Mixed & Multiracial Belonging Therapy
You do not have to divide yourself to belong.
Living across cultures, races and family histories can bring richness, adaptability and a deeply layered sense of self. It can also leave you wondering where you fully belong—or whether you must simplify, explain or change yourself to be accepted.
Perhaps other people have tried to decide your identity for you. You may feel too much of one thing in one space and not enough of it in another. You may move between different worlds with ease while privately feeling that nowhere quite holds all of you.
Therapy can offer a place to explore your mixed and multiracial experience without being asked to choose one identity, prove your belonging or translate yourself for someone else.
Book a free 15‑minute introductory call. A brief, no‑pressure conversation to explore what brings you to therapy and whether working together feels right.
You have often been asked, “What are you?” or “Where are you really from?”
Other people make assumptions about your identity based on how you look.
You feel too Black, not Black enough, too Asian, not Asian enough—or caught between other imposed categories.
Different sides of your family recognise some parts of you while overlooking or rejecting others.
Your identity seems to shift depending on who you are with.
You have become skilled at adapting your language, behaviour or appearance to fit different spaces.
You feel pressure to choose one culture, race, nationality or community over another.
You experience both privilege and marginalisation, sometimes at the same time.
You feel grief about a language, culture, ancestry or family history that was not passed down to you.
Racism, colourism, shadism or anti‑Blackness have affected how you see yourself.
You feel responsible for explaining race or acting as a bridge between different groups.
A bereavement, family gathering, marriage, birth or return to an ancestral place has stirred questions about who you are.
You want to feel more rooted without having to create a simpler version of yourself.
You might be in the right place if…
There is no single correct way to be mixed
Mixed and multiracial experience cannot be reduced to one story.
It may include pride and loss, connection and exclusion, visibility and erasure, privilege and marginalisation. You may feel deeply connected to more than one culture while also experiencing distance from each. These realities can exist together.
You may have become a bridge‑builder, carrying knowledge between families, cultures or communities. You may have learnt to shape‑shift: reading what a space requires and adjusting yourself so that you can enter it safely. These abilities can hold creativity, perception and strength—and become exhausting when you are always translating, mediating or adapting but rarely feel received as a whole person.
Your mixedness is not a problem to resolve. The work is not to determine which identity is most authentic. It is to understand how your experiences have shaped you and create room for the full complexity of who you are.
When an experience has no language
Mixed people are often left without language for experiences that are psychologically real but difficult to name.
You may have sensed exclusion without knowing whether you were “allowed” to call it racism. You might have been told that your proximity to one culture means another part of your experience does not count. Family members may have denied differences in colour, treatment, power or belonging.
Without language, it can be difficult to recognise an experience as real. Confusion can become self‑doubt:
Was I imagining it? Am I making too much of this? Do I have the right to feel hurt?
Therapy can help you name what happened without forcing your experience into a rigid category. Finding language is not about fixing your identity; it can be a way of gathering previously separated parts of the self back together.
Belonging at life’s thresholds
Questions of identity and belonging can become especially powerful during periods of bereavement, illness, migration, marriage, birth or family transition.
Funerals and cultural rituals may bring you into contact with ancestry, faith, family responsibility and inherited traditions. You may experience a profound sense of recognition while also feeling like an outsider. You may belong to the ritual and still feel estranged from parts of the family system holding it.
Grief can be about more than the person who has died. It may include grief for:
Languages, traditions or histories that were not passed down.
A culture you feel connected to but cannot easily access.
Family stories that were hidden, erased or altered.
The hope that one day your belonging would become uncomplicated.
The version of yourself you had to become to survive within your family.
The possibility of being fully known by people who could not see all of you.
Love, harm, loyalty, anger, tenderness and relief may coexist. Acknowledging one does not erase the others.
You can honour those who came before you without denying what caused pain. You can remain connected to ancestry without carrying every inherited expectation. You can grieve what was lost while deciding that some patterns will not continue through you.
Remembering who we are
The philosophy of Remember Who We Are Therapy is that healing is not simply about becoming someone new. It can also be a process of remembering who we are beneath trauma, shame, cultural expectations, family roles and inherited stories.
