Sam Hope

Sam Hope is an experienced trainer who has been working in EDI/Anti-oppressive practice for over a decade. Sam mainly works in the third sector, education and offering CPD to therapists as well as being a visiting lecturer on several therapist training programmes in the UK. Sam’s background is as an accredited, person-centred therapist with specialisms in trauma, anti-oppressive practice and working with diversity. Sam previously worked in education settings and organisations supporting victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse, but now works as a therapist in private practice alongside their training work. The majority of Sam’s clients are members of the queer/LGBTQA+ community, with a particular focus of their work being multiply marginalised people, including trans, disabled and neurodivergent people.

Sam’s book Person Centred Counselling for Trans and Gender Diverse People is available from Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Sam is trans, queer, ace and non-binary themself as well as autistic, ADHD, and mobility impaired. Sam has been actively involved in community organising and facilitation of supportive LGBTQA+ spaces as well as advocacy work and consultancy.

Sam's website: https://sam-hope.co.uk/about-the-trainer/

Peter's details
Website: www.peterblundell.com
Social Media: @drpeterblundell 

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Transcript

Dr Peter Blundell (2): 0:39

Welcome to another episode as the therapist connects podcast. My name is Dr. Peter Blundell, and today I'm delighted to be interviewing Sam Hope. Sam is a seasoned trainer, author, counselor, and consultant with person centered anti-oppressive values. They are highly rated trainer on gender sexual and romantic diversity. You're a diversity disability and anti-oppressive practice. They are a person centered therapist and clinical supervisor that understands the systemic factors that impact our lives. Sam is also an author of the book person centered counseling for trans and gender diverse people, practical guide, and much more besides. If you enjoy this episode of the therapist connect podcast, please leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform.

Dr Peter Blundell: 1:30

​Sam, thank you so much for coming on the Therapist Connect podcast. It's lovely to meet you and I'm sure our listeners are going to enjoy hearing a little bit about your life and work.

Sam Hope: 1:39

I'm delighted to be here. Thank you.

Dr Peter Blundell: 1:41

So the question I ask everybody, I think it's a good kind of opening question to kind of get us started is what drew you to become a therapist in the first place?

Sam Hope: 1:50

Gosh happy accident really. So I was studying chemistry as a mature student in my mid 20s, when I I became chronically ill with what originally they thought it was post viral fatigue syndrome. Then they said ME, then CFS, and now it's fibromyalgia. But it's, you know, sort of that kind of stable of chronic illness. And and I became very ill, couldn't, had to drop out of university, couldn't work. And I started doing Evening classes, just as a way of getting back into the world again. And I did an introduction to counseling course, having had therapy at university and found it very helpful. And, and I just got hooked, just it was, it was absolutely a sort of, um, not a kind of plan to become a therapist. I just, I did that. And then I did my certificate. And then I was like, Oh, I think, I think I'll go on and on and on I went. And then, yeah, so I qualified in 2004. sO yeah, I've been a therapist for 20 years now. It's amazing.

Dr Peter Blundell: 3:08

It's really interesting. It's a similar journey to me in terms of, I hadn't planned to be a therapist. And so did that kind of introductory course and then absolutely loved it and just kind of carried on with it. So it's yeah, there's something in there, isn't it? It kind of captures something. Even a bit. Yeah. So 20 year career, so that's quite a long time. Can you tell us a little bit about what you've done over the, over that period of time?

Sam Hope: 3:33

Yeah, so I started off As a, as a school counselor, and I also, um, sort of early career, and also, um, did a stint as a counseling coordinator for a domestic violence service and so, and so the two strands of my career ended up being counseling and education, so I went on to be a university counselor and counseling survivors, which is something that I still do a lot of now but Since about 2016, I've been solely in private practice and I do about half of my working week as, as a therapist and the other, well, a therapist and supervisor, I should say, and, and the other half as a trainer. So I do an awful lot of what people call it EDI training. I, I'd like to call it anti oppressive training, but yeah working on sort of upskilling people around best practice. Around access inclusion, etc.

Dr Peter Blundell: 4:40

Amazing. So, so much different work there. How was it doing school based counselling and then kind of it sounds like adult work as well. So do you still do both types now or?

