5 Reasons Every Therapist Needs a Positionality and Privilege Statement

Examining Identity, Power, and Accountability in the Therapeutic Relationship

As therapists, we routinely ask clients what brings them into therapy. How often do we pause to examine what we bring into the room?

We bring our education, training, and theoretical orientations. We also bring our histories, cultural values, spiritual beliefs, social positions, and assumptions about how the world works. These influences deserve our attention because they help shape how we understand the person sitting across from us.

Many of us readily describe our work as Adlerian, Rogerian, solution-focused, or cognitive behavioral. Naming our clinical approach helps clients understand how we work. Examining our positionality asks us to consider the person applying that approach and the power that accompanies our professional role.

I believe every therapist should develop a positionality and privilege statement as part of an ongoing reflective practice. By this, I mean a written examination of how our identities, experiences, and relationships to social power may influence our clinical work, paired with commitments to accountability.

This recommendation draws on scholarship concerning cultural humility and multicultural and social justice counseling. The sources discussed here do not establish that publishing a statement itself improves treatment outcomes. They offer a foundation for the reflection, transparency, and accountability that a thoughtfully developed statement can help us practice.

1. Our identities shape how we understand clients.

Who we are and the experiences we have had influence how we experience the world. Our upbringing, educational environments, economic circumstances, cultural communities, and religious or spiritual beliefs can shape what feels familiar, appropriate, troubling, or possible.

These influences accompany us into therapy.

For example, a therapist who places a high value on individual independence may need to examine how that value informs their understanding of a client’s family obligations. A therapist whose spirituality is a source of support may need to remain curious about a client whose religious experiences have been painful. Our experiences can offer insight while also creating assumptions that require examination.

The Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies identify counselor self-awareness as a central domain of practice and explicitly address how identity, power, privilege, and oppression influence the counseling relationship (Ratts et al., 2016). This framework supports examining the perspectives we bring to our work alongside the worldview of the client.

A positionality and privilege statement gives us a structure for that examination. It asks us to move beyond naming our identities to considering their clinical implications.

What do I tend to normalize? Which experiences do I understand readily, and which require more learning? When might my understanding of healing reflect my own values more than the client’s?

Writing these reflections down can make them available for further questioning in supervision, consultation, and our own continuing development.

2. Professional authority brings power into the room.

Therapy involves a relationship between people whose roles carry different forms of authority. Depending on our setting, we diagnose, document, recommend treatment, and produce records that may inform decisions beyond the therapy room.

Clients bring knowledge of their own lives. We bring clinical knowledge and professional authority. Responsible practice requires us to consider how these forms of knowledge meet and whose interpretation receives greater weight.

When someone seeks support, they may be sharing experiences they have never spoken aloud. We invite honesty about grief, shame, sexuality, relationships, identity, and distress. Alongside that invitation, I believe we have a responsibility to examine the conditions in which that vulnerability is being held.

Our professional role may make it difficult for a client to question an interpretation, disagree with a goal, or say that something we have written feels inaccurate. A commitment to collaboration therefore needs to include attention to how we respond when clients challenge us.

A positionality and privilege statement can name this responsibility. It can explain our intention to discuss clinical decisions, acknowledge the limits of our perspective, and make room for disagreement.

The practical test comes afterward: What happens when a client says we misunderstood them? Can we remain curious when our interpretation is challenged? How do we address the consequences of getting something wrong?

3. Shared identities do not eliminate differences in privilege.

A client may understandably want a therapist who shares aspects of their identity. Recognizing something familiar in a therapist’s background can matter when deciding whom to approach for care.

Research supports taking these preferences seriously. Cabral and Smith’s (2011) meta-analysis found a moderately strong average preference for therapists of the same race or ethnicity, alongside a near-zero average effect of racial/ethnic matching on treatment outcomes. Findings varied substantially, with studies involving African American participants showing the largest effects across preferences, perceptions, and outcomes. These findings suggest that identity preferences matter while demographic matching alone offers an incomplete picture of the therapeutic relationship.

Black people are not a monolith. A Black American therapist and a Black Haitian client may share experiences related to racialization while having different relationships to nationality, language, migration, spirituality, and community. People within either group also differ from one another.

Likewise, a therapist and client who share a racial or gender identity may have very different access to education, financial resources, physical accessibility, or institutional protection.

Experiencing marginalization does not prevent us from holding privilege in other areas. Our professional credentials and institutional authority also deserve examination.

A positionality and privilege statement asks us to hold these realities together. Shared identity can be a meaningful point of connection while curiosity remains necessary.

The question becomes: Where might recognition support understanding, and where might familiarity tempt me to assume too much?

4. Clients deserve to understand the perspective informing their care.

Clients are asked to share substantial information about themselves. Thoughtful transparency gives us an opportunity to offer relevant information about the perspective informing their care.

A client-facing positionality and privilege statement might describe aspects of our social location, acknowledge potential limitations in our understanding, and explain how we approach cultural differences and feedback. It offers a partial view of our perspective and commitments that clients can consider when assessing fit.

Research on counselor self-disclosure offers relevant, though indirect, context. In a meta-analysis of 53 experimental and quasi-experimental studies, Henretty et al. (2014) found generally favorable effects on perceptions of counselors and participants’ reported willingness to disclose. The review did not specifically evaluate public positionality statements, so its findings should not be treated as evidence that posting a statement creates trust or safety.

