Staying in relationship when patriarchal ideas emerge in therapy

Therapists regularly encounter patriarchal and misogynistic ideas in clinical conversations — sometimes expressed directly, sometimes embedded in everyday assumptions about gender, power, and entitlement. These moments often generate strong internal responses: a pull to correct, a fear of collusion, or an impulse to withdraw in order to stay “safe” or professional. While intentions may be ethical, responses can inadvertently shut down dialogue, intensify defensiveness, or fracture relationship.

This workshop focuses on what happens in the moment just before we speak, stay silent, or intervene. Rather than debating patriarchy as a concept, the session centres on observable decision points in practice and the relational risks attached to different responses. Participants will be invited to examine how power, responsibility, and values are negotiated through micro choices in interaction.

The workshop is designed for clinicians who already work from a relational or systemic orientation and who are interested in increasing their tolerance for uncertainty when oppressive ideas arise in sessions. It is not a training in “correct responses,” nor does it position facilitators as moral authorities. Instead, it treats uncertainty, restraint, and transparency as clinical skills.

Participants will work with brief composite vignettes drawn from common clinical contexts (e.g. family therapy, adult therapy, supervision). Using micro positioning exercises, the group will slow down the moments where practitioners feel pulled to challenge, explain, correct, or remain silent. Attention will be paid to embodied reactions, relational consequences, and the risks we take — either by intervening or by not intervening.

The workshop explicitly acknowledges that conversations about patriarchy can evoke defensiveness, fear of getting it wrong, or withdrawal. These reactions are not treated as problems to eliminate, but as important clinical information to work with. Facilitators will model curiosity, non resolve, and ethical transparency, holding complexity rather than striving for consensus.

The session draws implicitly on systemic and ethical practice traditions (including irreverence, responsibility, solidarity, and practices of approaching what repels us), with theory used to support process rather than frame content. The emphasis throughout is on staying relationally engaged without defaulting to correction, avoidance, or moral performance.