Sam Hope: 4:49

I still see a few young people. I don't see so many in private practice. But I mean, there's a real demand for it. But. It's it's more challenging working with young people because of, you know, the autonomy issues that young people have. But but yeah, so I, I don't think I could do solely working with youngsters, but. I but I like to keep a small amount of my practice working with youngsters.

Dr Peter Blundell: 5:17

Amazing. So could you tell us a little bit more maybe about your anti oppressive practice work and the training that you, that you do?

Sam Hope: 5:25

Sure. Yeah. So I'm actually working on a an e learning at the moment. That sort of just looks at actually how we sort of do anti oppressive therapy from a person centered perspective. And really I've been trying to help people understand the relational aspects of anti oppressive practice that often when we are um, sort of failing marginalized folks is because we're failing to empathize with marginalized folks. We're failing to build relationship to marginalized folks. And often what happens in the dynamics, within workplaces, within the therapy room is that we're inserting our own stories about that person, or we're you know, inserting sort of our cultural indoctrination around, you know, ideas about that person in between us and them, and it's sort of getting in the way of us actually meeting that person. So an awful lot of what what I do, I train around mental health and disability, trans, LGBT. And then sort of more generally on anti oppressive practice and things like beyond unconscious bias and that sort of thing. So, yeah, what I'm generally trying to do is sort of get wake people up to the, to the idea of, what they don't realize they're doing what they're not aware they're inserting in between them and other people when they're when they think they're in relationship. And often there's lots of sort of hidden hierarchies and sort of hidden assumptions going on that we kind of just need to bring into our awareness. So I think. Therapists doing this work is quite useful because it's about relationship and it's about awareness. So so that's kind of why it's become a big thing for me. And obviously I do a lot around because I'm a trans person myself. I do a lot around, helping people unlearn the things they think they know about trans people. Which is unfortunately an awful lot at the moment. Sort of, misinformation going around. So, so I do quite a lot of that work too.

Dr Peter Blundell: 7:35

That's really interesting. I was thinking from a person centred perspective, I think, how little, I think, is written from an anti oppressive, Place, which I think is really problematic that we haven't kind of ventured there and kind of haven't got many people kind of talk, but we've got people talking about but maybe not people writing about it and doing kind of some of the training. And the other thing I was thinking about as well as sometimes that risk with person centered, and particularly in training of that idea of, or we're being empathic we've got UPR, you know, therefore. We're, as the therapist, we're okay, you know, we're doing everything we possibly can, you know, for the client in front of us, and it's like, yes, but actually, we could not be empathizing because if we, the stuff that we don't know, or we don't understand or is out of our awareness, actually, we're not connecting with it. And that's the, that's the growing, the learning edge, isn't it?

Sam Hope: 8:26

You know, absolutely. And, you know, we could be in a state of incongruence because we because we don't know what we don't know. And we don't realize that we are inserting our own ideas into, into the relationship. So, so there's this, you know, this idea that the the person centered core conditions can be. just turned, switched on very, very easily. And I don't think people realize just how much work it is to get past their own kind of cultural stereotypes and indoctrination to really meet the client. So yeah, I would say person centered is aspirational um, and, and that it isn't Always as possible as we think it is when we're, when we're working across difference. And I think the sort of obliviousness of the kind of person centered approach to that is a shame because ultimately person centered is supposedly about power inequalities in the room and dismantling hierarchy between therapist and client. And that, you know, that to me is the heart of person centered practice. And if people aren't actively doing that and actively understanding the hierarchies present and the power inequalities present in society then there's a whole lot that they're just oblivious to that's going on in the room that they're not noticing. And so I don't really understand why we're not. Much more on enterprise to practice, except that, you know, Carl Rogers was of his time and he was kind of oblivious. If you watch him counseling African American client, you can see how he was oblivious to some of the, some of the stuff that was going on there and some of the. Power inequalities going on.

Dr Peter Blundell: 10:06

Absolutely. I completely agree with all of that. And I think sometimes people assume that that those issues of addressing power are, are within the theory. And when they are within the theory, but then we also have to actively work at that as well. And I think I don't think we've done a very good job of discussing that in the person centered community and looking at the. challenges and the difficulties that we face as person centered therapists. So I'll be looking out for your training as it, when it arrives.

Sam Hope: 10:36

Thank you. Yeah, no, I think we've, we've got a lot. Of work to do on this and, you know, as a profession is it is a whole profession issue. I just think person centered or what's to be better. But, but actually, I think therapy profession is probably 20 years behind social work and that's a real shame because, you know, we can. Definitely stand to do better, especially when it's often marginalized folks who are going to be coming to see us because they're under extra stress.