Disclosure also requires judgment. Therapists can decide what is relevant to share while maintaining privacy and professional boundaries. Clients should have room to respond, or choose not to respond, without being asked to affirm our identities, reassure us about our intentions, or agree with our worldview.

We can examine whether a disclosure gives the client useful information and whether the focus remains on their care. We can also ask whether the language allows for differences in values and experience.

A statement may open a conversation. The client’s experience of our work determines whether our commitments are meaningful to them.

5. Accountability requires ongoing practice.

A positionality and privilege statement should change as our understanding develops.

Tervalon and Murray-García’s (1998) foundational discussion of cultural humility, developed in medical education, emphasizes continuing self-examination, attention to unequal power, and accountable partnerships. This offers a useful foundation for treating reflection as an ongoing responsibility.

Psychotherapy research also points to the relevance of humility as clients experience it. Hook et al. (2013) found that clients’ perceptions of therapist cultural humility were associated with stronger working alliances and with improvement through the alliance. These associations support attention to how humility is experienced within the relationship; they do not establish that writing a statement produces those outcomes.

For a statement to have practical value, we need to revisit the commitments it contains.

If I describe my practice as collaborative, how do clients participate in setting goals? If I value cultural responsiveness, how does that appear in my formulations and documentation? If I invite feedback, how do I respond when receiving it is uncomfortable?

Supervision, consultation, continuing education, and client feedback can help us examine the distance between our intentions and our actions. A statement gives us something concrete to return to as we do that work.

An example from my own practice

I make my own statement available on my practice website. The following selections illustrate how I connect self-awareness with professional power, client autonomy, and responsibility for my limitations (St. Pierre, 2026):

I bring my own history, identities, culture, education, lived experiences, values, privileges, assumptions, and limitations into the work. Ethical practice requires that I remain aware of how those factors shape what I notice, how I understand others, and how I use my role as a clinician.

[…]

The therapeutic relationship also carries an inherent power differential. As a clinician, I hold professional authority, and I believe that power should be used thoughtfully, transparently, and with respect for client autonomy.

[…]

I do not believe cultural responsiveness means becoming an expert on every identity or experience. I will have blind spots. My responsibility is to remain curious, continue learning, seek consultation when needed, invite feedback, and repair when I get something wrong.

[…]

You do not need to share my worldview, beliefs, values, culture, spirituality, or identity to work with me. Therapy is not about shaping you into someone who thinks like I do. Your autonomy and sovereignty matter.

Excerpted from “Where I Stand: Positionality, Privilege & Accountability,” on the Mastering You About page. Ellipses indicate omitted passages.

I selected these passages because naming my perspective also requires naming my responsibilities. Acknowledging that I have blind spots means remaining willing to examine a formulation, seek consultation, or address a misunderstanding. Naming professional authority means considering how I respond when a client disagrees with me.

The passage about differing worldviews is equally important to me. Sharing my perspective should leave room for clients to bring their own. A statement should help communicate that their autonomy remains central to our work.

This is one example, shaped by my practice and current understanding. Other clinicians may choose different language or identify different aspects of their social location. What matters is the connection between the reflection, the commitments expressed, and the care provided.

Bringing the statement into practice

Developing a positionality and privilege statement begins with questions we are willing to keep asking:

• Which aspects of my identity and history most influence how I understand distress, relationships, and healing?

• Where do I experience marginalization, and where do I hold social or professional privilege?

• What assumptions might follow me into assessment, diagnosis, documentation, and treatment?

• How will I respond when a client’s experience challenges my interpretation?

• What actions will make my commitments visible in the care I provide?

A fuller version may belong in private reflection, supervision, or consultation. A shorter version may be appropriate for a website or a conversation with a client. Decisions about sharing should consider relevance, boundaries, accessibility, and the individual client’s needs.

For me, the value of this practice lies in making our perspective available for examination. We ask clients to consider how their histories and environments influence their lives. We should be willing to examine how ours influence the care we provide.

When I ask, “What brings you into therapy?” I also want to remain accountable for what I bring into the room.

References

Cabral, R. R., & Smith, T. B. (2011). Racial/ethnic matching of clients and therapists in mental health services: A meta-analytic review of preferences, perceptions, and outcomes. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 58(4), 537–554. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025266

Henretty, J. R., Currier, J. M., Berman, J. S., & Levitt, H. M. (2014). The impact of counselor self-disclosure on clients: A meta-analytic review of experimental and quasi-experimental research. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 61(2), 191–207. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036189

Hook, J. N., Davis, D. E., Owen, J., Worthington, E. L., Jr., & Utsey, S. O. (2013). Cultural humility: Measuring openness to culturally diverse clients. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 60(3), 353–366. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032595

Ratts, M. J., Singh, A. A., Nassar-McMillan, S., Butler, S. K., & McCullough, J. R. (2016). Multicultural and social justice counseling competencies: Guidelines for the counseling profession. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 44(1), 28–48. https://doi.org/10.1002/jmcd.12035

St. Pierre, L. (2026, August). Where I stand: Positionality, privilege & accountability. In About. Mastering You LLC. Retrieved October 31, 2026, from https://www.masteringyou.org/about

Tervalon, M., & Murray-García, J. (1998). Cultural humility versus cultural competence: A critical distinction in defining physician training outcomes in multicultural education. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, 9(2), 117–125. https://doi.org/10.1353/hpu.2010.0233