To be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight.
e.e cummings
MY APPROACH
My practice is grounded within the Interpersonal Dialogue, incorporating Person-Centred and Rogerian styles with Psychodynamic models of psychotherapy. I strictly abide by the ethical guidelines set by BACP and COSCA, offering both long-term psychotherapy and short-term counselling contracts. My practice is non-directive, relational and insight-oriented as opposed to authoritative, solution-focused and goal-oriented. I aim to work in a facilitative manner, free of judgement, criticism, or advice. This is done with the intention of helping you trust yourself, and make choices which empower and enable you to live more authentically. Our work will take a holistic view of healing and strengthening, rather than a binary and myopic perspective, leaving no experience unlived, and no capability untested.
Image Courtesy: @afinando
...helping you make choices
which empower and enable....
Sessions are 50 minutes long, and are typically held at the same day and time every week. According to your requirements, additional sessions can be arranged after due discussion. Our work begins with an initial consultation session where we get to know each other a little better: understanding your reasons for seeking counselling and assessing your needs, exploring your expectations from our sessions and how you believe therapy will help you, any questions you may have about my practice and the therapeutic process, and together assessing our overall fit. Should we choose to contract, we mutually decide on a certain number of sessions to start with. As our work progresses and our relationship develops, we can review, renegotiate, and re-contract based on your needs.
I currently only offer online sessions and e-therapy, through which you can access mental health services from the comfort of your home.
MY THERAPEUTIC STANCES
When discrimination, marginalization, silencing, and othering has such a violent, disempowering, and traumatic impact on minorities, neutrality and apoliticality is violence. Many of our problems are rooted in social, emotional, and political environments. I immerse myself in understanding and appreciating the richness of your psychosocial and political context and its value in grounding our work.
Your voice is the greatest source of wisdom,
and I am here to listen.
Here are a few of the hallmarks of my therapeutic practice. These subversive and reparative stances helps us erode and undercut the dominant narratives to give space for the oppressed realities and discourses and amplify the voices that lie in the margins.
I am trained to adapt and alter my practice to integrate and synthesize the unique life stressors and inherent barricades that you face as a queer person in a world that is heteronormatively constructed and designed to retain harmful and unjust power structures. I facilitate sessions with gentle curiosity to draw attention towards any internalised shame, unconscious biases, and heteronormative stances (both mine and my clients'). We would work towards challenging any harmful inner dialogues unjustly entrenched by social conditioning and external systemic failures. I continually work towards compiling and verifying resources that you may require and align my work to truly affirm your lived experiences, rather than appropriate them.
Queer-Affirmative
Contrary to popular opinion, feminist stances in therapy are not just for women, but for all genders and sexual orientations! Feminist therapy aims to empower anyone who feels suffocated or silenced by the social constructions of gender, power (or lack thereof), and the pervasive systemic patriarchy and dominance. This includes the pressure of socially constructed gender roles and expectations, sexism, oppressive patriarchal norms, bodily autonomy and sexual liberation, and gender-based violence among many others which impinge on our life experiences. We challenge this together by deconstructing pre-written socio-cultural scripts to help you recognize, embrace, and own your unique experiences.
Feminist Ideologies
Caste-based and intersectional violence, religious violence and intolerance, colonization, racism, colourism, xenophobia, coercion and intimidation, marginalization, poverty, ageism, ableism and accessibility, capitalism, social prejudice, and social exclusion and neglect are just a few oppressive forces that are stitched into our society's fabric. These are not mutually exclusive and have debilitating effects which compound over time. I actively make space to discuss these systems of oppression and their impact on us and our intrapsychic processes. In an effort to have a reparative practice that embodies this stance, I also offer concession slots for those from oppressed and minority sections of society.
Anti-Oppressive
Stepping away from diagnoses and labels, my work acknowledges that emotional struggles are not just internally located within you. I do not subscribe to the pathologization of your being which denies the social context of your problems. This is not to say that I don't work with you if you have an existing diagnosis, but rather this highlights my hope to work with you, and not just a list of symptoms. The reductive nature of labels can sometimes shield us from fully accessing the countless external factors and determinants of your emotional well-being. I actively integrate trauma-informed approaches to help heal these systemic and intergenerational injuries caused by discriminatory and inequitable socio-cultural/political underpinnings, and help you flourish.
