Restoring What Racism Steals: The Impact and Healing of Racial Trauma in Clinical Social Work

Grounded in Critical Race Theory and informed by Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis, this study examines how Black and multiracial clinical social workers interpret racial trauma and anti-racist psychotherapy in their work with clients of color. Drawing on the counterstories of twelve Black and multiracial clinical social workers, the study explores how they understood racial trauma as continuous, cumulative, and intergenerational, and how they linked it to emotional, psychological, and somatic distress in clinical practice. Findings also show that Black and multiracial clinical social workers described anti-racist psychotherapy as a process grounded in validation, attunement, psychological liberation, and the co-creation of safety. The study offers practitioner-level insight into how clinicians make meaning of racial harm and healing in therapeutic settings. The paper argues that addressing racial trauma in social work requires culturally responsive, structurally aware, and explicitly anti-racist approaches to practice.