What is The Trade of Therapy?

TLDR: Publications on what therapists feel about therapy, their industry, themselves, and you. Expect ethically-represented stories, published weekly.

The Trade of Therapy is my effort into building a community publishing space where I pen down and source experiences that come straight from the therapy room. These include stories of therapeutic spaces, observations about culture and lessons learnt from human beings. This Publisher is my way of making the both of us feel included in the vastness of therapy.

Cover images from upcoming publications

What makes me- a nervous and overworked therapist- any capable or qualified of writing and representing the tradespeople of therapy? Even amidst my shaking existential crises, what kept me afloat were the deepest reflections of my friends, colleagues, supervisors and clients. Being aware of our sameness and difference with others is what makes this existence meaningful. I feel called to represent what’s out there.

Oh, and I'm elated to have you witness my vulnerabilities in the first few minutes of knowing me. This isn't nerve-racking, at all.

The Trade of Therapy is a small and independent platform. There's no team here, and everything is run by yours-truly. I do not wish to create a content farm for the Algorithm Deity. I produce lengthy discourses on the niche, nuanced and unexplored processes of therapy. In my between-spaces, I platform other creators who contribute to ethical storytelling and journalism on therapy, mental health and humanity.

My thoughts on the trade of therapy often raise nauseating uncertainties: Even as a conductor of therapy, I sometimes feel like an outsider to the idea of "The Therapeutic." I'm elbow-deep in systemic failures, rampant misinformation and hungry capitalism. I bring this grief into my writing, frequently. A therapeutic thinker needs time, space, quiet, and an ability that wills them to imbibe knowledge. That doesn't sound all that profitable for institutions. I'm quickly realising that this Publisher is the shovel I'm using to dig my way out of some thick industry walls. Why Support Me?

I find myself wondering what would make this publishing space work. To me, it is intriguing to know what goes on in therapy and how your therapist thinks. These publications offer ethical and informed glimpses into these complex interactions (more on this in Ethical Writing and Representation). As a therapist in the economic and political south, I see men and women amidst the centre of abandonment, doubt, disease and suicide, all trapped in the labyrinths of culture and shame. Surely, this pocket of Indian-woman-meets-experiential-subalterns is of interest to the trade of therapy.

What should you expect? Carnage. Witness a privileged Indian therapist become humbled in the face of all the beauty, suffering and nuance that exists outside of her. Watch her enter a room with the pomp of an English King and walk out with her spine twisted like candy cane. See her flail helplessly in the modern marketplace of psychotherapy services.

Outgrow your biases and witness new and old generations of critical thinkers sink their teeth into the trade of therapy. I cannot wait to platform voices that are like and unlike mine.

Enjoy the TOT community! This space is a part of my soul and purpose.