FABRICE LUBIN (HE/HIm)

Founder + Supervisor

I am a clinical psychologist, poet, first generation Haitian immigrant, and father. 

My professional experience is reflected across the lifespan and in a variety of settings including trauma-work, college counseling, IOP/PHP hospital programming, depression, anxiety, self-injury, career changes, and cultural identity exploration. For Real Therapy (& For Real Spaces) offers an opportunity to interweave evidence-based practice with an emphasis toward radical change. I work to create concise, supportive, and tangible interventions.

Want to know more? Here's my LinkedIn + Instagram.
Questions? frlubin@forrealtherapy.com

INTERVIEW BIO WITH Fabrice Lubin

How does your therapy approach differ from traditional expectations of therapy?

As someone who has been both a "consumer" of psychotherapy and someone who provides it – I always felt a lack of engagement in the therapist and client connection. In my graduate program, we were instructed to observe for certain tells, signs, symptoms, problems, and conditions. All of it driven towards the purpose or aim of diagnosis. This is basically a problem-oriented or medical model that says, "You have a disease, and we need to determine what the cure is." I found this way of approaching people to be reductionistic and, at times, outright harmful. What was missing was the artfulness, the constructive, how our difficulties can contribute toward our expansion collectively and individually. 

Therapy is not a passive space for me. It is an active, engaging, co-created moment that seeks to promote healing. When this is happening, therapy isn't just talking; it is actively experiential. Inner-peace, tranquility, compassion all of these things require maintenance; otherwise they can grow stale.

So I encourage movement and tangible authenticity. 

We will dance in our sessions, we will DEBATE in our sessions, we will write terrible poetry that shouldn't be seen by anyone else, we will send text messages to friends you haven't reached out to in a long time, we will write that email to your parents that you've always wanted to send. Then, you go back to your life and try to apply what we've explored. When you come back in we determine together if things are moving in the direction you want. 

Approaching therapy with this active approach can provide vital feedback - the experience is necessary to confront personal growth challenges. 

How do you know if an intervention or therapeutic approach is successful?

Well, I am always checking-in, and I never assume that things are going well. I never assume things are poorly either.

An increase in symptoms doesn't mean you're doing the wrong thing. For example, if a client tells me, "man, I am crying all the time now! I never used to cry!" I don't necessarily assume this is a bad sign. Context matters and so if you're working with someone who struggles to share their feelings or thoughts – crying would imply something is shifting within themselves. Perhaps in the past not crying was a form of restriction, fear, or repression. Context matters in determining adequate interventions therefore, we need to examine several factors social, physical, and spiritual.

Tell us more about the role of culture and therapy?

Growing up as a child of Black Haitian immigrants in the United States, I will say that we do not exist in an openly curious society, especially when learning what makes us different. We often rush to say, "everyone deep down is the same," which I think presents a missed opportunity to share our unique narratives. Stories are how we transmute our burdens into wisdom. When we limit the stories we can share, we restrict a part of the world that we can see. For a long time, our culture placed a significant stigma on those receiving therapy.

In some cases, seeking to improve mental health was even weaponized to disqualify or restrict a person's voice. With advances in technology and access to therapeutic services, we directly see how culture can benefit from mental health. Seeking therapy can be an opportunity to model for others how to ask questions, remain curious, and endure when facing oppressive conditions. 

For Real Therapy (and by extension For Real Spaces) serves as an opportunity to integrate culture and mental health. We believe therapy should be engaging, rewarding, and unique to each individual. If in the past, you've found therapy to be too abstract or removed, then you will most likely find our approach to be a bit different.  

We are passionate about using creative approaches to foster real progress. 

We relate to our client's struggles and do not place ourselves "above" their own experiences. 

We know that access to spaces where sharing, expressing, and connecting is a requirement of health.

What if I come from a culture that condemns therapy, and this is all new to me? What should I expect from you?

I understand what it's like to come from a culture where therapy isn't the norm. There is a fear that therapy will be fixated on blaming someone, or you will change as a person altogether, but I actually believe that my role as a therapist isn't to change you. It's to encourage you to continue leaning into who you are.

As a parent, what I do with my daughter and my son – and my responsibility to them – is to let them be them as much as possible, and to make sure they don't cause damage beyond repair. They don't need me to tell them where to go but to protect their interests. I'll let my son roam, and I'll make sure to physically block his body. Clinicians should be seeing patients the same way; they should be protecting their clients' bodies, not pushing them toward being someone they're not. Everything we do for your healing is influenced by you as a person.