Meet Chenai

I came to mental health and therapy after years in community development, working first in the Northern Territory in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, then back in Melbourne with diverse populations. I also had opportunities to spend time overseas doing bottom up international development work.

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Working closely with community groups, I saw how simply creating a safe space often led to people opening up about their trauma. I realised that in order to help with processing these complex emotions and experiences, I needed to evolve my work practice to include individual therapy. Thus began my journey from working in diversity and social inclusion into more therapeutic training. 

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Once I began working and learning in mental health contexts, it became clear that for some groups of people, their “symptoms” can be caused by the systems and structures around them. The individual is then tasked with “fixing” themselves. There is so much more to what hurts people than simply changing one-self, especially when the frameworks around them are not affirming and thus are unsafe. My work became about walking alongside humans whilst also calling out systemic oppression and thinking ways in which we need to heal in community and not in isolation. Honouring how therapeutic relationships must incorporate peoples intersecting identities and be equitiable (even with the littles humans) to co-create meaning and thus healing.