Remembering is not an attempt to return to an idealised past, nor does it require you to accept every part of your cultural or family inheritance uncritically. It begins with reality:
What happened? What was lost? What sustained you? What was silenced?
What belongs to you and what were you taught to carry for other people?
The process may involve:
Remembering → Acknowledging → Healing → Clearing → Integrating → Knowing → Choosing
We remember what has been forgotten or pushed aside, acknowledge the reality of our experience, attend to what has been wounded, begin to clear what no longer belongs to us, integrate different parts of our story, deepen our knowledge of ourselves and make more conscious choices about how we wish to live.
Remembering makes freedom possible because it allows you to choose what you carry forward.
Ancestry without idealisation
Ancestry can be a source of strength, continuity and spiritual meaning. It can also be complicated by colonialism, migration, displacement, family secrecy, racism and intergenerational harm.
You may feel drawn towards an ancestral culture while knowing very little about it. You may be reconnecting with names, places, traditions or histories that were hidden, shamed or forgotten. You may feel anger that this knowledge was not preserved for you.
Therapy cannot recover every missing piece of a family or cultural history. It can, however, help you attend to what the absence means and develop a relationship with ancestry that is emotionally honest.
You do not need to romanticise your ancestors to belong to them. You can recognise their survival, wisdom and complexity while also choosing not to repeat the harm they carried.
How therapy can support you
Therapy may help you to:
Explore your identity without being asked to choose one part of yourself.
Understand how race, culture, family and belonging have shaped your emotional life.
Find language for experiences that have previously felt confusing or invisible.
Process racism, colourism, shadism, anti‑Blackness and identity‑based exclusion.
Recognise when shape‑shifting protects you and when it disconnects you from yourself.
Explore the emotional cost of being a bridge, translator or mediator.
Grieve cultural disconnection, lost language and fragmented family histories.
Work with complicated feelings towards parents, family, culture and community.
Explore how bereavement or other life transitions have changed your sense of identity.
Develop boundaries that do not require you to abandon connection or cultural values.
Build a more internally rooted sense of belonging and decide which values, traditions and stories you want to carry forward.
The aim is not to arrive at a final, fixed definition of who you are. Identity can remain living, relational and evolving. The work is to become more able to inhabit your complexity without shame.
How I work
I offer integrative, transpersonal, trauma‑informed and transcultural psychotherapy.
Our work may explore present relationships, childhood and family experiences, attachment patterns, cultural histories and the ways identity is experienced within the body. We can also attend to dreams, imagery, spirituality, ancestry and questions of meaning where these are relevant to you.
I understand mixedness as more than a demographic category. It can be an internal and relational experience of moving between worlds, holding different realities and searching for somewhere that does not require you to fragment yourself.
My role is not to define your identity or decide which community you belong to. I offer a reflective relationship in which your experience can be recognised, questioned and understood at your own pace.
About me
I’m Jamila Andersson, a UKCP‑registered integrative transpersonal psychotherapist and the founder of Remember Who We Are Therapy.
My perspective is based on my Nigerian and Filipino heritage, my multicultural upbringing and my clinical and professional work with mixed‑race identity, belonging, racism and intersectional experience. I recognise that shared aspects of identity do not mean our experiences will be the same, and I will remain curious about what your particular family, body, culture and history mean to you.
Alongside mixed and multiracial experience, I work with anxiety, low mood, relationship difficulties, grief, chronic illness or pain, life transitions and questions of meaning and self‑trust. You do not have to make race or identity the sole focus of your therapy.
Sessions and fees
Sessions are 50 minutes and usually take place weekly at a regularly agreed time.
Psychotherapy in-person and online: £90 per session, available across the UK.
In‑person psychotherapy: Paddington, London W2.
Working days: Tuesday to Friday.
Begin with an introductory call
If you are considering weekly psychotherapy, you can book a free 15‑minute introductory call. We can briefly discuss what is bringing you to therapy, what you are looking for and whether my approach and current availability are a suitable fit.
Book a free 15‑minute introductory call
You do not need to arrive with a clear definition of who you are. We can begin with the parts of your experience that are asking to be recognised.
If your experience of belonging is connected to people‑pleasing, self‑silencing or difficulty saying no, you may also wish to read about Boundaries, Belonging and Self‑Trust Therapy.