One-on-one Consulting
For practitioners who want to better support their fat clients/patients/customers
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Fat people deserve supportive, unbiased care, that takes seriously the oppression they face, treats them with dignity and humanity, and does not pathologize their bodies.
Most of us enter helping professions because we have a deep desire to support people and not cause further harm.
And yet, fat people often experience body size oppression and violence in the therapeutic relationship.
As practitioners, our thoughts, feelings, and experiences of our own bodies can influence how we show up with clients.
Because of colonization and chattel slavery, we live in a world steeped in and built on anti-Black racism, genocide of Indigenous peoples, and systematic destruction of Indigenous food sources, all which creates anti-fat bias.
Our Master’s programs, supervisors, and continuing education so rarely prepare us to understand these concepts, let alone how they intersect, and what the very tangible impacts on our clients are.
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As a practitioner, you deserve support to cope with the moral injury of providing services within oppressive systems. You deserve compassion for not knowing how to address anti-fat bias, and you deserve an opportunity to better show up for your fat clients.
when biases go unchecked.
Health and wellness culture (a.k.a. diet culture) wriggles its way into the
therapy room
Want to begin unlearning anti-fat bias?
Do you want to better support your clients and help them to feel welcome and accepted, while preventing harm they may experience from your unchecked bias?
Here’s what we can dive into together:
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how to identify the harms of diet culture and disordered eating for all clients (but especially fat clients),
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how to support clients to check their own biases around fatness,
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how fatness intersects with other identities,
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how to support straight sized clients dealing with disordered eating and body image without perpetuating anti-fatness,
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and how to support clients in living more embodied lives (hint: it doesn’t mean just “helping” your clients to “love” themselves!).
"Alexandra helped our team gain a new understanding of how anti-fat bias impacts community members of all sizes and what we can do about it. Her professionalism and humour was exactly what our team needed to create a safe learning environment with simple, actionable ways to match the quality of care we offer at our clinic to what our clients expect of us."
- Anja Hess, Director, Wildwood Therapy
One-on-one Consulting is for you if:
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You work in one of the following professions:
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Social Worker
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Counsellor
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Therapist
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Supervisor
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Psychologists
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Dietitian
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or student of any of these fields,
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You have some understanding of anti-oppressive practice/intersectional feminism (in-depth experience is not required, but I need to know we can speak a bit of the same language!),
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You want to learn about the history of anti-fat bias,
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You need help figuring out resources to learn more,
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You want to consult about specific clients,
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You are ready to look at your own relationship to food, body, movement, biases, and internalized oppression,
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You are ready to reflect on the ways you have caused harm (we all do - as Vikki Reynolds says, “We learn our this work on the backs of clients… Our work is not innocent”).
A Little Bit About Me:
I am a Registered Clinical Counsellor (RCC) with the BC Association of Clinical Counsellors (BCACC) who is passionate about having peer-to-peer conversations about uprooting anti-fat bias in the therapy room. While there are some similarities, One-on-One Consulting is not supervision.
We will collaborate on therapeutic interventions and explore how your own experiences/identities influence this aspect of your work, and I will recommend follow-up resources for yourself and clients. I can touch on historical context, but for a more in-depth analysis, please attend one of my workshops.
