The Professional Counselor | Volume 14, Issue 1 55 example, counselors could simultaneously utilize family therapy as a mechanism to support structural change associated with the development of a client’s substance use and to promote accountability for harm caused by substance use within the family system. Furthermore, when harm from substance use extends to one’s community, in collaboration with clients and those directly impacted, counseling could be used to promote reparation for harm caused (Cullors, 2019). Counselors should be mindful of the possibility that clients may not readily share experiences of police violence and substance use because of distrust fostered by carceral systems and if they have experienced invalidation, blame, or neglect regarding their experiences of police violence. Thus, counselors can enhance safety, trust, and the potential for change with clients through a consistent practice of accurate empathy and attunement to clients’ subjective experience of police violence (Miller & Rollnick, 2013). Trustworthiness and Transparency Trustworthiness and transparency are essential given the systemic distrust fostered by histories of collaboration between helping professions and carceral systems (Jacobs et al., 2021; Klukoff et al., 2021). Counselors need to promote an optimal level of safety and trustworthiness with their clients through nonjudgement, empathy, transparency, positive regard, validation, normalization of the client’s responses to adversity, and consistency (SAMHSA, 2014). Counselors pursuing abolition can establish trustworthiness and transparency through using the informed consent process to build rapport and establish parameters of the therapeutic relationship within a societal context that largely criminalizes substance use. While Drustrup et al. (2023) offered inspiration for abolition in the therapeutic relationship, counselors are ethically obligated to make exceptions to confidentiality when imminent risk to self and others is established. Additionally, as mentioned above, substance use counselors may be required to make exceptions to confidentiality to share progress for courtmandated clients. Informing clients of these exceptions to confidentiality is standard in helping professions; however, abolition can maximize trustworthiness and transparency by going beyond merely capturing client signatures on informed consent documents. In addition to establishing the limits of confidentiality, counselors pursuing abolition are recommended to ensure that clients fully understand these limits and the impact of these limits on their participation in the therapeutic context. For example, a substance use counselor could clearly articulate known risks of making exceptions to confidentiality of the therapeutic relationship with police and legal system employees, such as increased risk of experiencing police violence, incarceration, and state-sanctioned surveillance. Counselors pursuing abolition who are directly embedded in carceral systems as a function of their employment, such as prisons, should inform clients of any dual or conflicting interests associated with their counseling in the prison system. Additionally, counselors can use open-ended questioning to provide clients an opportunity to check their understanding of confidentiality, its limits, and the impact of needing to make exceptions to confidentiality. Moreover, counselors pursuing abolition should collaborate with clients to identify external resources to counseling that offer greater trustworthiness that can facilitate transformation and healing from substance use in situations where clients may feel a lack of trust in counseling because of the threat of carceral systems. Peer Support Providing opportunities for peer support for clients who have experienced police violence and are living with substance use disorders could also be promotive and helpful for healing because of the access to other individuals who have undergone similar experiences. Group therapy has been associated with positive mental health outcomes, particularly among individuals with PTSD and substance use disorders, due to receiving mutual support from others who have similar experiences and can provide empathy, a sense of belongingness and collectivism, and the opportunity to provide and receive feedback; build safety through interpersonal relationships; and reduce feelings
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