[JOE]:
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This is the Practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sanok. The Black Leaders Matter series.

Welcome to the Practice of the Practice Podcast. I am Joe Sanok, your host, and this is part of the Black Leaders Matter series that we are doing here on Practice of the Practice. Today we have Dr. Bernice Patterson. Dr. Patterson has Infinity Consultation Group in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Dr. Patterson, I am so glad to have you here on the Practice of the Practice podcast. How are you doing today?

[DR. PATTERSON]:
I’m doing wonderful. Thank you so much for having me.

[JOE]:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, let’s just start with your consultation group. You’re licensed as a psychologist, doctoral level. I mean, that alone takes a ton of work to even just get through that. Talk to us about your consultation practice, who you’re consulting with, so we can kind of understand your world before we jump into some of the other topics we’re gonna cover.

[DR. PATTERSON]:
Well, no, thank you. So basically, as a consultant, I’m working with different organizations in the community, be them hospital-based services, mental health services, law firms, school organizations or districts, universities. And I do a lot of work in the church, especially the black church, just to really be able to help people dig into some hard things. Three of the core items that we really look at are cultural diversity and inclusion, self-care and burnout prevention, and mental health and spirituality. So, for me, as a therapist, it’s this idea of helping people look at their process. But as a consultant, really helping people figure out a roadmap to where they’re trying to get in, what’s the best way to get there.

[JOE]:
Yeah, so when you look at kind of a typical organization you might consult with, what are some maybe core either problems or pains or things that they say, Dr. Patterson, we need help in this area. They may not even know where they need help. But how do you help them identify that? And what are maybe some of the common ones that you see?

[DR. PATTERSON]:
So I would say right now, especially in the midst of a pandemic, one of the most common things we’re dealing with is just trauma, and helping people recognize their trauma and recognize how to cope with it and how to access resources. I think a lot of the people who I have the privilege of speaking with and consulting with are really people who believe all is well, it’s like, you know, hey, I got a roof over my head, I got food in my refrigerator but are not taking the time to take stock of where they are emotionally and how that’s actually impacting them. So helping organizations figure out where is the real needs of their employees and how do we speak to those needs directly have been one of the major things and then also, as the issues facing the black community are getting more and more airtime, you know, I have more and more organizations who are realizing that they can’t silently sit by and watch their employees hurt, watch their clients hurt, and they are ready to begin to look at their own stuff. You know, a lot of times it’s really starting at square one, because a lot of these organizations really haven’t taken the time to do the hard work. So, getting them kind of a roadmap of like, this is where you start, starting with your own internal stuff before we can even get into how are you going to make some really systemic changes?

[JOE]:
Yeah, and when they want to kind of start digging into that stuff, what are some of the ways that looks? What are some of the internal blocks that happen in the organizations? What are you noticing there?

[DR. PATTERSON]:
Well, funny enough people are well intentioned but want to have a meeting about a meeting about a meeting.

[JOE]:
Oh, my gosh, that drives me bonkers.

[DR. PATTERSON]:
Pretty much. You know, and it’s funny; I have found more movement happens when people feel like a lawsuit is about to come. All of a sudden, they don’t need quite as many meetings to say we need to do something. But when they don’t feel their feet necessarily in the fire, you know, people are trying to figure out like, well, do we have the resources for this? Do we have the time for this? Do we have the emotional bandwidth for this? So, a lot of times it’s watching people trying to negotiate, do they want to make time for this work? Because I’m very upfront with people, like, this isn’t comfortable, like people don’t walk away from this stuff smiling because I made them feel warm and tingly. You walk away feeling like I’m doing good work and although it’s hard, it’s worthwhile. So, I think a lot of people are really trying to make this a priority but putting the resources there to make it a priority is a dog of a different breed.

[JOE]:
Yeah, so I mean, I feel like as a consultant that would be really difficult to try to help break through that. What are some techniques you use to really kind of shake those organizations and get them to take that action?

[DR. PATTERSON]:
I think one of the things, and I’m blessed to have this quality, is I’m so extroverted and so just… can get in your business and you not even know I’ve gotten in your business.

[JOE]:
I love that.

