Asylum Seekers, Refugees, and Psychotherapy with Jesse Harbaugh

In this episode of It's Complicated, we speak with US therapist, Jesse Harbaugh about the nuances and challenges of therapy with asylum seekers and refugees. Jesse has worked with refugees and asylum seekers extensively in the US and since moving to Berlin she has been regularly volunteering at temporary housing shelters. From Jesse's perspective, psychotherapy is not always complatible across cultural divides. To a person coming from a non-western background the value of therapy might not be immediately apparent and even notions such as "trauma" could be presumptuous or misleading. In this episode, we will discuss these topics to reveal some of our western assumptions in pursuit of more globally compatible psychotherapy.