Therapy as a Radical Act of Mutual Recognition in a World of Inequality

Exploring how therapy can be a gift of solidarity, trust, and shared humanity—beyond privilege.

In a world marked by stark inequalities, putting a price on care can feel uneasy. If you earn about £14,000 per year in the UK, you may feel as though you are living on the edge—and you are (so am I, as I maintain and grow a practice that supports both sustainability and access). Yet in global terms, this income places us among the top earners on the planet. This paradox invites reflection on privilege, precarity, and what it means to have enough.

My therapy practice is shaped by these contradictions. My full fee is intentionally set at a premium. It honours the years of study, self-work, and skill that enable me to hold others safely. It recognises the hidden costs—supervision, training, the labour of tending my own nervous system so I can offer presence and clarity. And it reflects the reality that I am working-class, queer, neurodivergent, and disabled in a society that often struggles to recognise intrinsic human worth. It also affirms my right to set boundaries for self-preservation.

But I also believe compassionate therapy shouldn’t be reserved for the mid-salaried managing class and above. Compassion is not a luxury; it is a human birthright. That is why I offer a sliding scale, and why, in some circumstances, I work for free. This is an expression of my values: solidarity, mutual aid, and the conviction that we belong to one another. I use income from full-paying clients to subsidise lower-cost therapy for those in need.

Across history, ordinary people have had their time and labour extracted by systems designed to concentrate wealth and power. From feudalism, where peasants were bound to the land, to the Industrial Revolution, which moved people into factories and called it progress, to today’s wage slavery, where many work endlessly just to survive, the story has been the same: our worth measured in productivity.

These systems have always depended on violence: the theft of land through enclosure and colonialism, the exploitation of working-class and Black and brown bodies, the suppression of women, trans and gender-nonconforming people, the erasure of disabled lives, and the punishment of queer love. Patriarchy, ableism, classism, white supremacy, colourism, xenophobia, and anti-LGBTQ+ oppression are not relics of the past but living systems—structuring whose needs are met, whose labour is valued, whose worth is affirmed, and whose suffering is dismissed. They diminish us all, even as we experience them from different vantage points.

I say this as someone who has known marginalisation through class, disability, and queerness, and who also holds forms of unearned advantage—as a white, male-bodied, native English speaker with access to education. I believe it matters to name these positions honestly, because they shape how I experience the world and how I am received within it.

I have been inspired by socialism, by anarchist principles of self-organisation and collective care, and by many grassroots networks that show us a different way is possible. Anarchy, in its truest sense, is not chaos—it is the radical trust that communities can meet their own needs without resorting to domination or exploitation. Mutual aid reminds me that none of us thrive alone.

Gift cultures and gift economies have long existed in Indigenous societies, rooted in reciprocity and belonging rather than extraction. They remind me that generosity is a natural human capacity, not a utopian fantasy. In Bhutan, where policies have centred Gross National Happiness rather than profit, we see glimpses of how differently we might organise life when we value well-being over accumulation.

Throughout my life, countless people—friends, mentors, peers, and those who stood against bigotry—have extended their hands to help me survive and grow. I carry profound gratitude for every act of generosity and resistance that has shaped my path. If I can now offer something back, it is because others believed in me when systems did not.

Operating this way is not simple. It means continually navigating the tension between my own sustainability and the wish to make therapy accessible. It means honouring the dignity of my work while refusing to see care as something to be hoarded. And it means holding an ethic of trust: that when we centre relationships rather than transactions, something sacred becomes possible.

For me, queerness is part of this vision. Queerness is not only about identity but about how we live—disrupting norms, questioning hierarchies, reimagining kinship. In a culture that commodifies everything and sustains itself on exclusion and fear, offering therapy in this spirit feels quietly subversive. A small act of resistance against the notion that wellness belongs only to those who can afford it.

If you are considering working with me, you are welcome to select a fee from the Bread and Roses Sliding Scale. I offer this scale to provide a therapy service that is fair, human, and sustainable for both me and my clients. Those who contribute the full fee, or at the top end of the sliding scale, help cover the professional costs of providing the service, contribute to my livelihood, and enable me to offer therapy for free and low-cost. There is no judgement about what you contribute, and everyone receives the same quality of care.

Therapy, at its best, is not a commodity. It is a practice of mutual recognition—of seeing each other as worthy, exactly as we are.

And perhaps, in this recognition, we reclaim something that has always been ours: the freedom to live and thrive on our own terms—and the hope that together, we can build a world where everyone is held in dignity.

We are worthy not by measure, but by existence.

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