[DR. PATTERSON]:
I tend to make people super comfortable and I’m willing to be transparent about my own struggles with this, being a black woman who’s a PhD, and just the struggles that I faced and how many of their employees are probably facing some of the same struggles, but it doesn’t feel safe to talk about those things. And, you know, really asking them to do a hard check of what legacy do you really want to leave in this organization? You know, I keep reminding people, how you’re treating your staff during these painful times is really going to determine how your staff responds to you when the storm passes. So that has been a great way of just getting people in and even just inviting adding them to other presentations that I’m actually doing. And people are like, oh, you’re not going to tell me I’m this horrible, horrible human being and just tell me to take a bath and shame. And I’m like, no, that’s not helpful. It doesn’t move people to grow. So, debugging some of the painfulness around it, and just normalizing that, that it’s a process, has really helped open some doors for me.

[JOE]:
I love what you just said there that you’re not gonna kind of open up these wounds and make people feel the shame and then just leave them there, that you’re going to take them through a process. Talk about that, because that’s something that I’m noticing on social media right now that isn’t seeming to happen. And I’ve personally experienced it lately, where as some people put their necks out and say, here, I’m noticing my own prejudice. I’m noticing my own whatever, fill in the blank. And then instead of kind of walking through a process of growth, you know, there’s some people that will attack, there’s some people that say welcome, there’s other people that will say here’s some resources. Talk about that process of someone opens up, you know, whether it’s a leader in the organization you’re working with, or whoever, they feel that shame, they feel that identification of maybe how they viewed the world consciously or unconsciously. Where do you take them after that?

[DR. PATTERSON]:
Well, the first place I take people is internal. And by internal, I mean their own story. All of us have a family store, we have a cultural autobiography. And whether we like it or not, the realities of this world, I’m filling pages on that. And in order to create empathy for other people, I think people first have to realize that they need to have empathy for themselves. You know, I do a lot of work with pre-doc students and doing training around cultural diversity and inclusion, and I start with them in July and by November, you know, they are fired up and like want to go home for Thanksgiving and like turn the world upside down. And I’m like if your uncle was racist last Thanksgiving, I don’t think he magically figured it out between now and then. So, you need to understand the same grace that I had for you as you’re learning and growing, you have to give that same grace. You know, dropping a hammer on people has never moved anybody to great change. The reality is, is we have to love people in to change. And that’s not easy. That’s not easy when you’re the person who’s hurting. And it’s not even easy to receive that love when you’re the person doing the hurting because you feel guilty. Like I don’t want you to take care of me. I don’t want you to rescue me. But me hating you is not going to really serve either one of us well.

[JOE]:
Love people into change. I love that statement. I feel like that’s so helpful. What does that practically look like?

[DR. PATTERSON]:
I think being willing to have hard conversations, but also understanding your bandwidth. You know, I’m privileged that a lot of people have come to me, especially a lot of white people… I grew up in a small town in Michigan, like five stoplights in the whole city, small little town. And I’m having people reach out to me saying, you know, the scales are falling from my eyes, I see that there’s so many things that I thought were okay that I’m realizing aren’t. And me loving them into change is me being willing to have hard conversations and talk about how things impact me. You know, I’ve had coworkers who have posted things on social media that they thought were just fine, and then they were getting negative feedback. And they called me and said, you know, can you be honest with me – was that offensive? And I have to love them enough to be honest, but also love them enough to walk them through how that impacted me emotionally, versus just saying, you know, you screwed up, you stuck your foot in it, clean it up. So, I think being willing to walk with people in the process, and allow them to hear your story, and allow them the opportunity to hold that and to honor it and do the same for them. It creates human connection. You know, it’s hard to hit somebody who you see as a person, versus [unclear] dehumanized.

[JOE]:
Totally. Now, I’m interested in that example you just gave of someone saying, will you look at this and tell me your thoughts on it. William and I, a couple episodes ago, talked about this too; the idea of on one side, I hear people saying, go do your own work. I am not your person that needs to teach you about your own potential racism. Don’t even talk to me about your experience as a white man and I don’t want to be your person to process. Then on the other side, there’s people that are saying, I’ll walk with you, I’ll join you. I’m glad that you’re joining the fight. You know, and they say if it’s too much, I’ll say, don’t. How do you personally sort through that? How do you recommend people sort through that? Because I feel like my natural apprehension, if I was getting push back, would be that I don’t need to burden you know, Dr. Patterson, and obviously we don’t have the relationship your friend did, but burden one of my African American friends and say like, how did this come across, when it feels like there’s so much else going on in the world that should get their attention that for me to say, hey, give me feedback on my whiteness feels like… I would be apprehensive to do that. So, like, how do you sort through that? How should I sort through that? What are your thoughts?