Dr Peter Blundell: 11:07

Absolutely. And I think there is really something important in that is thinking about the therapy profession and how far we still yet to go compared to some other professions that are based on kind of social justice and empowering people. So no, I completely agree. So as well as doing training around kind of LGBT and trans issues. You've also written a book, which is from a person centered perspective. The person centered counseling for trans and gender diverse people are practical guide. For anyone out there who's not read it, can you tell our listeners a little bit about what motivated you to write it? I suppose we've kind of hinted at that already a little bit and what they can expect from the book.

Sam Hope: 11:44

Thank you. Yeah. I mean, I really loved writing the book. And I mean, what motivated me to write it was the publisher getting in touch, having read a blog that I'd written. I gave a presentation at the Montford University and they thought my take on person centered, exactly what I was just talking about, sort of person centered sort of approach to working with diversity. They thought, oh, that would make a good book. So I did a pitch. And wrote the book but my intention when I wrote it was to write something that was really accessible, really easy so that you know, clients pick it up sometimes as well trans people pick it up. And find it sort of helpful in understanding themselves. So it's a real kind of basic ABC of trans, but, but not in any way dumped down in the sense of like trying to reduce it to this one kind of trans person or there's you know, it's really, really simple to understand what a trans person is, really kind of holding the complexity, but using simple language. Using sort of you know, sort of nice, straightforward, clear self reflective bits at the end of each chapter. And, yeah, have you thought about this, you know, aspect of gender? Have you thought about what it would be like to work with this particular kind of client? So it's that sort of Very, yeah, practical tangible, concrete. These are the sorts of things you can do. And the other thing that I really wanted to do was to bring in all of the other strands of intersectionality. So it also speaks to gender equality, inequality in general. It speaks to colonialism and racism and ableism and. Gives a reasonable framework for also thinking about anti oppressive practice. So hopefully if somebody reads this, it will also make them think about other aspects of their practice as well as working with trans people. So that's kind of what I want to do, wanted to do. I think that I achieved that. I think it's sort of, it's, you know, it's, it's not, it's, it's not a thick book, it's not, there's not a a lot to wade through, but hopefully it's quite a thoughtful book and it will get people thinking differently about the ways that they practice and also, you know, sort of maybe getting people thinking differently about their processes of thinking about their own gender as well.

Dr Peter Blundell: 14:15

Yeah, it's really good. It's great reflections in there. And I know we recommend it on all the different person centered courses that I've teach on or have taught on in the past. So if anyone's not read it go and go and grab a copy. I wondered shifting topic slightly a little bit I'm wondering how you see the wider therapy community and how kind of connected that you feel to other therapists within the profession.

Sam Hope: 14:40

It's a question. Yeah, I, I I have found it difficult since coming out as trans. I think prior when people perceived me as as a lesbian cisgender person I found it relatively comfortable, um, I didn't, I didn't face a lot of discrimination. But since coming out as trans, I have. I've faced a lot of discrimination in a lot of contexts and really concerning stuff. And I think I was surprised by that. I think I was surprised to see there's a particular difficulty maybe with, um, and I think there are other, you know, this isn't exclusive to being trans. I also see I'm also a neurodivergent person. I also see it towards neurodivergence that, that maybe because we come from a profession that deals with sort of ideas of psychopathology and neurodivergence and transness of both being perceived as psychopathology. That maybe there is this sort of idea that a trans and neurodivergent person can't be a therapist, um, and or that there, you know, that there is something wrong with being this kind of a person, um, in a way that I suppose would have happened very much, and still happens a bit for gay people, but not as much. So, you know, if you go back 10 years, 20 years, people thought. Homosexuality was a mental illness and I, I guess gay therapists weren't having an easy time with it. And I'm not saying it's all roses, but it's definitely got better. So yeah, I think there is that sort of, there is still this sort of understanding of you're the kind of person who would, who is client, not therapist. You're, you know, you're, you are very much in a one time position in society and what are you doing to, you know, treating yourself as an equal. And, and I've had a lot of infantilising attitudes and just generally being patronised as well. It's just shocking levels of transphobia that reflect the society that we're in right now, where, you know, we've got a prime minister who is, is spouting ridiculous nonsense about trans people and trans people are really a very much scapegoated minority currently. So I guess, you know, that's where we are and the profession unfortunately reflects that that it's.

