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Why Politics Shows Up in Therapy (Whether We Name It or Not)

January 29, 2026 | Patricia Barberis

Many people hesitate to bring politics into therapy.

They worry it will feel divisive, overwhelming, or too big. Some worry it will derail the work. Others worry they will be judged for how they think or what they believe.

But the truth is this.
Politics already shows up in therapy. Not as opinions or talking points, but as conditions.

The policies, systems, and structures we live under shape how safe we feel, how much rest we get, how supported we are, and how much room we have to breathe. They influence our stress levels, our relationships, our work lives, and our access to care. They shape the context in which mental health exists.

Ignoring that context does not make therapy more neutral. It makes it less accurate.

The social conditions we live in shape our mental health

Mental health does not exist in a vacuum. It is shaped by the environments we move through every day.

This is what people mean when they talk about social determinants of health. Things like housing stability, income, access to healthcare, education, safety, discrimination, and community support all influence how we feel, cope, and connect.

If you are constantly worried about money, your nervous system is doing more work.
If you lack access to quality healthcare, stress compounds.
If your identity puts you at higher risk of discrimination or harm, your sense of safety changes.
If your work demands everything from you with little flexibility or protection, burnout is not a personal failure. It is a predictable outcome.

Therapy that focuses only on mindset without acknowledging these realities can unintentionally place responsibility where it does not belong.

The biopsychosocial lens helps us tell the fuller story

In therapy, we often work from a biopsychosocial perspective. This means we look at biology, psychology, and social context together, not in isolation.

Your mental health is shaped by your nervous system and your lived experiences. It is also shaped by the world you have had to adapt to.

Two people can experience the same event and be impacted very differently depending on their resources, support, and safety. Trauma does not land the same way when you have access to care, flexibility, and community as it does when you are navigating chronic stress with little margin for error.

This is not about ranking suffering. It is about understanding why coping looks different across contexts.

Resilience is real, but it is not infinite

People are remarkably resilient. Therapy bears witness to that every day.

But resilience is not something people should be required to draw from endlessly. When we celebrate resilience without acknowledging the conditions that demand it, we risk normalizing struggle instead of questioning why so much resilience is needed in the first place.

Low socioeconomic status often means fewer buffers against stress and fewer places to land when things fall apart. It can mean delayed care, limited options, and more pressure to endure rather than heal.

Naming this is not doom and gloom. It is honest. And honesty is a form of care.

Therapy helps us understand how we experience our environment

One of the most important roles of therapy is helping people make sense of how the world impacts them.

Therapy can help you notice how your body responds to chronic stress. It can help you understand how power, scarcity, or instability shape your relationships and boundaries. It can help you recognize when your reactions are not flaws, but adaptations.

We explore how you reach out for support or why you learned to suffer alone. We look at how your system learned to stay safe. We build awareness, choice, and compassion where there may have once been self blame.

This work is not political in the partisan sense. It is relational, contextual, and deeply human.

Equity matters in mental health care

Access to mental health support is not evenly distributed. And that matters.

When therapy is framed as something only available to those with time, money, and flexibility, it reinforces the idea that care is a luxury rather than a need. Equity in mental health means recognizing that people start from different places and require different kinds of support.

Talking about equity in therapy is not about assigning blame. It is about widening the lens so that individuals are not carrying the weight of systemic gaps alone.

A note on neurodivergence and injustice

For many neurodivergent people, these inequities are felt even more sharply. Systems built around narrow definitions of productivity, attention, and communication can amplify stress and exclusion.

There is a deep intersection between neurodivergence, access, and justice. That conversation deserves its own space, and I will be writing more about it soon.

Therapy is not separate from the world we live in

Therapy does not ask you to pretend the world is kinder than it is. It helps you understand how you are shaped by it and how you can move through it with more support, clarity, and self-trust.

You do not have to carry everything alone.
And you do not have to locate every struggle inside yourself.

Sometimes the most healing thing is realizing that your reactions make sense given what you have lived through and what you are living in.