Meet Sonja Harrison

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sonja Harrison. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sonja below.

Sonja, thank you so much for joining us and offering your lessons and wisdom for our readers. One of the things we most admire about you is your generosity and so we’d love if you could talk to us about where you think your generosity comes from.

When we think of generosity, oftentimes we confine it to largesse or currency such as material gifts or the giving of one’s time. Even more so, we associate generosity as something we bestow upon another. However, I believe the greatest form of generosity is embodying kindness and grace, and gifting them to myself first.

When I speak of kindness I feel the need to distinguish it from “being nice”. Kindness is respect for one’s personhood while being nice is more so related to being agreeable. Existing in kindness is always an act of love, first to one’s self and subsequently to others. Conversely, being nice can be detrimental, particularly when we’re going along to get along because it can negate personhood – the right to be seen, heard, and supported for one’s unique self and experience.

As a Black woman in my mid-50s, I have experienced and witnessed, especially to other Black women, innumerable unprovoked affronts in every sphere of life: family, educational institutions, workplaces, as a consumer, likely any space you can imagine. And in every instance, I wanted someone to protect me or come to my rescue.

Through therapy I came to know what it is to be seen, heard, and supported for my unique self rather than being subject to another’s imposed ideas or abstractions of who I should be. And that healed and continues to heal me.

The affronts still abound, but my healing affords me capacity to protect myself and come to my own rescue. I am different, so I respond differently – I use my voice to speak to the unkindness and express how I want to be treated versus reciprocating ugliness.

Now that I no longer experience the world as a dangerous place, my senses are clear and I can recognize when others do, and as long as they are not a true danger to me I can respond with kindness by using my voice or choosing to disengage. Realizing that what someone is doing is 100% about them and not at all about me is freeing. It frees me from carrying their affronts and from needing them to be accountable for my hurt feeling, and that’s what allows me to offer grace.

I try to be intentional about offering kindness and grace in abundance everyday which means it’s ok for me to make mistakes and not get it right. As practicing kindness and grace becomes embedded in my ethos, I automatically gift it to others.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I am a psychotherapist who operates a private practice in Washington, DC. I’m also licensed to practice in Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas, and California.

I love what I do, and I love my clients! Prior to working in my passion as a psychotherapist, I was engaged in diversity and inclusion work and served as Senior Director for Access, Diversity, and Inclusion at an education association where I worked for more than 20 years.

At the age of 40, I enrolled part-time in a MSW program to pursue my goal of private practice psychotherapy. I graduated three years later and subsequently began completing the requisite supervised practice hours for licensure. I did this while still working full-time. In March 2019, I excitedly transitioned to full time private practice. I’m sharing this part of my story to encourage anyone who has a dream to pursue it, no matter how hard it is.

I am trained in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, a holistic mind-body approach to healing trauma. My therapeutic focus is the unique experiences of Black women. I guide my clients in mind-body practices to heal while providing extensive psychoeducation to help them understand how trauma/unresolved fear impacts their thoughts, behaviors, and emotions.

I bring my ethos of kindness and grace into my practice. A client once described me as being “soft on the soul”. I take that as the highest compliment. My clients come to me because the world has treated them unkindly. That I can offer a different experience means everything to me.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

The qualities that have been most impactful in my journey and still are mainstays for success are (1) being open and knowing that there’s always so much more to know; (2) being curious about my field of expertise – the nervous system and how we respond to trauma/unresolved hurts and fears – which allows me to never get bored; and (3) approaching my work in collaboration with my clients, as I am not the expert and we learn, grow, and heal together.

My advice to everyone is to know that we are all connected. No matter how successful you are or erudite in your chosen field, if you cannot connect to yourself and others from a place of openness and curiosity, you can become stagnant and jaded. To remain in love with what you do, you must be open and curious. This allows us to continue to connect, learn, and grow.

Okay, so before we go, is there anyone you’d like to shoutout for the role they’ve played in helping you develop the essential skills or overcome challenges along the way?

My husband and life partner of 32 years is my rock. He encouraged me to pursue my dream of becoming a psychotherapist and picked up the slack as I returned to school while working full-time and as I worked nights and weekends to fulfill my practice hours required for licensure. With 100% confidence, I can depend on him to support me and my dreams without question. His support has been and will always be invaluable, as it’s so much easier to jump when you have a secure safety net. I am forever grateful for his love and support.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://sonjaharrison.com/

Image Credits

Sonja Harrison photos