When searching for a therapist in Massachusetts, you may consider their experience, therapeutic approach, personality, gender, areas of specialty, or whether they offer in-person or online therapy. But for many people, another important question comes up:
Should my therapist share my race, ethnicity, or cultural background?
Maybe you’re specifically searching for a therapist who shares your culture or racial identity. Or perhaps you’re wondering whether a therapist from a different cultural background can truly understand your experiences.
There is no single right answer.
For some people, working with a therapist who shares important aspects of their identity can feel essential. For others, finding a culturally responsive therapist who is curious, open, and willing to understand their lived experience may matter more.
What may be most important is whether you feel seen, understood, respected, and safe enough to be yourself in therapy.
Race, ethnicity, and culture can influence how we understand ourselves, our families, relationships, emotions, success, mental health, and even what it means to seek therapy.
When a therapist shares aspects of your racial or cultural identity, there may be certain experiences that require less explanation.
For example, you might feel that your therapist more intuitively understands:
Research suggests that many people from racial and ethnic minority groups express a preference for therapists who share their racial or ethnic background. Clients may also perceive racially or ethnically similar therapists somewhat more positively. However, research has generally found that racial matching in therapy, by itself, does not guarantee better treatment outcomes.
In other words, representation can matter tremendously—but shared identity alone does not determine whether a therapist will be a good fit.
Two people can identify with the same racial or ethnic group and still have remarkably different lives.
Culture is shaped by much more than race. Geography, socioeconomic background, religion, immigration history, generation, language, gender, sexual orientation, family structure, education, and countless other experiences influence who we are.
Even within the same family, people may relate very differently to their cultural identities.
A therapist who looks like you should therefore not assume that they automatically understand you. Similarly, a therapist who comes from a different background may be capable of understanding you deeply.
Cultural similarity can create a bridge—but curiosity is still necessary.
When searching for a culturally competent or culturally responsive therapist, you may come across another important term: cultural humility.
Rather than expecting therapists to be experts on every culture or identity, cultural humility recognizes that a therapist cannot know everything about another person’s experience.
It involves remaining curious, examining one’s own assumptions and biases, and being willing to learn directly from the client.
The American Psychological Association emphasizes that responsiveness to race and ethnicity is an ongoing process and encourages psychologists to recognize how race, ethnicity, culture, bias, and broader social systems can influence clients’ experiences.
Research has also found an association between therapist cultural humility and the quality of the therapeutic relationship.
So, instead of only asking:
“Does my therapist share my race?”
You might also ask:
“Does this therapist make room for my culture and identity, even if their own is different from mine?”
A culturally responsive therapist doesn’t pretend that differences don’t exist.
Instead, they should be able to talk about them.
A therapist may come from a different racial, ethnic, religious, socioeconomic, or cultural background and still provide a space where you feel genuinely understood.
You might notice that your therapist:
Therapists will inevitably misunderstand things from time to time. What matters is also what happens after a misunderstanding.
Can your therapist hear you when you say, “That didn’t quite feel right”?
Can they become curious rather than defensive?
Can the two of you talk about what happened?
Being able to recognize and repair moments of misunderstanding—including misunderstandings involving culture, race, identity, or lived experience—can be an important part of building trust in therapy.
There are situations in which having a therapist who shares your racial or cultural identity may simply feel important to you—and that preference is valid.
Perhaps you’ve spent much of your life explaining your culture to other people and don’t want to do that in therapy.
Perhaps previous experiences with healthcare professionals left you feeling stereotyped or misunderstood.
Maybe you want to explore racial identity, immigration, intergenerational experiences, or experiences within your cultural community with someone who may have greater firsthand familiarity with those experiences.
You don’t need to justify why representation matters to you.
Therapy asks you to be vulnerable. Feeling comfortable with the person sitting across from you matters.
Absolutely.
A therapist from a different background may bring genuine curiosity to your experience rather than assuming they already understand it. Some clients also find that discussing cultural differences within the therapeutic relationship becomes meaningful in itself.
What ultimately matters is whether your therapist is willing and able to understand your particular experience of the world.
When trying to find the right therapist, you might ask yourself after the first few sessions:
Those questions may tell you more about the potential of the therapeutic relationship than demographics alone.
There is no formula for finding the “perfect” therapist.
Shared racial or cultural identity can be incredibly meaningful and, for some clients, may be an important part of feeling safe and understood. For others, a therapist’s openness, warmth, cultural humility, clinical expertise, and ability to build a genuine relationship may matter more.
You are also allowed to decide what matters to you.
At Insights Psychological Services, we believe that meaningful therapy begins with curiosity about the whole person. Our clinicians strive to understand clients within the context of their identities, relationships, families, communities, cultures, and lived experiences—not simply through a diagnosis or set of symptoms.
Whether your therapist shares aspects of your identity or comes from a different background, you deserve a therapeutic relationship where important parts of who you are can be talked about openly.
If you’re looking for a culturally responsive therapist in Massachusetts, Insights Psychological Services provides online therapy for adults, college and graduate students, working professionals, and couples throughout Massachusetts. Our therapists provide thoughtful, individualized care and welcome conversations about race, culture, identity, relationships, family experiences, and the many factors that have shaped who you are.
Interested in finding a therapist who feels like the right fit? Contact Insights Psychological Services to learn more about our clinicians and schedule an initial consultation.
About the Author
Ashley O'Hearn, PsyD
