Nathan Leach

The politically charged paradigm of drug policy and treatment has historically worked to discipline drug using bodies into a regimes of care that serve capitalist interests rather then challenging its racialized, classed and gendered formations. My therapeutic approach informed by my lived experience lends to an embodied practice which challenges these oppressive notions of care.

Critical relationality is at the core of my approach to trauma. The wounds of systemic harms creates a disembodied experience leaving us alienated from the human and non human world. My approach to trauma is rooted in cultivating safe body based practices informed by critical theory that can bring us back into relationship with a world worth fighting for.

Capital works on and through the body. The processes of body normalization through ableist notions of labor, essentialist constructs of gender and the on going historical process of racialization all come to serve colonial and capitalist interests. A somatic approach to care gives us a chance to challenge these repressive logics at the physiological level and we can show up in response to oppression as a fully aware, interconnected force.

As a long time harm reduction care worker and former iv drug user, my approach to therapy demands a recognition of the nuances of non normative acts. Shifting the lens of treatment away form the so called pathological subject to the coercive nature of western capitalist society allows for a new ethic of care that demands empowerment to individuals impacted by mental health disparities.

A feminist approach to care first and foremost demands that we recognize the personal as political. Centering the histories of feminist insight and struggle paves the way to imagine the reproductive value of therapy that subverts the patriarchal demand of devalued feminized labor. These insights render the therapeutic process as essentially a subversive political act that works to challenge problematic systems in a safe and affirming way.