Clinical Conversation

Guest: Linda Thai, LMSW ERYT-200
On-Demand: Recorded September 3rd 2025

What if the traits we pathologize in our clients, hyper-independence, control, and perfectionism, aren’t just personal adaptations, but reflections of a much larger cultural story?

In this Clinical Conversation, trauma therapist and educator Linda Thai invites us to explore the intersection of colonialism, narcissism, and clinical practice. Through a trauma-informed, somatic, and decolonizing lens, we’ll examine how colonial systems shape not only our clients’ inner worlds but our therapeutic frameworks, our training, and our very presence in the room.

This isn’t about blame. It’s about awareness.
And from awareness, repair.

In this conversation, we’ll explore:

• How colonialism and white supremacy culture fuel narcissistic defenses, individually and systemically
• Ways these dynamics show up in the therapy room, often unspoken
• What it means to practice therapy that honors historical, ancestral, and cultural trauma
• How clinicians can begin to decolonize their own nervous systems, practices, and presence

Linda Thai is a trauma therapist and educator who specializes in brain and body-based modalities for addressing complex developmental trauma. Linda has worked with thousands of people from all over the world to promote mindfulness, recover from trauma, and tend to grief as a means of self-care, with a special focus on the experiences of adult children of refugees and immigrants. She has assisted internationally renowned psychiatrist and trauma expert Dr. Bessel van der Kolk with his private small group psychotherapy workshops aimed at healing attachment trauma, and holds a Master of Social Work with an emphasis on the neurobiology of attachment and trauma. Linda has studied Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Somatic Experiencing, Brainspotting, Internal Family Systems, Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment, Havening Touch, Flash Technique, and structural dissociation of the personality, and offers the Safe and Sound Protocol, yoga, and meditation within her practice. Working on the traditional lands of the Tanana Athabascan people in Fairbanks, Alaska, she is passionate about breaking the cycle of historical and intergenerational trauma at the individual and community levels.