[DR. PATTERSON]:
Well, I think the main word there is the friendship. The people who have reached out to me are people who I’m genuinely invested in as a person. You know, it’s not just these people who I kind of loosely know, like, I know a whole lot of people. But that doesn’t mean a whole lot of people can say that they actually know me. And who can actually say like, they feel really close to me. I feel like we have relationship. So, like, no, you do not walk up to the random black person [unclear] and say, hey, let me ask you about [unclear]…

[JOE]:
[Unclear]

[DR. PATTERSON]:
[Unclear] strawberries, but tell me about your blackness, and let me talk about my whiteness, like no, no, we’re not doing that. But this idea of where you have actual connections and you have actual relationships, you know, people want to be known. And people want to be known in their truth. So I think it’s very different to say, hey, teach me about everything that’s black and about systemic racism versus saying, hey, I’m doing these readings, and as I’m sitting through this, and I’m sifting through this stuff, like it’s pulling up all of these emotions in me, and I’m wondering just how you’ve experienced me. So now we’re not asking this person to take on the heavy lifting, you’re saying, I just want to dialogue with you about your experience with me and my experience with you, which is very different than saying, hey, I need you to give me this roadmap of how to be anti-racist.

[JOE]:
Yeah, that’s helpful. I think that you know, what I’m hearing is that it’s obviously the relationship; with any social issue, it’s gonna be the relationship you have with that person. Having it be dialogue and not saying, you put in a bunch of work for me to know what I need to go read. And have it be that ongoing process.

[DR. PATTERSON]:
Right. My hope is that this isn’t a one and done conversation. You know, here’s the reality is I need to understand the white experience just as much as I need to understand the black experience. I’ve had to do that just to survive. But understanding why you think the way you think helps me say, okay, I get it. It’s not right. But I understand it. And now I know how to have a conversation with you around your own stuff. And that’s probably because I’m a therapist, and I like to get inside of people’s heads and walk around. But if I don’t understand your context, it’s hard for me to justifiably say, hey, I want you to take the time and understand my context. I feel like that needs to be a mutual thing; we need to understand one another.

[JOE]:
And when you’re trying to love people into change, what else do you do, either as techniques, as approaches, as ways that you try to kind of crack the egg open more?

[DR. PATTERSON]:
One of the things I love to do is have people tell me just kind of their history of like how culture was talked about in their homes. You know, I grew up around the table… my father grew up in the south, picking cotton, and my grandmother grew up a sharecropper. You know, like, I have very distinct memories of talking about culture, and they route me to who I am and the lens that I see the world. So, when I’m trying to get into people’s world, is I ask about their family. You know, tell me about your grandparents. Tell me about how black people were talked about, and people’s eyes sometimes get, you know, huge and I’m like, do you really want to know? I’m like, I can kind of imagine from your facial expression that it’s not the Mormons things, but I need to understand the soup that you were cooked in to understand how do we change the seasoning for where we want to go? You know, we all have generational things that are passed down. But the question is, are we going to take them with us into the next generation?

[JOE]:
Yeah. So, before we got started, we were talking a little bit about your work, kind of in regards to consulting with churches and within the African American community around just therapy. And this is kind of becoming somewhat of a theme during this discussion, not just with you, but with some of the other speakers. Talk a little bit about the idea of faith and therapy. We were talking about that before we started rolling. Talk about that issue, and maybe help us all understand kind of what you’re seeing there.