Dr Peter Blundell: 17:28

I mean, I'm really, I'm really sad to hear that, but I'm not surprised. I think within the therapist connect community and on our social media platforms, some of the things that we have to try and manage, or some of the worst things that we have to try and manage is transphobia from within the profession and how some therapists conduct themselves online talking about. trans issues it's really, it's really difficult. So yeah, I'm very sorry that you've, you've had to experience that.

Sam Hope: 17:55

Yeah, I mean, it's hard. It's, I had to leave the BACP because of transphobia. I, I've, Um, can't really be in sort of, like, mainstream, like, Facebook groups and stuff like that, because, you know, you will inevitably come across people's sort of entitlement to tell you that you don't understand your own experience, that trans people aren't real, that, you know, it's usually some flavor of trans people aren't real, trans people don't exist. You're completely mistaken that trans people are a real thing in a hundred years research. on trans people. It's all nonsense. Trans people just don't exist. And yeah, it gets tiring pretty quickly. Yeah, it's exhausting. And it's particularly in the news and social media, it's kind of like a nonstop onslaught at the moment of people debating other people's lives and identities when it's not even related to their own experience. And again, I mean, it goes back to what I was saying about the complete empathy failure, because you know, sort of what I know is trans people are at huge risk if, if, if we're not included, if we're not included, it affects our mental health, and we're much more likely to be assaulted, we're more likely to be murdered. So, you know, we know that there is a real risk, especially to trans women of, of, of assault, of of murder, of hate crime of higher suicide rates, all of those things if, if, if trans women aren't treated as who they say they are, treated with respect and dignity And there's loads and loads of evidence for that. Meanwhile, there is zero evidence of any risk attached to trans people being given civil rights. There's, I mean, it's absolutely proven that trans people gaining civil rights causes no extra danger to anybody, including cis women, including children. There's no, there's, there isn't an actual risk attached to trans people being treated with dignity and respect. buT I always find it very interesting that, you know, sort of, I'm seeing the, the results of this, and trans people experiencing these high levels of risk of assaults, trans people dying you know, I get to hear about that every day, and there is an absolute silence around, you know, concern for the well being of trans people. It just there, it just doesn't register for people that we should be concerned that, you know, trans women are much more likely to be sexually assaulted than cis women. Trans women are much more likely to be Murders, trans women are much more likely to sort of experience sort of worse mental health and as proven because of the way they're treated. So, so our mental health is very contingent on how we're treated in society. And this sort of minority stress model, you know, it's really well proven now and yet people are still sort of saying, Oh, well, trans people are mentally ill because they're trans. It's like, no, it's, you know, well established that it's because. Because we're marginalized. And I think it's really important, and I think that's where social media can be a real problem in terms of where people are getting their information and research, and things like that, to kind of be up to date in terms of what is actually happening, and what we know is kind of happening, and how people are being marginalized and oppressed in different communities. Yeah. But, and again, because trans people are infantilized, the, the sort of, and anybody who works with trans people is infantilized, you know, this enormous body of research is so well established. And the, and the, and the transphobes have about three papers, all of which have been very, very carefully and well debunked. And yet, our body of research counts for nothing because it's all seen as biased because it's pro trans. So there's a sort of circular thing where people. It doesn't matter how much information you give people that's correct. They will still sort of lean on the the far right, let's face it, information that there is so much of out there. And, you know, I think people's ability to, um, see information as biased and propaganda is, is, is a little bit thin sometimes because, yeah, they I understand it because if I go on YouTube, I can see you know, if I'm looking up something trans related, the first you know, sort of 20 videos will be telling me that lots of trans people detransition. That's not true, but that's what the first few, you know, or they'll be telling me that trans women are dangerous predators or whatever. So I, I get that. You know, algorithms on online will lead people down a path of misinformation, but people have got to learn to be able to sift through that information and realize that it's propaganda and

Dr Peter Blundell: 22:50

pushing a moral panic as well. It's into people's, you know, fears and all kinds of things, whether it's not actually based in reality. Yeah. Thank you for, for talking about that. This might link into some of those things we were talking about there, but I suppose what do you think is the biggest challenge that the counseling and psychotherapy profession faces right now?

