Deconstructing Therapy
Deconstructing Therapy
Podcast Description
A podcast redefining the way we approach healing, relationships, and mental health. We challenge the status quo and traditional therapy frameworks that often fall short in today’s rapidly evolving society. Through conversations with therapists, activists, and thought leaders, we explore bold, community-centered approaches to mental health that honor the complexities of our world. Together, we’ll uncover how connection, shared stories, and innovative practices can adapt therapy to the needs of our time. Let’s reimagine what healing looks like in the here and now.
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The show focuses on themes of mental health, healing, relationships, and cultural identity, with episodes that explore the transformative power of grief, the complexities of Asian identity, and the intersection of education and therapy, showcasing diverse perspectives on these subject areas.
A podcast redefining the way we approach healing, relationships, and mental health. We challenge the status quo and traditional therapy frameworks that often fall short in today’s rapidly evolving society. Through conversations with therapists, activists, and thought leaders, we explore bold, community-centered approaches to mental health that honor the complexities of our world. Together, we’ll uncover how connection, shared stories, and innovative practices can adapt therapy to the needs of our time. Let’s reimagine what healing looks like in the here and now.
Episode 5 | Season 2
Safety Is Not a Feeling: Power, Privilege, and Listening Deeply
Guest: Jay Seiff-Haron, Psy.D
In this expansive and honest conversation, Alefyah sits down with therapist, trainer, and anti-oppression educator Jay Seiff-Haron to explore what happens when we let our clients challenge our worldview—especially around safety, power, and privilege. Jay reflects on growing up Jewish and queer, navigating whiteness and passing, and later becoming part of a Jewish–Muslim family, holding both marginalization and access within the same body.
Together, Alefyah and Jay examine how Western therapy—shaped by colonial and individualistic assumptions—often treats safety as an internal feeling rather than a reality shaped by power, history, and structural violence. They explore how therapists can unintentionally dismiss real danger by framing it as anxiety, distortion, or resistance, and why deep listening requires a willingness to be changed by what clients are telling us about the world they live in.
This episode is a call to complexity: resisting binaries of oppressed vs. privileged, refusing to rank suffering, and practicing a form of listening rooted in humility, justice, and shared humanity.
Highlights & Takeaways
Safety is not always a feeling—it is often shaped by material reality and real threat
Holding privilege and marginalization as parts, not opposites
The danger of turning oppression into a competition
Jewish identity, whiteness, and intergenerational survival strategies
Passing, visibility, and choosing when to lead with different parts of self
Neurodivergence and justice sensitivity as moral attunement
How colonial psychology trains therapists to overlook suffering
Why EFT already contains the tools for liberation—if we let context back in
Letting clients reshape our understanding of the world through deep listening
Mentioned
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
Liberation-oriented and anti-oppression clinical practice
Neurodivergence and justice sensitivity
White Supremacy Culture (Tema Okun)
Decolonizing Western psychology
Cross-cultural and interfaith relationships
Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF)
Connect with Jay Seiff-Haron
Training & Consultation: eft-lifeline.com
Liberation-oriented EFT trainings, facilitated dialogue, and consultation for therapists and allied professionals.
✨ Connect with Deconstructing Therapy (Alefyah Taqui)
Therapy / Consultation • All Podcast Episodes
Instagram: @taquitherapy • @deconstructingtherapy
Facebook • TikTok • YouTube
Special Thanks: George Alvarez & Rayana Consulting
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