"We bask in the glow of having done something small and extraordinary"
Tatiana Chaterji's new book and what mental health providers can learn from the fight for RJ in schools
Sometimes the universe really shows up. After I sent that last newsletter I had the thought “oh gosh, I’ve said I’m going to do this and now I actually have to figure out what to say 😰😬.” Shortly after, I was lucky enough to have received a free copy of Everyday Restorative Justice: Moving from Crisis Response to Positive School Culture from Tatiana Chaterji. The book is a passionate, practical, abolitionist resource for true integration of Restorative Justice (RJ) into schools—something our communities desperately need to shift carceral and community violence. I highly recommend it. You can buy the book at Teachers College Press.
In the post below, I’ll share some of my thoughts about what mental health care as a field can learn from efforts to truly integrate RJ into education.
Note: Tatiana did not ask me to write this—doesn’t even know I’m writing this! I have no stake in her book doing well, I don’t know her personally. I believe it’s a wonderful tool that will make our world a better place.
content warning: brief, non-descriptive mentions of suicide, self-harm, interpersonal violence
content preview: three ways mental health care can learn from efforts to integrate RJ into schools
Creating a culture of interconnected mental health care
How often have you longed for a sense of community and resourcing related to mental health that simply does not exist or is inaccessible? How often have you and/or your clients left therapy to return to isolation, violence, and insecurity with just that one safe hour to hold on to? For me, this is a daily struggle. I wonder, how can this one hour shape the other 167 hours in the week, when so much of our world undermines what I’m doing in the therapy room?
What if mental health clinics were more like public schools (with all their flaws and struggles)? A place for learning, playing, and socializing. A place to encounter conflict and triggers with support right by our side. A place to practice skills in an environment to reinforce that practice. A place to interact in a supportive and accountable environment, alongside the people who we interact with at home and at work. A place where all our relations—parents, neighbors, friends, plants, animals are a part of the healing process. A place where privacy was less important than belonging. It’s hard to even imagine getting from where we are to a place like that.
People are experimenting all the time with creating these kinds of places—in clubhouses, in community centers, and in peer-led residential programs. Like schools, these programs tend to be under resourced and unlike schools are not part of the fabric of our communities. Community Mental Health offices are maybe the closest thing we have, and like schools they are woefully under-resourced and overwhelmed, often providing a limited (and necessary) number of services responding to crises in under-resourced communities—putting out fires and providing the basic necessities. Chaterji highlights in her book how schools are so often focused on crisis response (responding after harm), that few resources remain for preventing harm through a culture of daily care. We have this same problem in mental health.
Restorative Justice and the movement for RJ in schools teaches us that for true transformation to happen, we all have to play a part. We all hold value and responsibility in caring for each other, preventing violence, and responding to distress. We are all necessary to meaningfully prevent trauma. In that spirit, we can do more:
We can bring participants and providers together, into the process of identifying what care is needed, how care is provided, and into actually providing that care together—not in lip-service to being “peer-led” but actually creating avenues for collaboration, consensus, and leadership. Blur the lines between provider and recipient whenever and wherever appropriate; break the rules in service of the person in need.
We can integrate learning and skills related to mental health into environments outside the clinic—home, school, work, play—in a seamless, shared way. Build a culture that what we practice in “treatment” we practice in all aspects of our daily lives, because we are all learning and experimenting together toward the same goal—preventing trauma and embodied/mental suffering.
We can identify shared commitments and values among the community participating (recipients, families, providers, neighbors)—what matters most to all of us? How will we know this is working? How do we want to treat ourselves and each other in this community?
A first step is to start reaching out for more relationships—
Have regular social events with other providers and peers to intentionally talk about values and dreaming (I’m very lucky to be in community with lots of therapists, but never in shared spaces with patients—isn’t that interesting?).
Talk to colleagues about opening up your space to more social, community, and belonging focused events that are accessible (affordable, mobility accessible, language accessible, etc.).
Talk to family, friends, and neighbors about how you can care for each other or receive care outside of traditional mental health—build neighborhood pods for sharing meals, sharing skills, showing up when distressed. Call in the therapists and budget makers in your neighborhood to do more if more is needed.
Try a little something small and extraordinary—see what happens.
Using Restorative Justice to address harm within mental healthcare and with people receiving care
Chaterji’s book understandably talks about responding to harm—most of us know Restorative Justice is often used in response to harm, as an alternative to the criminal-legal system (or lack of any support). What I love and feel inspired by is her reminder that RJ comes from Restorative Practices—a daily practice, a way of being, and a set of skills that have to be nurtured and learned. She also reminds me how little most people know about consequences, responsibility, and accountability from a non-carceral perspective—which leads to avoidance, shame, and regret.