[DR. PATTERSON]:
Right. So, you know, I am a psychologist, I’m also a licensed and ordained preacher. And you know, I’m a church kid, to the Nth degree. My grandfather was a pastor, like I took my first steps on a church pew. And throughout all of that, I never heard anybody talk about mental health ever. And I grew up in multi-generational home, it was a three generational home and my grandmother, God rest her soul, was my best friend. And my grandmother suffered from what I now know was claustrophobia and anxiety. But we never talked about it like that. Grandma would just get in the elevator and started turning colors and couldn’t breathe and was hyperventilating. And we would pray. And we would literally sing worship songs to her while riding the elevator to get her upstairs in a hotel room. Now, nobody’s saying, hey, this is a mental health issue, this is something that she can learn techniques to talk about it. It was, I need to have faith about this, I need to pray about it, I need to give it to God. So, from just my own lived experience and experience of many of the other clinicians that I talked to, you know, it’s this idea of you can have faith in God and faith in a therapist. And one of the things, if I do nothing else for the rest of my career, is to really help solidify this idea. That you can have Jesus and a therapist too; that they’re not this mutually exclusive entities. That just as God has allowed us to have medical doctors who help you with diabetes, or an ophthalmologist who helps you with your eyes, psychologists just help you with your mind and help you with, you know, how you’re thinking and how you’re walking through the world. So really just challenging this idea of leaning on other people. And in telling the secrets of what happens in black homes. You know, a lot of times I will hear people say, you know, what happens in this house stays in this house, you know, and we will protect the secrets of the past and the secrets of the present in order to save face. So really just tearing that down and saying it’s okay to get outside help and it doesn’t mean you don’t believe in God.

[JOE]:
Now, are there ways or case studies or times that you’ve seen light bulbs go off for people in the black community, when you’ve been trying to make that point to people that you know, you can have Jesus and a therapist? Are there things you’ve said, or you remember a time when it clicked for someone, that you could share with us?

[DR. PATTERSON]:
Yeah. So actually, it was very heavy on my heart kind of near the beginning of this pandemic, to do a Facebook Live, which I had never done. I’m like, no, thank you. I post pictures of my children and make funny dog posts. That’s what social media is for. But to really speak to the heart of like, Jesus is okay with therapy. And even just speaking to the fact that like Jesus is known as a mighty good counselor. It’s like, so why would we call him that if he don’t believe in counseling? Something about that don’t make sense. Like, Jesus is not offended by you using your BlueCross BlueShield benefits, like, he’s not…

[JOE]:
He’s not the mighty counselor like the mighty attorney counselor. He’s the mighty therapist.

[DR. PATTERSON]:
Pretty much. And even just from his idea of self-care, you know, talking about how Jesus would do miracles and then go be by himself because he needed a break from the disciples like, I need to chill, like, I need to take care of myself. Like, yeah, y’all my real dogs, but y’all are doing too much right now; I need to just chill with Jesus. So just this idea of taking care of oneself, and how that actually honors God for you to say, I need to take care of me. And even just helping people see how they can incorporate their faith into treatment. Like, I pray with my clients. I’m not a therapist who identifies as a therapist who happens to be a Christian. You know, I would comfortably say, I’m a Christian therapist, I give my clients biblical homework. I kicked one client out of the Old Testament, cuz I’m like, no, you want too much Hellfire and brimstone. You need some grace, love, and mercy, so you can only read the New Testament for right now.

So, showing people they can bridge these two worlds, that they work well together to actually strengthen the work that you do in the therapy room, has just really opened up doors for people to come to therapy. And I’ve just seen so many more churches who are like, we want to have this conversation, we want to send our parishioners to therapy, we want to know that they’re going to get good Christian-based therapy, but we do want to send them. So, it has been a beautiful thing to watch this shift happen.

[JOE]:
I’m picturing a therapist that… maybe they’re a Christian therapist, they have partnerships with churches, things like that, and they’re hearing this and saying, I didn’t realize that for a lot of people there’s a lot of hang ups in regards to going to therapy. What would you encourage them from a cultural standpoint, to know, to understand, ways that they can sort through walking with a pastor through that process or talking to maybe an apprehensive client that feels shame about coming to therapy, but they know they need it? What would you say to those therapists?

[DR. PATTERSON]:
Um, well, one thing I will strongly recommend is asking clients to pray about it. And when I say pray about it, I mean, pray not even just about going to therapy, but patience with healing. You know, I think sometimes we will use prayer as kind of this Band-Aid to just want pain to end versus saying, okay, how does God want to use this pain? How does God want to grow you in the midst of that? But now can you be patient with his process? And can you be open to the fact that maybe part of this process is you talking with somebody who is trained to listen, who’s trained to hear you, and validate you where you are, and care about you where you are, whose objective, because they’re not a part of your regular life, and even just talking about how liberating it is to have like an hour and somebody to just sit and listen to you uninterrupted, who wants to hear what you have to say. I don’t even think people necessarily know what therapy looks like. Because people go off of what they see on television. I remember being in undergrad thinking I’m not Frasier, like, I don’t know if I can do that like, I’m not him. But understanding culturally responsive therapy will speak to where you are, and it will vibe with where you are and take you where you’re trying to go. But we just have to be willing to put our toe in the water and building those connections with therapists in the community who can come in and, you know, have conversations with the parishioner so they have a face to identify and a name to identify, really takes away a lot of the fear factor of taking those first steps.

