How To Find A Culturally Aware Therapist

Culturally aware, culturally sound, culturally informed, culturally diverse...

Let's set one thing straight. Just because someone is a person of color, multicultural or bicultural, it doesn't automatically make that person culturally aware. It may give them a head start, at the very least.

Just because someone is not from a certain cultural group also does not mean automatically they will not be culturally aware.

Being culturally aware/culturally sound/culturally informed/culturally diverse means being culturally (*insert all those wonderful adjective*) despite being from that cultural group.

So when looking for a therapist, you may find that having a therapist from the same cultural allows you to feel more comfortable, open and find more ease in the therapeutic relationship. But the same can be true for a therapist from a completely different cultural group. It can also be the case that you may find someone from a similar cultural group to be the right fit-just enough similarities and a basis of understanding, but not too much cross over.

To find a culturally aware therapist, you may first want to ponder what is important in an ideal therapist. Age, gender, similar culture or the exact same culture, completely different culture but a deep understanding of your culture?

From there, it will be helpful for you to get a feel for therapists, which can be done in a consultation or even nowadays a lot of therapists are on social media, have blog posts (such as this one) or from their website or directory listings. I would say the best starting point is a consultation.

What to ask in consultations: do you have specific experience with my cultural group? Do you have lived experience? What does your experience look like with my specific cultural group? I want to add that it's important for therapists to separate their lived experience from how they show up as a therapists. It's also very important to understand that no two individuals from the same cultural group are alike.

Also, where to specifically find these therapists? There are numerous websites you can find them on but you are fortunately reading the blog post of a culturally informed therapist. If you are in NJ or SC and are looking for therapy, you are in luck and reach me using the contact form on my website! And if you are not in NJ and SC and are still looking for a culturally informed therapist, please still reach out and I will do my best to reach out to my networks to help you find a good fit.