Erin Stevens

YouTube video by Erin Stevens - Harm in Therapy Counsellors Staffroom: Meet BACP Board Candidates 2025 Erin Stevens and Matt Cormack

Counsellors' Staffroom hosted a Q&A event for the BACP election with candidates Matt Cormack and me. It's now available to view here youtu.be/n5TpemRbyrs?...
Voting closes 15th August!

Meowslow's hierarchy of needs Pyramid of needs with food on almost every tier except the second top with reads "other cats to stay out of my garden"

Meowslow's hierarchy of needs

Thanks Joy ❤️

You can also meet me and fellow candidate Matt Cormack at the Counsellors’ Staffroom Q&A on Friday 18th July at 2.30pm. Free tickets here

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/bacp-board...

BACP Trustee voting is open! if you are a BACP member, please check your emails and cast your votes! Remember you can email me on erinstevens4bacpboard@gmail.com if you have any questions for me.

Thanks so much. That's a really important facet of disability justice that therapists and the whole profession need to attend to.

Thanks Sara 🙏

I'm standing for the BACP board! Voting is 15th July - 15th August so if you are a BACP member, you can look for an email from Mi Voice with a link to vote around then. I'm interested in anti-oppressive practice & ethics and I'll be answering questions sent to erinstevens4bacpboard@gmail.com

This is such a great point, thank you so much for it.

YouTube video by Erin Stevens - Harm in Therapy The Harm in Therapy Series: Introducing the Therapy Harm Resistance Project

Introducing the Therapy Harm Resistance Project: a conversation with Natalie Russ is now available on YouTube!
youtu.be/Ne1NX48UoKk

Um therapy harm 🙃

When Therapy Causes Harm: A Webinar for anyone interested in Therapy Harm A one hour webinar including Q&A with Erin Stevens - a therapist working with clients who have been harmed and a survivor of therapy harm.

30th April I'm hosting a 1 hour webinar on therapy therapy, open to everyone whether client, therapist or just interested. I'll overview the fundamentals of recognising harm, leaving harmful therapy, complaints (UK) and seeking support. Tickets by donation.

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/when-thera...

I know, it's feels like BACP have become much more open to Harm in Therapy and much more open to people like me in the last year or so. It's promising.

If you are a member of BACP you can listen to me being interviewed by Katy Georgiou for the latest Therapy Today podcast here
www.bacp.co.uk/events-and-r...

The recording of the Harm in Therapy for Queer Autistic Therapists workshop with me and Sonny Hallett @scrappapertiger.bsky.social , which was sold out for live attendance, is now available for purchase! Access here: www.erinstevens.co.uk/workshop-rec...

Front cover of April 2025 Therapy Today magazine. When therapy causes harm. Image of a therapist standing on a client's toe, which i take to be metaphorical.

I've been really pleased to hear from people who found this landing on their doorstep today. Finally, conversations about harm are becoming mainstream in the profession. I was grateful to be invited to participate in this issue & the corresponding podcast. If you are a BACP member check it out. 🙂

🙏 totally agree, survivor advocacy is a huge part of therapy harm activism. @sophieblackthorn.bsky.social is a brilliant activist survivor and writer, in case you don't know her. I'm really getting a sense of solidarity and community finally becoming more visible 🔥

When a patient—perhaps unknowingly—challenges the therapist’s ego, self-image or worldview, and the therapist feels threatened, the therapist might respond with bullying or belittling behaviours that serve to undermine the patient’s self-esteem and reinforce the therapist’s power and authority.

In PCA terms, for me therapeutic neutrality is UPR in action. It's the knowledge that my client isn't 'bad', 'wrong' or 'broken', they don't need me to change them, or to tell them what to do. It's about power. But it isn't about denying the impact of who we are or how we show up in the room.

My long-term therapist once said to me that I always get myself to where I need to be. He didn't create my ability to make choices, he simply made space for me to see that I can. It was this non-possessiveness, this therapeutic neutrality, that helped me develop my self-trust.

By this I mean that I do not operate from wishes or desires for my clients. I don't have desired outcomes for them, and I prize their self-determination. I am not meeting a client to impose my own conditions of worth on them, I don't know what is best for someone else.

and any attempt at neutrality is inherently a non-neutral act. In short, complete neutrality is a paradoxical notion and impossible in practice.
Yet, I view therapeutic neutrality as an important part of my philosophy of therapeutic practice. In reality, I think TN describes non-possessive practice

Therapeutic neutrality. Let's talk about what it is and what it isn't.
We are inherently non-neutral. We bring contexts, some of which will be explicit, some of which are implicit, all of which influence how we show up in the world and in the room. Any attempt at apoliticism is inherently political

I'm doing the crystal maze experience for my 40th birthday, fulfilling a lifelong ambition to collect tickets in the crystal dome.

Good decision from BACP to leave twitter. I hope they join BlueSky
www.bacp.co.uk/news/news-fr...

🙏

Workshop 2 in the Harm in Therapy Series - "Rupture and Repair: The Fundamentals" is now available to buy from my website. Keep an eye on this page as more Harm in Therapy resources and CPD are added! www.erinstevens.co.uk/workshop-recordings

No prob I'll aim to make the resources available on my website afterwards :)