Bianka Hardin, Psy.D., owns Centered Therapy Chicago, a small group psychology practice focusing on relational, feminist, body-oriented, and trauma-informed therapy. As an alumna of and associate professor at The Chicago School and a practicum supervisor for doctoral trainees from The Chicago School and other schools, Dr. Hardin embodies the core values of the institution and integrates them into all her work.
While Hardin’s career may be informed by her personal and professional experiences, it is her respect and attention to other cultures that makes her the leader she is today.
Born on a U.S. Air Force base in Germany to an American dad and German mother, Hardin moved every one to three years until high school, bouncing from Germany to various states in America. Her bicultural upbringing ensured transition was a normal part of her life.
“That’s what ultimately got me interested in people’s identities, cultural issues, and psychology as a whole,” Hardin says. “It was challenging and also contributed a lot to who I am today in terms of just really appreciating the importance of getting to know people, understanding their culture, and adapting in new situations.”
After 20 years in the Air Force, her father retired. The family moved to Michigan, then Ohio, where she attended college to study psychology before moving to Chicago for graduate school. While she had learned to find connection wherever she lived out of necessity, Hardin craved a stable community that reflected the type of environment she grew up in.
“I really craved going to a place that was more diverse,” Hardin says. “Growing up with a mother who is an immigrant and having grandparents who didn’t speak English, I had to navigate two cultures. It got me really interested in the importance of understanding our identities and having a soft spot for and interest in people who come to the U.S. from other countries. I want to learn about their journeys, their stories, opportunities, and barriers.”
She chose The Chicago School to earn her Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology because the school offered a multicultural competence concentration through which she could dive deeper into cultural and identity issues. It was the start of a long relationship with The Chicago School, where she still teaches and supervises.
Upon graduating, she embarked on what she calls three separate chapters in her career, each one building on the other. The first chapter was her postdoctoral fellowship at the Village of Hoffman Estates Department of Health and Human Services in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, working in the community to provide health and mental health services to residents who couldn’t traditionally access them. The second chapter was working full time at The Chicago School to start the child and adolescent track in the Clinical Psy.D. department. The third and most recent chapter was starting a private practice, Centered Therapy Chicago (CTC), a trauma-informed practice that seeks to support clients in their healing and to understand and appreciate a person’s full humanity and experience. At CTC, clients are recognized as resilient and complex individuals who are so much more than their trauma.
“I wasn’t meant to be in an office by myself seeing clients,” Hardin says. “I was meant to be in the community connecting and growing with others on a team. To me, that meant creating a practice that did just that.”
CTC is a place to learn and grow and is even a practicum site for students at The Chicago School and other professional schools.
“I love learning. I love training. I love being a supervisor. We’re going into our fifth or sixth cohort of being a practicum site here at CTC. It’s thrilling to be a part of a student’s professional journey. We’ve even started having people come back for their postdocs after being practicum students,” Hardin says.
She was inspired to imbue her practice with the community work, training, and team building from the first and second chapters of her career.
She also took inspiration from her personal life. Having searched for connectedness so much when she was young, she knew how community could be an integral element of healing and prevention. Hardin sought to make that a key tenet of her practice, reminding her clinicians that people are wired for connection.
In addition to this community focus, Hardin wanted to ensure her practice was trauma-informed. She was deeply impacted by a trauma class she took at The Chicago School when she was earning her Psy.D. At the time, a lot of people weren’t learning about trauma. To her, it was both critically needed and far too rare, something that still resonates for her and her practice.
“We are living through a collective trauma in terms of what’s happening in our society and the increased experiences of discrimination and oppression. People learning and knowing about trauma should just be infused into all graduate curricula and be a part of continuing education for therapists,” Hardin says.
Hardin’s intention is to infuse cultural awareness and cultural humility into everything at her practice, and she continuously learns about cultural competence and humility from the early career therapists and practicum students at CTC. Hardin says she received a solid foundation and appreciation of cultural competence at The Chicago School and also recognizes learning from a younger generation of therapists is paramount to her development as a psychologist.
“The practicum trainees are committed to cultural competence,” Hardin says. “They want to integrate social justice into their work with clients. They are really interested in talking about their identities and the identities of their clients and intersectionality. And it’s just a part of their vocabulary and values. When I was a student and teaching diversity, I did not see the level of commitment to these issues that I see today. It’s clear that The Chicago School’s emphasis on this is working and this is so refreshing and needed.”
“I loved being a student at The Chicago school,” Hardin adds. “It was just such an exciting time to learn to become a trauma therapist, which was less prevalent at the time, and really get into coursework focused on multicultural competence and cultural diversity,” Hardin says. “It felt like the school was providing many opportunities for me to dive deep into really important areas that still influence who I am as a psychologist.”
Ultimately, Hardin’s love and pursuit of learning keeps those values top of mind. Whether it’s with her own clients, clinicians, or students, Hardin rises to the occasion every time to be someone others can look to, and to never rest on her laurels.
“As an ethical, competent psychologist, we need to be sharpening our own saws so that we can keep up with what’s going on in the field. I think lifelong learning is essential for all of us,” Hardin says. “It’s so important for us to just constantly be thinking about our own identities, the fluidity of identity, our clients’ identities and how social, political, macro system issues impact our health and mental health.”