[JOE]:
Yeah, how much do you think grad schools are teaching…? Like, what you see in your community, in your world – how much does that mirror what you learned in grad school? Or did you have to kind of make quite a jump into what real life therapy looked like for your community?

[DR. PATTERSON]:
I had two very different experiences. My master’s degree was from a very Christian evangelical college. So, the incorporation of faith was like, they were all about it. Like, we had devotionals before we started talking about psychology, but the cultural piece we would not talk about, And for me, just being vocal and constantly asking the question, how am I supposed to take that back into my community? Because what you’re saying, is not gonna work. The techniques you’re offering me, the way you want me to phrase these things, is just not going to work. So, I had to be very purposeful in pushing my professors and my mentors to give me more. And then they directed me to where I did my PhD, which was Western Michigan University, where I was blessed to have professors who saw multiculturalism as a way of life, not a class, you know. So, I had a African American preacher who was my mentor, and also the PhD and the [unclear] of the Department. So, I had this very tangible example of what did black psychology look like, you know, they even brought the father of black psychology, Dr. Joseph White, I believe is his name, please correct me if I’m wrong. I mean, he’s recently passed, but like, they gave us these opportunities to dive into these communities and say, what is actually necessary versus what’s in these books? And I don’t think if I wouldn’t have been at Western that I would have gotten that because when I talk to other professionals, they’re like, yeah, we had a class but we didn’t dive into it like that. Like, we were supposed to look at our stuff, but we didn’t really do the hard work. So, I was beneficial in that, but I think the average grad school is really not doing that work.

[JOE]:
Yeah, and that’s interesting because it could have been my state of mind when I was in grad school – I also went to Western – but for my master’s degree, I don’t feel like that was as pronounced in the early 2000s. And maybe that developed after that, at least for my master’s degree program; it didn’t seem like it was as pronounced as maybe your experience was. So that’s awesome that that has kind of become more of the culture of that department.

[DR. PATTERSON]:
And I think it’s a big difference between the master’s program and the PhD program. You know, and even the fact that I was in a counseling psych program, which counseling psych really focuses on social justice, like that’s just a core tenet of division 17. So, I think just the training was really influenced by (1) the people who were there, but also just the vision of the department. But I don’t think that’s something that’s necessarily common across the board.

[JOE]:
Yeah. Well, Dr. Patterson, the last question I always ask is, if every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know?

[DR. PATTERSON]:
I would want them to know that as an African American woman who is a Christian, who is educated, that no matter how many tags or titles that you put on me, I need to be heard in my context. I need you to hear my context and I need you to honor my context, even if you don’t agree with it, even if it’s not your lived experience. But to hear me within my context is to love me in to change. It is to help me see myself fully, where I am, where I’ve been, and help me get a plan for where I want to go.

[JOE]:
Oh, that’s so awesome. And Dr. Patterson, if people want to connect with you, if they want to work with you, what’s the best way for them to contact you?

[DR. PATTERSON]:
Yeah, so you guys can check me out on my website, www.infinityconsultationgroup.com, it’s really long, I apologize. My email is [email protected] or you can reach me by phone at 833-342-4552.

[JOE]:
Well, Dr. Patterson, thank you so much for being on the Practice of the Practice podcast.

[DR. PATTERSON]:
Well, thank you so much for having me.

[JOE]:
We just want to remind you that we are not doing any sponsors during these series; please donate to your favorite charities that will make a difference in regards to the matters we’re discussing, to help your community, to help communities at large. Find those charities that are really making a difference. And so, give your time, give your money to those charities. That’s what we’re doing instead of sponsorship. Thanks so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have an awesome day.

Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music. We really like it. This podcast is designed to provide accurate, authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.