The mental health system causes an incredible amount of harm. We over-diagnose, pathologize, over medicate, under treat, institutionalize, control, punish, and restrain. We provide very little of what people need and we make it very difficult for people who are poor and marginalized to access what help there is. Restorative Justice and the movement for RJ in schools encourages us to take responsibility for our part—even if we have many good reasons for participating in the ways we do. We can say:
I know it hurts you that we can’t provide that [insert resource], I want to hear how that impacts you, I am willing to try to change things.
I acknowledge that what I offer is cost prohibitive, I am responsible for participating in this system, I want to hear how this impacts you.
I am taking X, Y, Z steps to change these harms and my participation in them; I invite you to take action alongside me to change these systems of harm.
And when we are engaging people who are suffering in their mind and body—RJ calls on us to hold them to the standard of responsibility and accountability that we model. When we are in community (as providers or peers) with people with mental health struggles, we don’t want to add to their suffering. That can lead us to avoid talking about the harm they may be doing or may have done. Someone might share that their “fight” response kicked on and they name-called, controlled, coerced, or neglected someone around them. Our automatic response might be to “make it okay” by humanizing and having compassion for those responses—without directly addressing the harm that caused because we don’t want to blame or judge. But we do a disservice to not address the collective and individual harm we cause. And by not addressing it, we don’t create room to fully explore the shame, guilt, moral injury, and responsibility we’re holding. Unspoken, unaddressed shame is often at the very root of self-loathing that produces suicidality, abuse, coercion, and neglect.
We can shift these dynamics by bringing up the dialectics directly with each other:
I have caused harm to you ← → I care about you and want to do right by you
harm happens out of trauma and suffering—it is human to hurt each other ← →unaddressed harm leads to further trauma and suffering—it is human to repair with each other
having caused harm is understandable and should be met with compassion ← → causing harm should be prevented with truly accountable change
“Compassion without accountability is collusion; accountability without compassion is domination.”—JAC Patrissi in ‘A Domestic Violence Hotline for Abusers’
We can do more to integrate restorative practices into mental health care, toward healing and preventing harm. Chaterji offers a lot of lesson plans in her book that would be very meaningful in therapy, with peers, in a support group, and at home. Here are some highlights mixed in with my own thoughts:
Before harm happens or we become aware, talk about values and integrity when it comes to how we treat each other, our world, and ourselves.
Before harm happens, co-learn about having difficult conversations with loved ones and neighbors and the skills and tools necessary to do that—preferably with those loved ones in the room!
When a peer or client brings up guilt, shame, regret1 and self-loathing—don’t shy away or provide unconditional reassurance (you’re fine, you didn’t mean it, it’s okay)—ask difficult questions:
How did that not line up with your values?
If it did line up with your values, then whose values are telling you it was wrong? Do you agree with that?
What could you do to make it right?
What’s holding you back from taking responsibility?
What were the consequences—and, if none, why?
What did you gain or hope to gain from doing the thing you’re ashamed of?
Is it possible to do something you regret and not be all bad? Is it possible to be lovable and have done something wrong?
When a client or peer brings up harm done to them by the mental health system, take responsibility and affirm their concerns, fears, and hurts. Receive these concerns with awe and gratitude for being trusted with them.
Encourage perspective taking to identify the impact of someone’s actions on the other person—how do you think that impacted the other person, regardless of your intentions? What could have been done differently to prevent that?
Encourage direct ways of making it right and skill up (see below) to practice real responsibility, apologies, and amends. Provide the tools to take direct responsibility, including emotion regulation, self-compassion, and coping.
Offer Circle Process as a form of healing.
If you yourself don’t know how to do this, learn about restorative justice practices (the “Little Book” series or Creative Interventions are a good place to start).
Talking about the harm we have done very rarely happens in non-punitive, non-carceral care. It’s a fine balance to hold compassion and accountability, but we have the capacity to be brave enough to talk about and provide the tools to recover a sense of dignity and self-respect.
It is healing to take responsibility.
It is healing to make things right with ourselves and others.
It is healing to shine a warm, compassionate light on whatever is hiding in the dark.
Skilling up relationally as trauma prevention and trauma healing
“One of the biggest pitfalls in RJ is failing to accommodate the range of people’s ability to express and act on the empathy they feel.”—Chaterji, p. 71
Building off the first two sections, Chaterji makes the important point that preventing harm should be the bulk of what we do—integrating skills, care, and practices into our daily lives so that people (and planet) suffer less in the first place.
