Conversation with Rosalba Rios, therapist and artist.

Rosalba Rios is a friend and colleague of mine. She is a therapist and artist who has a wide breadth of knowledge and experience. Here at Counseling for Creative People, we talked together to share her voice as a therapist, a person of color, a creative, a social justice advocate, and someone with a deep commitment to her faith.  Enjoy!

What are some good things happening right now regarding access to mental health services?  What are some of the issues you’ve seen at your job and in the community?  What’s working and what’s not working?

I think what’s working right now is a general awareness around mental health. There’s more of an awareness about mental health in general and since I live in the Latino/LatinX community and I work in a LatinX community I would say hands down there is more of an openness to get help when it comes to mental health, than before. Now, the good thing is we have telehealth, so I find that at least with my own clients, a lot of the parents don’t feel the need or they don’t have the stress with regards to coming to the office.  But the downside is there are a lot of technical issues like the Internet sometimes doesn’t work.  Even the space can be an issue. That’s something that I’ve noticed is a little bit of an issue, when it comes to privacy.  Where can clients go and have some privacy and really feel like it’s a sacred space or a private space between them and I? I find that is more challenging when it comes to telehealth at least with the community that I’m seeing and the community that I live in as well.

What’s inspiring you the most these days in terms of the therapy work? 

I think Covd-19 really exposed the good, the bad, and the ugly on a lot of facets of society. For instance, poverty, inequality, who gets to be essential, and those people that are deemed essential and are not compensated properly.  I think it’s really exposing a lot of systemic racism and ableism. It’s just really exposing a lot of things. So, within Christianity and specifically Evangelical Christianity it’s exposing a lot of incredibly harmful theology that is incongruent with what we profess. And so what I’m noticing is there is a schism right now even in the American Christian church. People of color are presenting a different narrative and are more passionate about social justice within our Christian tradition looking at what Scripture says and the teachings of Jesus and all of that being centered around justice.  This differs from the dominant, often White Evangelical Christian community. And what I’m noticing is there’s more of an energy around seeing all these broken systemic, unjust situations, with COVID 19 and the pandemic. It’s energizing to see mobilization, even mobilization on a political scale.  

Regarding my own pastor, I’ve been in and out of that church but my own pastor who is a Guatemalan immigrant has been responsive to the recent social movement.  You know it’s a very different world when you’re dealing with immigrant Latinos and when you’re looking at more of the racism in all these things. It’s a different world and not that they don’t feel the injustice but as far as being involved, that’s not as prominent at least within the Christian community. What I noticed after the George Floyd [protests] was that I had a really good conversation with my own pastor and he was having conversations with other pastors including Black pastors who were sharing their narratives.  And I noticed his messages began to change.  And I noticed that even this morning.  I don’t go every Sunday but I happened to go this morning and I immediately noticed there was this put into action tone, not just like a passive faith but do something with it: feed your neighbor, look for people that are that are in need and that is exciting and that’s not the only space that I’ve seen that in.  Other churches, other church leaders are really coming together with Black church leaders and there is this really energizing movement.

Unfortunately, there is this flipside, and there also the opposite reaction with the more White affluent Evangelical movement. They’re going to complete opposite direction and defying quarantine orders and claiming discrimination and all of these things and persecution.  And so it's this strange time to live in, even within the faith.  In some ways it’s exciting at least among people of color, there does seem to be this collaboration between more marginalized people of faith that you didn’t see prior to the pandemic as much.  So as a [mental health] clinician, I feel like that’s what inspires me on a personal level to do what I do. It’s a core faith issue for me because I feel like I was destined to live during this and I’m here and what can I do to help? That’s what I feel is core to the Christian message. So that’s what fuels me right now.

Rosalba B. Rios was born in Mexico City and explores the connections between faith, human experience, narratives, and identity both as a therapist and visual artist.  Rosalba has a B.S. in Studio Art from Biola University in La Mirada, California, an M.S. in Clinical Counseling from California State University, Fullerton, and an M.A. in Theological Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. Rosalba currently works in mental health serving underprivileged children and families in the Los Angeles area.