Practice 10 Compassion-Informed Care

Abstract

Jessie starts this chapter off with a personal recollection that illustrates the importance of listening for stories of joy to balance compassion-informed care with trauma-informed care. Jessie, Sandra, and Melissa position compassion-informed care within truth-telling about the continued coloniality of society and of healthcare theory and practice. They invite nuanced appreciation of diverse ways of knowing, doing, and being and the interconnectedness of shared humanity as a foundation for honouring compassion-informed stories. Compassion-informed care includes both listening with compassion and bearing witness. Compassion-informed care involves building relationships that are attuned to stories of joy, amplify acts of resistance or survivance, and foster agency and self-determination. The authors draw on the concept of double listening to encourage counsellors to attend to multiple storylines simultaneously, which prevents premature foreclosure listening fully and with compassion. Reconstruction of cultural identity and relationality is examined through cultural identity development, life transitions, and cross-cultural transitioning. Compassion-informed care invites careful attention to therapists’ experiences of compassion fatigue. Increasing distress tolerance and fostering self-compassion are positioned as important counselling self-care practices.

These themes come to life through the practice illustrations by the following co-authors:

• Judy Chew illustrates how modelling compassion can create space to honour storylines grounded in clients’ views of what is healthy and empowering for them.
• Zuraida Dada continues her story of apartheid in South Africa highlighting what she learned about resistance, resiliency, and allyship.
• Lisa Gunderson reflects on how her cultural identity development as a Black woman was shaped by living in both majority culture spaces and minoritized space, concluding: “I embody Blackness; therefore, I am always enough!”
• Kirby Huminuik speaks to healing as resistance, drawing on her experiences in Mexican communities that came together in acts of resistance as part of collective healing following grave human rights abuses.
• Fatima Saleem speaks to her lived experiences as a racialized Muslim woman mental health professional, including her cross-cultural transitioning.
• Gina Wong revisits the Lionhearted conversations model in Chapter 2.1, highlighting the importance for therapists to enhance their distress tolerance to ensure they stay present and grounded in client–counsellor interactions and respond with compassion and care.

Co-Authors

Jessie King (she/her), PhD. Hadiksm Gaax di waayu. Jessie has matrilineal ties to Gitxaała, belonging to the Ganhada. She is also settler-European Irish/English on her father’s side. She is an experienced instructor, facilitator, and researcher with a background in health, philosophy, and research design. Her areas of specialization include cultural safety, Indigenous rights and contemporary issues, research methodologies, decolonization and Indigenization, and instructional design. She is living on the traditional and unceded territories of Lheidli T’enneh.

Sandra Collins (she/her), PhD, is a co-editor of this book. She writes from the perspective of a feminist, lesbian, cisgender, woman with an invisible disability, who is a white, retired professor, and inhabits a privileged social class. Over the 25 years of her academic and professional career, she focused her research, writing, and teaching on cultural responsivity and social justice in theory, research, and practice. This is her fifth book on these topics, two of which were awarded the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Counselling biannual book award. She also received a silver medal for best e-book design by the Independent Publisher Book Awards. 

Melissa Jay (she/her), PhD, RPsych, is a cisgender nehiyaw (Cree) member of the Métis Nation of Alberta and lifelong student of yoga philosophy. She is a cisgender, able-bodied woman who moves through the world with white-passing privilege. She is a psychologist and associate professor at Athabasca University. Her work is centred in reciprocity and relationship, decolonized healing, anti-oppressive practices, and the integration of ancient wisdom and psychology. Her intention is to share trauma-informed, culturally responsive care, alongside her ongoing collaborative research exploring relational accountability, Indigenous methodologies, and ethical engagement with community.

Judy Chew (she/her), PhD, RPsych, spent her career years (1992–2020) at the University of Calgary, Counselling Services where she held the positions of psychologist, tenured faculty member, associate adjunct professor, senior counsellor, and training director. In continuing her passion for lifelong learning, she is immersed in knowledge acquisition and writing on early Chinese immigration, sleuthing efforts into the unsolved mysteries of my ancestral background and the complex intertwining of lives with de(colonization), diversity themes, intersectionality, and social justice.

Zuraida Dada (she/her), MA, RPsych, CPsych, Registered Psychologist (South Africa), is South African by birth and lived under apartheid for most of her life. SheI was an anti-apartheid activist and was part of the first wave of IBAPoC “intelligencia” in postapartheid South Africa. She is the founder and president of Invictus Psychology & Consulting, an international psychology private practice. She is a seasoned psychologist with over 20 years of experience in South Africa and 16 years of experience in Canada, specializing in counselling psychology and industrial organizational psychology. She was the recipient of the Canadian Psychological Association’s 2021 John C. Service award and was recognized for her volunteer efforts by the Psychologists’ Association of Alberta as a Contributor of the Year in 2020.

Lisa Gunderson (Akua Offeibea, she/her), PhD, RCC, ACS, is the founder of One Love Consulting and an award-winning educator and equity consultant for families, educational, and organizational institutions. She is a registered clinical counsellor in British Columbia and an approved clinical supervisor in California. For almost 30 years she has focused on equity and anti-racism issues for racialized and minoritized populations, including Black ethnic identity in Canada and the U.S. In 2023 she received the John Young Advocacy Award from VCPAC for “courageous, principle-based efforts advocating for equity and access for all students.” For almost 10 years I have worked clinically with the ȽÁU,WELṈEW̱ Tribal School and the W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Secondary School where I served as a clinical school counsellor, peer, and intern supervisor.

Kirby Huminuik (she/her), PhD, RCC is a psychologist and has worked primarily with refugees and university student populations. Her clinical practice, leadership, and scholarly work are focused on the intersection between human rights and mental health. She has also served her professional community as a member of the American Psychological Association Task force on human rights, the Canadian Psychological Association committee for human rights and social justice, and the advisory committee of the Global Network of Psychologists for Human Rights.

Fatima Saleem (she/her), MEd, RSW, CCC, is a registered social worker with over 10 years of successful experience as an educator, researcher, counsellor, and community programs coordinator. Her main interests are mental health and social well-being of youth, newcomers, and refugee populations. She believes in her clients’ strengths and abilities, and she works to empower them as they heal and recover.

Gina Wong (she/her; they/them), PhD, RPsych, is a psychologist, researcher, writer, and a perinatal mental health certified (PMH-C) clinician. She is dedicated to increasing literacy, focus, and successful treatment for maternal mental health illness in Canada, particularly for women of colour. She co-founded and served as the vice-president of the Postpartum Support International-Canada. She has authored or edited three books related to mothering: : Moms Gone Mad: Motherhood and Madness Oppression and Resistance; Mothering in East Asian Communities: Politics and Practices ; and Maternal Infanticide and Filicide: Foundations in Maternal Mental Health Forensics.

Citation

King, J., Collins, S., Jay, M., Chew, J., Gunderson, L., Huminuik, K., Saleem, F., & Wong, W. (2025). Practice 10 Compassion-informed care: Listening for stories of joy. In S. Collins and M. Jay (Eds.), Decolonizing health, healing, and care: Embodying culturally responsive and socially just counselling (Chapter 4.4). Counselling Concepts. https://doi.org/10.71446/zx92624377