Liberation Psychology in Practice – Free Training with Dr. Thema Bryant
Chronic stress, collective trauma, intergenerational trauma, and systemic oppression can shape a client’s psychological experience in ways that individual trauma frameworks alone may not fully address. In Liberation Psychology in Practice with Dr. Thema Bryant, joy is explored not as an afterthought, but as a protective factor and resistance strategy that can support resilience, cultural identity, and wholeness.
Grounded in liberation psychology, this free training offers practical, case-based ways to integrate joy into therapeutic work with marginalized clients. Dr. Thema Bryant introduces the J.U.S.T.I.C.E. model, a framework outlining seven pathways for cultivating and sustaining joy.
You’ll explore how joy, spirituality, creativity, community support, rest, intimacy, embodiment, and honest reflection can become meaningful parts of culturally responsive care. The training also considers the practitioner’s inner life, including self-awareness, self-care, community care, and the responsibility to become an agent of change.
This is not a surface-level conversation about positive thinking. It is an invitation to examine how liberation psychology can help make room for joy alongside the realities of trauma, oppression, and cultural disconnection.
Why Attend “Liberation Psychology in Practice with Dr. Thema Bryant”
For clients carrying chronic stress, collective trauma, intergenerational trauma, and the effects of systemic oppression, joy can be treated as something secondary to the “real” work. Liberation psychology offers another perspective: joy can be part of the work itself.
Dr. Thema Bryant presents joy as a protective factor and resistance strategy that can help clinicians think more expansively about resilience, identity, agency, and wholeness. Rather than separating healing from culture and lived experience, the training places them in conversation with one another.
Through the J.U.S.T.I.C.E. model, you’ll explore seven applied pathways for cultivating and sustaining joy with marginalized clients. The emphasis is practical and clinically relevant, with attention to truth, spirituality, restoration, connection, creativity, embodiment, and the practitioner’s own inner life.
Who Should Attend
This training is especially relevant for mental health professionals whose clients are navigating more than individual trauma, including chronic stress, systemic oppression, intergenerational wounds, cultural disconnection, and the exhaustion of simply surviving.
It is designed for practitioners who want a more culturally responsive, identity-affirming framework for helping clients make room for joy, resilience, agency, belonging, and wholeness within the therapeutic process.
- Counselors
- Social workers
- Psychologists
- Case managers
- Therapists
- Marriage and family therapists
- Other mental health professionals supporting marginalized clients
What You’ll Learn
You’ll begin by examining how oppression, systemic forces, and intergenerational trauma can shape psychological experience, along with the importance of affirming cultural identity and humanity in work with marginalized communities.
From there, Dr. Bryant explores joy as an emotion with physical, psychological, and social benefits, and as a protective factor and resistance strategy within liberation psychology. The training connects joy with resilience, cultural identity, agency, and wholeness without reducing the realities of trauma or oppression to positive thinking.
The J.U.S.T.I.C.E. model provides a practical framework for exploring joy through multiple pathways, while also inviting practitioners to consider their own identity, experience, self-care, community care, and therapeutic influence.
- How oppression, systemic forces, and intergenerational trauma can shape psychological experience
- How joy can function as a protective factor and resistance strategy in liberation psychology
- Ways to support resilience while affirming cultural identity and humanity
- How the Justice Pathway connects joy with agency, resilience, and identity
- How the Unearth the Truth Pathway uses honest reflection around trauma, identity, and lived experience
- How spirituality may contribute to joy and resilience for clients who draw on spiritual practices
- Why rhythms of engagement and restoration can support presence, rest, and well-being
- How connection, belonging, and supportive relationships contribute to mental health
- How creativity can support joy, personal identity, cultural identity, resilience, and agency
- How embodiment can reconnect joy with physical experience, vitality, and the body
- How practitioner self-awareness, self-care, and community care shape therapeutic influence
About Dr. Thema Bryant
Thema Bryant, PhD, is a psychologist, author, professor, sacred artist, and minister whose work brings together trauma healing, culture, identity, relationships, stress, oppression, and spirit.
She completed her doctorate in clinical psychology at Duke University and post-doctoral training at Harvard Medical Center’s Victims of Violence Program. She has served as president of the American Psychological Association and is a tenured professor of psychology in the Graduate School of Education and Psychology at Pepperdine University.
Dr. Bryant is also an ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, author of Matters of the Heart, and host of The Homecoming Podcast. Across her clinical work, teaching, ministry, and writing, she brings an integrated view of healing that places joy, culture, and identity within the work of trauma recovery.
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Join Dr. Thema Bryant for a practical exploration of joy as a protective factor, resistance strategy, and pathway for supporting resilience, identity, agency, and wholeness with marginalized clients.
- Nov 12 2026
- 11:00 am - 1:00 pm
Local Time
- Timezone: America/New_York
- Date: Nov 12 2026
- Time: 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
More Info
- Worldwide
