world – it is a place in which systemic oppression and marginalization, institutional dehumanization, discrimination and injustice, ideological radicalization and increasing polarization is creating and sustaining the conditions that result in intergenerational trauma, the dismantling of communities, diminished personal agency, and the weakening of interpersonal skills and resiliency. We live in a world that promotes and contributes to mental ill-health.

It might seem obvious that by pointing this out I might use this opportunity to encourage you to change the world through the power of psychotherapy. And, I am. But what I really hope to electrify you to do is to better understand and appreciate that the power of psychotherapy is revolutionary.

There is an awesome power inherent within the art of practicing psychotherapy. It is, however, a power that must be consciously and purposefully harnessed, it cannot be assumed. It is my hope that I might inspire, and provoke you, to reflect upon how you can harness this power in a more deliberate and impactful way. If I do well, you might come to understand why harnessing this power is not just necessary for meaningful change in the individual, rather it is essential for meaningful transformation on the collective level.

Interlocking systems of the state, capitalism, imperialism, settler colonialism, white supremacy, and heteropatriarchy, to name a few, upholds and supports racism, sexism, ableism, and ageism, and the violence, abuse, and tyranny that results. These interlocking systems of oppression distorts how we conceptualize happiness, fulfillment, purpose, and relationships, and it positions individuals in the role of both oppressed and oppressor.  

Oppressive systems pathologize healthy human needs by designing mechanisms to push us towards desiring our subjugation and subjection, ultimately keeping us alienated from ourselves and others, which dismembers us from the full human experience that allows us to lean into transformation, growth, and change. Systems of oppression ask us to reject our emotional selves and our relational needs in favour of duty, competition, self-sacrifice, and production, towards that which is most desirable: power and control. We become severed from our own capacities, needs and desires, and instead they are distorted, manipulated, and corrupted, until we are infused with impotence, fear, shame, emptiness, and dependence. The little power and privilege we have we carefully protect and enjoy, forcing us to become complicit in the machinations of the kyriarchy. The corruption of our hearts and minds, this disconnection of self to other, is what lends itself to abuses of power, interpersonal violence, displacement, and trauma. It is what lends itself to depression, anxiety, PTSD, and other adverse mental and physical health outcomes. As Steve Biko wrote, “the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”

If systemic oppression finds its power in severing us from our ourselves and others, then an act of revolution demands of us to reclaim our power through a defiant transformation of one’s relationship to self and to community. Rebellions are not only about acts of resistance or struggle, but they are also acts of tenderness, love, and joy. To subvert and sabotage the power of kyriarchy insists that we embrace connection, care, and community in defiance of the isolation and violence of oppression.

The power of community and relationships is what supports our individual and collective capacity to rebel, revolt, and revolutionize. Community is required to dismantle oppressive systems because it is through our relationships that we uphold dynamics of power and control, subjugation and subjection, hierarchy and domination. But, it is through loving, safe, and reciprocal relationships we find courage and support to self-examine and to practice new ways of being.

The power of psychotherapy is that it is an artform and science through which we can empower others to connect to their authentic selves and to make meaningful relational connections that support them in their ability to move through life in alignment with their values. Psychotherapy is a means to explore and discover our woundedness and to dismantle the systemic narratives of heteropatriarchy, capitalism, racism, and all other forms of oppression, so that we might better understand how to untangle ourselves from these oppressive systems and develop a critical eye towards identifying, understanding, and subverting these systems, for ourselves and with others. Psychotherapy provides individuals with a foundation of fundamental skills to lean on and employ to deepen their connections and intimacy with others. It helps individuals to recognize the impacts and ways in which oppression insidiously weaponizes their need for human connection for its own gain, and through psychotherapy individuals can cultivate the skills that strengthen their resiliency and capacity to navigate challenging realities that would otherwise entangle them more in oppression and detach them from the power of community.

Our role, as practitioners in the field of mental health, is to ensure that the practice of psychotherapy is protected as a tool of transformation and to untether it from its colonial and racist past. We must protect our profession from adopting an ideal and working through a pathological and prescriptive lens, and instead, we must ensure our work is centered on possibility, adapting to the evolution of the individual. Psychotherapy is a mechanism for process – process as a pedagogy towards self radicalism and revolution – a process towards becoming mentally, psychologically, and emotionally free from the power of oppressive systems and oppressive versions of ourselves.

An anonymous writer wrote, “To become what we need to each other, and to find power in friendship, is to become dangerous.” When kyriarchy, the intersectional structural powers that seek to oppress, control and dominate, seeks to sever us from ourselves and our relationships, so that we might mindlessly pursue the sanctioned idols of happiness, success and power, it is imperative that we resist and subvert these efforts. The power of psychotherapy is that we can journey alongside individuals as they explore and understand the ways in which they have been severed from themselves and others, through their individual stories that have been undeniably impacted and shaped by systems of oppression and domination. We have the privilege to help them cultivate the skills, capacities and means to purposefully and consciously enter into relationships with others that subvert and undermines systems and experiences of oppression.

I am honoured to have the privilege to work with incredible individuals that are striving to confront their wounds and pain, and to alchemize it into a source of empowerment. Through the self-awareness they cultivate, they develop a deepened understanding of how the interconnectedness of systemic forces of oppression have a part to play in how their lives, relationships and worldviews have been shaped in such a way to diminish their personal power and the power of living in joy in relationship to others. The remarkable magic I have an honour to witness is how these individuals harness this newfound awareness to transform themselves and their relationships to others that ultimately strengthens their capacity to rebel against and subvert machinations of disempowerment, control, domination and oppression.

It is my hope that speaking to the power of psychotherapy has strengthened your passion for our chosen profession. That it might have reawakened your appreciation for the incredible importance of the work we will do. That perhaps it might have given strength to your sense of hope for change in the world. I hope that it has provoked you to consider new ways of understanding the profound potential and eloquence of psychotherapy as a means of engaging in revolution, personal and collective. The world is not without hope. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, “Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of an ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.”

Thank you, and my sincere best wishes for joy, community, and transformation.”

~ Emersyn, 2023 Yorkville Master of Arts Counselling Psychology commencement address