Ready to dive deeper? Therapeutic Listening Services (TLS) offers community members a guided experience in self-exploration and growth.
TLS is rooted in a combination of wisdom gathered from:
- Elders & ancestors in Black and Indigenous communities
- Motivational Interviewing (MI) techniques
- Alcoholics Anonymous
- The academic study & clinical practice of western Developmental Psychology
- White supremacy culture characteristics
- The theories and practices in decolonization & unlearning discussed in How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind by La Marr Jurelle Bruce
- Other Black scholarly literature
IMPORTANT: TLS is NOT traditional western therapy. Mental health diagnosis & licensure ARE NOT centered in TLS. Though keepers may hold a license of some kind or may have previously worked as licensed clinicians, TLS does not require a license and keepers do not report to any accredited licensing board. Giovanni’s Room’s TLS uses a community-based peer supervision model, and upholds the ethics outlined in our TLS Guidelines & Agreements.
TLS Framework
The foundation of TLS work is a holistic view of people & communities. It starts with the understanding that each person and community is formed and informed by six main elements:
- Self/Humanity represents who we are at our core, in our soul/within the collective soul of humanity and humanness.
- Social & Cultural Context represents our placement in society according to the identities we inhabit. For example, our social/cultural placement based on race, sex & gender, sexual orientation, ability/disability, socioeconomic class, whether we are native to the lands on which we live or are immigrants or refugees. This also includes the families and support systems that we are born into.
- Rules, Consequences, etc. represents what we have learned and how we function around social and legal rules. For example, what is your relationship to the idea of truth versus lies/lying? Do you lie? In what context(s). How do you view lying in the context of right and wrong? What consequences do you face as a result of your behaviors and choices?
- Genetics & Innate Personality represents the traits that we inherit from parents and ancestors, and those that we are simply born with. For example, physical strength or eye color, a sense of humor or natural artistic talent.
- Capacity for Learning, Growth, etc. represents how we interact with our surroundings. Specifically, how we take in information, understand what we take in, and adapt & grow from what we learn.
- Experience & Trauma represents our life experience, including the positive and negative things that happen in our lives.
What to expect:
TLS work starts with the basics of the framework. Keepers support clients in taking a developmental inventory of their childhoods so that they can better understand how they came to be the way they are.
Keepers guide clients as they delve into the arrows of the framework–the ways in which the different elements continue to affect how we behave and react today.
Clients identify areas of their lives that they want to work on, be they learning new skills for navigating disagreement, discomfort, and community, or unlearning harmful patterns from childhood traumas and negative experiences.
Keepers support clients in accessing tools for healing and changing old patterns, and highlight potential blind spots and opportunities for growth.
The beauty of TLS is that, like all living things, it functions cyclically. The techniques & skills can be used again and again as different things come up in life. Like the 12-steps of AA and the skills taught in Motivational Interviewing, TLS is meant to be repeated and applied seasonally and as needed/desired.
TLS is client-guided. Once a client has worked through the TLS framework for the first time, it is not necessary to start with a developmental inventory again. You can start with an issue that you’re having in your life and work backward to its sources, or you can take a deeper inventory of a specific time in your development and use that to understand how you are making decisions and building relationships & community now.