Sam Hope: 23:15

Yeah, I was thinking if I could. think of something else to say other than, other than anti oppressive practice but I really can't because I feel like this is actually at the heart of, I, you know, the political context we're in now is, is, the social context we're in is, is alarmingly going towards the right, for whatever reason that happens. It's really, It's interesting psychologically to see people kind of following the herd on this, you know, quite scary path. You know, we've asked in the past sort of how do these things happen and suddenly here they are happening and we're seeing things like, you know, ethnic cleansing happening in our own country. You know, we've seen so many disabled people dying under government policy and people barely blinking about it. And. And, and I guess for me, the profession reflects the wider context, but, you know, we've always had a role to be countercultural to help bring stuff into awareness for, for, for our clients and for our sort of corner of the world that maybe aren't being thought about and talked about and, and it seems like if we're leaving all of that political context, kind of out of the therapy room and out of the training room, then we are, you know. Really failing to do our job, which is to really be awake. And I think it's particularly interesting is how many counselors are quote unquote anti woke. Just when you think about the word woke, it, you know, it is about coming awake. It's about really noticing what's going on in the world. It's a wonderful. Words that comes from the black community, and yet it's being used as a negative and I find that really surprising. So, so I think that, yeah, our job, probably as therapists is to wake up to become woke. It's not, it's not an additional optional even add on, you know, and choose to do or not do it should be embedded within all of the teaching and work that we do. Absolutely, absolutely. And I just I recently wrote the gender chapter for the Sage handbook of counseling and psychotherapy. And I did a deep dive into the way gender comes into sort of the evolution of the the counseling profession and I was looking at sort of conceptual it. Sort of the, our conception of the family and and who is responsible for social problems and the way sort of wider social contexts like class inequality and racism have been is sort of scapegoated into individual community. So instead of like if somebody, something goes wrong for somebody, it's, it's the mum, it's the family, rather than it's the wider social context, it's the what it's. It's, you know, class, it's It's, you know, sort of marginalization. And, and I found that really interesting the way that, you know, sort of, I was kind of taught, even as a person centered therapist, there is this sort of low level idea in the running in the background constantly in our profession of, if something went wrong, it was probably the mum, you know, ultimately, it was like it was, it's how you were raised. It was how you, it's how your family were rather than the wider social context in which you grew up and the wide, and there's an incredible obliviousness to how much the wider social context that we grow up in impacts how we were raised, what it was like for a family, how much stress our family were under. And all of that stuff. So, so I find that really interesting that just how oblivious we are to this, these really big systemic factors.

Dr Peter Blundell: 27:09

It's really interesting. I'm thinking about from a person centered point of view, we do talk about introjected values. But then the focus tends to be then actually on the developmental process through. the family and what went on with like the main caregivers and as you say we've got it there but why don't we talk about it more those broader kind of impacts when it is it is there we just don't focus on it yeah yeah

Sam Hope: 27:32

it's really interesting that it was almost there but it didn't quite get to the systemic level yeah yeah

Dr Peter Blundell: 27:39

Sam, thank you so much. I could talk to you all day. It's been really absolutely fascinating. I suppose one last question is what are your future plans or anything that you've got coming up next that you'd like to share with us?

Sam Hope: 27:50

Okay, well, yeah I've got this anti oppressive practice e learning that I'm working on. I have, I've also got an essay on my website, which is sam- hope. co. uk around anti oppressive practice, which people might be interested in reading, which is about sort of relational aspects of anti oppressive practice. I'm doing some counsellor CPD in the new year that anyone can book on to, which is around gender diversity and neurodiversity. So the intersection of those 2 things well, the 1st 1 plus and neurodiversity, and the 2nd 1 sort of focuses more closely on trans and autism because that's something that people I think are particularly interested in knowing more about, which I will probably be putting information about on my website in due course, which I'm hoping will be a supportive space for therapists to come together and especially marginalized therapists. So I'm hoping that that will be turning up in the near future as well.

Dr Peter Blundell: 28:59

That's amazing. Once you've got the full details, you can share them with us and we can put them in the show notes so that people can access that if they're interested. And Sam, good luck for the future. And thank you so much for being a guest on the Therapist Connect podcast.

Sam Hope: 29:13

Thank you very much for inviting me. I've really enjoyed it.

Dr Peter Blundell: 29:17

Take care.

Dr Peter Blundell (2): 29:20

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