Philosophical Framework

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I believe that much of what we call “mental illness” or “disorder” through a Western clinical lens is often a natural response to living within unnatural dynamics, environments or systems - systems like the U.S. mental healthcare industrial complex (MHIC) -  built to restrict, extract, police, and pathologize what is deeply human. Including the knowledge or care we are trained or able to provide as clinicians, helpers, healers and advocates. 

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I began my career revering the study of individual pathology and 1:1 individual work. To some extent, it still fascinates and excites me.
But time, lived experience, and disillusionment shifted much of my orientation toward macro-level systems thinking.
Today, I support others in what I once felt alone in: recognizing deeply personal pain as a wise signal of the external.
A signal that needs to be spoken about. Needs weight. Needs naming. 

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Part of our healing work as mental health professionals is recognizing how systems like the MHIC have historically and continually harmed Black, Indigenous, and other oppressed communities. Importantly, as white "healers", we are not separate from the history of harm. We are overwhelmingly hurt and shaped by it, too.

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Whether it’s burnout, shame, grief, rage, or survival mode, I don't see these states as individualized problems. I see them as human responses to invisible -but very real -structures of harm.

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I believe in care that is human, relational, liberation-oriented, and politically aware. [Anecdote: I only read news and rarely watch mainstream television.]

I’m not here to guide people back into the systems that harmed them. I'm not here to know exactly how to fix systems, either. I mostly don't expect them to change.

I’m here to help hold the tension of how we survive within them, resist them, and hopefully dream and build beyond them.

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I’m here to help name those harms, metabolize what it's done and reclaim what was taken - professional livelihoods, creativity, dignity, purpose, self-worth.

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This is deep unlearning. It unfolds over a lifetime.

This is not new work, either. I am but one voice among many marginalized voices who have long called for the creation of more humane systems of care, living and being. 

I come to this work with humility. To walk beside others in community, in curiosity, and in solidarity.

 

I'm deeply grateful for the ability to recognize that we're all shaped by systems, power, history, and politics -whether we see it clearly yet or not.

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​Additional Beliefs & Context

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I hold a professional license (LMHC - MA#9601) and the clinical skills to provide professional counseling, however I do not conduct therapy or counseling in my work. 

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I no longer align with the practice of diagnosing mental health conditions or using the DSM as a framework for understanding people. Among many reasons, I believe the risks of coupling personal struggle with clinical labels are too great. 

I am not a supporter of so-called "measurement-based care," "value-based care," or "precision mental health" - terms that sound scientifically based and promising but too often serve to narrow the scope of humanistic relational labor to what is convenient and profitable for those in power.

I am still developing a framework for ethical use of AI in mental healthcare. Collectively, we are not off to a good start.  I do not support using regulated terms like psychotherapy, therapy, therapist, counselor or counseling to describe what AI is able to accomplish. I believe in the potential for positive and pro-human, restorative justice, and community-championing use cases for AI, and I'm interested in supporting free market builders of AI products to engage in building intelligence grounded in the ethical, historical, and cultural lenses required to properly reduce harm to the users of their LLM-based products/services.

 

I welcome, and in fact seek out, critique of modern psychology, psychiatry, counseling and psychotherapy practices especially as we understand them today. Rather than defend any profession out of fear or attachment to title and power, I choose curiosity and critical analysis.

 

I believe that curiosity has made me a better person and a more honest companion to those I work alongside.

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