I practice in non-medicalised and non-pathologising ways, meaning I don't start from a question of what is wrong with you? Instead, our questions are about what is happening (or happened) to you? How is it to be you?

 

Being trauma-informed means identifying, recognising and validating what has happened to someone and in therapeutic work, uncovering the adaptive responses that have resulted from traumas and harms. These may include distressing and problematic states, which sometimes can be very risky and scary (perhaps hearing voices or seeing apparitions).

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I fully respect that you may arrive with medical and psychiatric diagnoses and I don't seeking to invalidate diagnosis or any attached identities. Diagnosis can be welcome at times in our lives, ​it might be a gateway to community and perhaps an important experience of validation. For some, there can be a sting within a label (e.g. increased feelings of shame, self-blame and guilt) and there will be many differences and nuances between people who share the same diagnosis or identity. In our work together, I will always be looking to know you.  

 

Diagnosis and labelling sometimes mask causes of difficulties, individualising and internalising struggles that may have  arisen from external circumstances, life events, abuses and coercive powers.  Non-pathologising counselling means considering contextual influences (e.g. relational, societal & cultural) and I use the Power Threat Meaning Framework and it's principles to identify threats and misuses of power we may have experienced, our adaptations and our capacities to overcome and ease distress.  Being a trauma-informed counsellor means I don't overlay pathology or possible diagnosis instead we explore narrative and the meaning of emotional and psychological states we experience.

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