The amount of time and energy spent on preventing trauma—in my experience—is very little. Instead, we tend to find ourselves reacting long after the fact; trying to heal wounds that could have been prevented in the first place and that we have the power to prevent for future generations.
Trauma prevention means: being creative in the resourcing, skills, and support needed to relate to ourselves and each other with compassion, curiosity, integrity, accountability, generosity, and care. Helping people understand the power they hold individually and collectively, to shape shared experiences. Collaborating with public health, education, neighborhood programs, advocacy organizations, mutual aid groups, and anyone else who is trying to build a world where every person’s basic needs are met—and doing that collaboration alongside people who are suffering as a way of building agency and self-efficacy.
I have long dreamed of a conflict + relational school—all day, with our neighbors, learning about empathy, listening, communicating, perspective taking, needs, trauma, nervous systems, advocacy, basic needs. I have long dreamed of bringing care into the environment where triggers and drivers of suffering occur, and directing care at the environment and relationships rather than individuals. People are already doing experiments with this and we can do more. Here’s some really low-hanging fruit (some of which Chaterji mentions so beautifully):
Don’t assume colleagues, clients, peers, neighbors have the skills to relate in a way that prevents harm and trauma. We live in a violent society that teaches coercive and individualistic responses to conflict and distress. Start assuming that we just don’t know (in an intellectual or embodied sense) how to treat each other in the ways we need to to build a better world.
If we assume that we don’t have the skills—ask questions:
what do we need to learn or practice together to prevent hurt between us?
what is your automatic response and what are the potential consequences of not having alternative skills at the ready?
what happens to us if we continue in this way?
what is possible if we try to change?
what are we afraid of if we learn and try something new?
how have we been treated when we’ve tried new things before?
Learn something about intervening in cycles of harm and, without 100% confidence, create a space to share it with others across power differences (providers, recipients, family, neighbors)—accept that none of us are experts because we’re all swimming in the same sea of messed up relations.
Create programming that helps people to intervene at the early signs of mental/embodied distress, abuse, and neglect—and intervene in ways that are non-carceral, compassionate, and toward healing.
Host mutual aid and peer-led groups about relational contexts and relational skills that are broadly shared across differences:
How the military and prison industrial complex subconsciously teaches us to use control and punishment and avoid taking responsibility for our behavior—especially when that behavior comes from survival and self-protection;
How to be vulnerable and view vulnerability as a strength, rather than a weakness;
How to express that we’ve been hurt in a way that fosters being heard and hearing the other person;
How to see ourselves as part of an interdependent network—to recognize the impacts of our behavior on others and consider that in how we act;
How to belong to a collective when we don’t feel we belong anywhere;
How to identify, name, and shift power in all our relations, toward collective wellbeing;
How to express regret and apology in a way that fosters repair and security;
How to listen and express, without defensiveness or dissociation;
How to be seen, heard, and validated while being open to a need for change;
How to be supported by others when we’re hurt or we’ve hurt someone;
How to express distress like suicidality, self-harm, intrusive thoughts, violent thoughts, in a way that brings support and invites healing;
How to respond to distress without shame, punishment, blame, or control but also with collaboration for safety and recovery;
How to co-create rules, limits, boundaries, and non-punitive consequences with compassion and without authoritarianism;
How to collaborate in solving shared problems across difference;
…what else?
We can assume that we don’t know how to do this. We can also assume that we have the capacity to learn, to teach, to practice, to fail, to try again. We have a responsibility to create spaces where non-providers can teach and learn how to care for each other in ways that prevent trauma and violence. If we do that, I truly believe fewer people will suffer in the first place. I would like my job as a therapist to be obsolete—and I believe we can get there.
There is so much we can and must build to do mental healthcare differently—but we have what we need to do it. Restorative Justice is one tool in our toolkit that we can learn from—and the movement for RJ in schools has reckoned with a lot of the obstacles we face in mental health care.
I finished this writing and walked away and instantly heard that nagging voice in my head that says—but how can we do all that? is this even possible?—I feel the crushing tightness of all of the constraints. We are so locked into the limitations of the medical mental health model, under a fascist regime that doesn’t care about us. But, we can—little by little—try to change. All of this requires a lot of creativity in how we fund and resource our efforts (we’re all tired, we’re mostly underpaid). All of this requires generosity, tenderness, and rage at how things are.
Who around you is doing experiments or programs to change in this direction? Please share and I would love to highlight what is already being done. You can see some ideas in One Million Experiments.
With love and rage,
Luna
I find this video on Accountability from Barnard Center and this video from Therapy in a Nutshell to be pretty helpful for clients: