Field Week: Liberal White Woman are the Most Dangerous Archetype in Mental Health

Apr 29

Before you accuse me of being a racist, hear me out. We don’t necessarily ever get a chance to talk about this topic.

Mental health is primarily an industry dominated by women. Per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, women made up 82% of therapists, 73% of counselors, and 67% of psychologists as of 2017, and the number is expected to grow. Most mental health programs and facilities are managed by clinicians. A report by the same agency indicated that as of 2015, 86% of mental health professionals were white. That then all means, if you the consumer are purchasing or seeking services from a mental health professional, 8 times out of 10, a white woman will probably be the referral. In marketing science terms, this is referred to as a soft monopsony.

She speaks in the language of safety while enforcing compliance. She performs empathy while gatekeeping truth. She wears "healing" like armor — but the battlefield was never hers.

This is not an attack on women. This is an exposure of the institutionalized feminine front of neoliberal control.

The white liberal woman is the new missionary. Her gospel is credentialed. Her tools are therapeutic. Her role is to make sure no real revolution ever takes root.

Weaponized Empathy

In the hands of the liberal white woman, empathy becomes a Trojan horse. She will nod, breathe, mirror, validate. But the second your rage threatens the ecosystem she benefits from, she will shut it down.

She will use her "concern" to pathologize you. She will use her "compassion" to reroute your revolution into a staff training. She will mourn with you as long as you stay wounded, but the moment you become dangerous, she becomes a gatekeeper.

Your anger becomes "problematic." Your body becomes "unsafe." Your refusal becomes "non-compliant."

She will hug you while turning you into a chart note.

The Credential Firewall

The liberal white woman professionalizes healing. She turns liberation into licensure.

Her alphabet soup of degrees isn't about insight — it's about insulation. Her certifications serve one purpose: to control who gets to speak, who gets to lead, and who gets to define "appropriate."

She builds entire treatment models designed to keep you in therapy, not in power.

And when someone comes from outside the system — someone with raw authority, lived fire, earned perspective — she blocks the door with paper:

“What program were you trained in?”
“Are you trauma-informed?”
“Have you completed supervision hours?”

Credentials become walls. Degrees become weapons. And healing becomes another domain you have to apply to enter.

Relational Containment

She believes "relationships are healing," but only if you show up in the posture she finds digestible.

She wants rupture and repair — but only if you rupture in lowercase letters. She wants emotion — but not too much. She wants "authenticity" — as long as it doesn't smell like aggression, grief, or masculine fire.

Her version of relationality is a hall of mirrors. You see yourself reflected, but never engaged. Your presence is tolerated, not metabolized.

Emotional Surveillance

She watches your tone. She monitors your body. She uses DBT, mindfulness, and somatic tracking not as freedom tools — but as behavioral policing.

She'll call it "de-escalation." She'll call it "nervous system regulation." She'll call it "containment."

But what it really is... is silencing.

She teaches coping where there should be confrontation. She teaches breathwork where there should be exposure. She calls it trauma-informed, but it’s compliance-centered.

The DEI Hijack

She co-opts language she doesn't live. She fills panels, not gaps.

She claims to fight for inclusion while systematically excluding brown masculine energy as "aggressive." She uses "safety" to exile threat. She installs herself in diversity roles to make sure real power never gets redistributed.

She is the smiling face of institutional failure. The yoga-posing blockade to structural change.

Psychoanalytic Colonization

She takes trauma and makes it clinical. She takes grief and makes it disordered. She takes hunger for power and calls it narcissism.

Through attachment theory, somatic tracking, and inner child frameworks, she breaks down your rage into "parts" she can manage.

You become a client. A case. A complexity to contain.

Your fire becomes her content.

And So We Begin: Field Week

This is Day 2. We're not done. We're naming the archetypes. We're naming the function. We're drawing the field.

The elevation is coming. But first, we wage war on the performance.

elevate.epo Field Week: The Archetypes Must Burn.

🎧 Download the latest podcast: Field Week: How Reverse Causality Destroys Relationships

Enrique Arteaga