Centred Space Counselling
with Davina
Non-pathologising practice
I work 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? Being trauma-informed means identifying, recognising and validating what has happened to someone and in therapeutic work, uncovering the adaptive and meaningful responses an individual has made from from the traumas they have experiences. These may include distressing and problematic states, and sometimes can be very risky and scary (perhaps hearing voices or seeing apparitions).
When we do the work of figuring out what has happened to you and inside you (the adaptations you have made in response to what's happened), the emotional and psychological states we experience are usually understandable within the contexts. Being a trauma-informed counsellor means I don't overlay pathology or possible diagnosis instead we explore narrative and the meaning of experiences / traumas. I use the Power Threat Meaning Framework and it's principles to identify threats we may have experienced, misuses of power, our adaptations and our resources and capacities to overcome and ease distress.
I fully respect that you may arrive with medical and psychiatric diagnoses and in our work I am not seeking to not invalidate those diagnoses or any attached identities.
Non-pathologising counselling also means considering contextual influences (e.g. relational, societal & cultural) and
I support the work of Emotions are not Illnesses (ERNI) and A Disorder 4 Everyone (AD4E), both of which challenge the rapid and extensive reach of medicalised understandings of emotional distress. Diagnostic labelling and language are now commonplace in the current discourse of general emotional and psychological well-being and is not necessarily always helpful. Diagnosis and labelling can mask the causes of our problems, individualising and internalising struggles that may have understandably arisen from circumstances, life events, abuses and coercive powers.
Diagnosis may be welcome at times in our lives, it might be a gateway to community and there may an experience of validation. It can also have a sting within it (increasing feelings of shame , self-blame and guilt) and for some, being within the psychiatric system results in long-term harm.
.Exploring our beliefs about disorders and mental health is often an important aspect of therapy, and in broadening the lens from a medical approach we might locate meanings in the labels you have and consider any disempowering effects. This gives us opportunity to
research is showing the negative correlation current research showing that prevalence hypothesis / schools where more MH intevntion have poor outcvomes
Currently there are many debates in the fields of counselling, psychotherapy & psychiatry about t
because it would a contradiction to validate your experiences on one hand and with the other hand, judge your response to it as dysfunctional or disordered.
Intense & distressing stressing states don't necessiate identifying disorders or brain diseases.
we explore narrative and how they structiure meanings of experiences - this can be profouondly impactful in alterering how we feel. I use Power Threat Meaning Framework REF tupes of power ion our lives, the treats we have experiences and how misuse of power poses threats to us , recognising how we have adapted ourselves to respond to threats we experience and feel/
on-pathologising practice means getting into our capacities to toletatre the intense and difficult feelings we live with. To not view this in one dimension of a disability, neaurodiversity or psychiatric condition and instead, to wrestle with the indoiviuydula self, that comprises these
it isn't necessary to impose medical or diagnostic lens to describe what we are experiencing, to learn what our needs are and explore what might be helpful in easing distress and liberating ourselves from psychological burdens we carry.
, we can explore as threat responses to better understand what has happened to you, we might recognise patterns in your tyhreat responses and
My Master's disseration investigated the anxiety-related mental health content on Tik Tok
In Western culture “diagnoses have become part of how we make sense of ourselves, each other, and the world” (McGann, 2011) and therefore, we may miss understanding anxiety as something valuable, to be learned from.
