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

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

Sometimes we experience painful emotions or troubling thoughts and feel unsure how to cope, who to talk to, or even how to listen to ourselves. In these moments, we may need careful, accurate empathy, non-judgement, and unconditional positive regard from someone who is genuine with us—someone who can help us make sense of our pain.

That’s where therapy often helps. A skilled therapist can offer the right conditions to move forward.

In the UK, many people access therapy through the NHS. But resources are limited. Most people face long waiting times, receive time-limited therapy, and may not meet therapists who work in the way they most need. Charities and community services offer alternatives, but they too are underfunded. For many, the only remaining option is private therapy—which means self-funding.

Some can afford this with ease. Others can't. That’s why I offer a sliding scale of fees to help address inequality and make therapy more accessible.

My full fee reflects the real value and sustainability of this work. It honours the years of study, self-work, and skill that enable me to hold others safely. It reflects the hidden costs: supervision, ongoing training, and the labour of tending my own nervous system so I can offer presence and attunement. It also affirms my right to set boundaries for self-preservation as someone who is working-class, queer, neurodivergent, and disabled.

My take-home income currently averages around £14,000 per year. That figure reflects the reality of working as a therapist committed to accessibility, while navigating the costs of running a practice. It’s not a sustainable wage on its own, which is why contributions from full-fee clients are vital. They help subsidise lower-cost therapy for those living on the breadline, and allow me to continue offering care in a way that honours both my values and my survival.

At the same time, I believe therapy shouldn’t be reserved for the mid-salaried managing class and above. Compassion is not a luxury, it is a human birthright. Offering a sliding scale, and sometimes working for free, is an expression of solidarity. It reflects my conviction that human beings are inter-dependent and everyone deserves support, beyond artificial financial barriers.

The fact that therapy is often inaccessible is not accidental. It’s the result of systems that have, across history, extracted time and labour from ordinary people to concentrate wealth and power. From feudalism and colonialism to the Industrial Revolution and today’s wage slavery, many have worked endlessly just to survive, while care remains commodified and out of reach.

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.

But other ways of living have always existed. Gift cultures and gift economies have long thrived 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 policy centres Gross National Happiness over profit, we glimpse how differently life can be organised when well-being is prioritised.

Throughout my life, countless people including friends, mentors, peers, and helping professionals have extended their hands to help me survive and grow. I carry profound gratitude for every act of generosity and resistance that shaped my path. If I can offer something back now, it’s because others believed in me when systems did not.

Operating this way isn’t simple. It means constantly 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. It’s not only about identity, it’s about how we live. It means disrupting norms, questioning hierarchies, and reimagining kinship. In a culture that commodifies everything and sustains itself on exclusion and fear, offering therapy in this spirit is a small act of resistance. A way to say: wellness does not belong 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 therapy, support my livelihood, and enable me to offer free and low-cost sessions to others. There is no judgement about what you contribute. Everyone receives the same quality of care.

The Bread and Roses Sliding Scale is named in honour of the 1912 textile workers’ strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, which was an action of international significance led largely by immigrant women. Their demand was not only for fair wages (“bread”) but for dignity, beauty, and joy (“roses”). That call still resonates today, including here in the UK, where workers continue to organise for fair pay and humane conditions, and across the world from garment factories in India to industrial zones in China. Their slogan speaks to our shared need for resources, like therapy, that meet material needs and nourish the soul.

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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