Interview with Kintsugi Therapist Collective
chatting with Onyx Fugii and Asher Pandjiris
Before we dive in, a quick note on audio: my voice ended up recording a little louder at times, so you may need to turn the audio up or down as needed. Thanks!
When I first started doing this interview series, I knew that I wanted to interview the creators of the Kintsugi Therapist Collective, Onyx Fujii and Asher Pandjiris. Kintsugi Therapist Collective is a community of therapists and aligned care workers dedicated to embodied and liberatory visions of care. You can learn more about their work via their website linked here.
Kate: Could you tell us what sparked you to start KTC when you did? What moved you from conversation to action?
KTC: The two of us had been close friends and colleagues for almost a decade when the pandemic began. Given the intersections of our identities and experiences as two queer, non-binary, chronically ill care workers and parents, we had long since been in dialogue about the cumulative impact of the care needs of our own complex bodies, our children, and our clients. During the second year of the pandemic, these conversations deepened with urgency, due to the increasingly grave reality that neither of us could imagine sustaining ourselves with the added load that COVID had infused into our individual and shared personal and professional lives. Isolation was one of many factors we explored, and we did notice that having the core connection to one another during this time did offer each of us a small sense of perhaps together, more was possible. In many ways, this sensation of radical friendship propelled us forward.
What compelled us to action really was desperation. We were desperate to find new ways to integrate ourselves and our work without one eclipsing the other. In order to do that we realized we needed new ways to conceptualize self within the work, care for the care worker, and a radical centering of friendship and community amongst care workers.
We really needed each other and found our conversations to be both confronting and energizing. To share so openly our personal struggles (anxiety, fear, depression, chronic illness flares, living as immunocompromised in the pandemic) alongside our professional challenges, was a revelation for us and led us to create a space for others to do the same.
These initial conversations, and the creation of KTC, were lifelines, helping us to envision deeply grounded and creative care work practices in the midst of our pandemic reality.
Kate: How is KTC in conversation with and/or offering alternatives to outdated or harmful norms in the realms of care work and therapy?
KTC: We radically pushed against the notion that a care worker needs to be a model of perfection, that we need to embody toxic professionalism by appearing to be eternally well or perfect. We’ve also tried to unlearn the white supremacist dynamic in which the care worker must always position as beyond reproach, never demonstrating our own humanity. This includes suffering, uncertainty, despair, physical discomfort and fear. We are committed to creating practices that center, rather than disavow, our shared vulnerability as a pathway to intimacy and sustainable connection.
One of the primary challenges we face is in creating practices that are sustainable in the face of toxic professionalism. For example, at KTC, we frequently encounter incredibly thoughtful and skilled clinicians who are on the verge of burnout and seriously contemplating leaving the field. Care Workers are seeing far too many clients, demanding themselves to rarely cancel sessions or disclose accommodation needs. They are also overworking themselves in session, relating to complex and intergenerational trauma in each and every client, while going through their own bodily transitions and emotional struggles.
In our signature program, the Embodied Private Practice Cohort, we spend a year together pondering the forces that contribute to “burn out” as well as possible embodied supports that can sustain our practices. We find that we need that full year together to understand the depth of internalized ableist, white supremacist, capitalist ideologies as they play out and shape our practices. Engaging in this process with similarly aligned professional peers can feel like a revelation for our participants – something that challenges the isolationist frameworks that many private practice clinicians practice within.
Kate: What have you witnessed as the benefits of a group cohort, particularly for folks who share experiences such as chronic illness, being working parents, BIPOC affinity groups, etc.?
KTC: Especially for folks who hold identities and experiences of oppression, the toxic professionalism trope of what one needs to be or embody in order to be seen as competent or ‘good enough’ in this work is especially condemning. The biggest impact we both witness and experience is a significant decrease in folks’ (including our own) experiences of isolation – and the incredible transformation via reconnection to self and one another that occurs when folks feel invited and supported to be more whole in relationship with one another. We frequently hear folks describe how being a part of KTC has deeply impacted their felt sense of being valuable and impactful in their work and lives.
Kate: In the realm of your field of work or more broadly–what is bringing you hope right now?
KTC: The shared reality held within KTC is that hope may not be possible during this time, but that staying in connection in our commitment to both action and rest supports our ability to continue. We see the ways that hope can be used as a tool of white supremacy and ableism in the context of care work; where narratives around ‘inevitable progress’ offer comfort to some while further isolating others. Within KTC we often talk about the intrinsic link between grieving and dreaming. As we grieve for the ongoing loss of life and humanity, recognizing that we are witnessing ongoing eugenicist and genocidal acts taking place every day around us, we are then able to dream up new visions of how we take care of ourselves and one another – because we know that when we have nothing else left, we have each other.
Thank you again so much to Asher and Onyx for taking the time and energy to share with us today. If you’d like to check out their work, you can learn more at kintsugitherapistcollective.com.
Take care and talk soon,
Dr. Kate