de-professionalising

One-to-one deconstruction time for professionals


Being a professional, an authority or expert can be bad for your health, your sense of self and your sense of place in the culture. It’s not about you, it’s the system - but you are both the system and you're a subject of it. How to live with these complexities?


The idea for this service came out of my own need for reflective, mutual practices to help me de-programme. I like to steer clear of ambitions to be just, pure and good - but I do want to clearly see what I'm doing and make decisions and choices from there. How about you?







What we will do

I can help you explore the language you use, we will find the limits of what you can do and say in the professional context you’re in. We will find new words and understandings that help you change ways of relating, within the limits of your role and the structures beyond you.


There will be no solution to the discomfort of authority, no transcendence or transformation - no running off “to do what you always dreamed of”. But we shall note these narratives of perfection for what they are, say hello and let them move by.


There will be a greater sense of the density, granular detail and texture of your professional self. There will be a greater sense of the long, wide and deep history that we exist in and how much we are structured by our context. There will be a liberation from the distressing institution of “the individual” - returning you to the dependant, socially cognitive, historically and biologically contextualised animal that you are.

Interested? I've still got places on 6 fully paid trials. You will get 3 x one hour sessions, fees are already paid. I will use our sessions to try out and shape aspects of the service that I'm developing. Email tasha.golding@gmail.com to talk further.

Name it, know it better

Individualism tricks us into thinking you, me, her, them - that the person is the problem. In reality the injustices we collectively sustain are the problem. But in the unreality of a professional context, it can be hard to see how we chose and don't chose to uphold certain ideas - including ones we disagree with. Think about the word "sorry" and how you use it in a day. Your apologies support certain ideas about who is allowed where and what they're expected or allowed to do. The problem of gatekeeping power and giving knowledge status to some people and not others - is acting thru you. It's all very normal, and not easy to spot - unless you have time to reflect and the considered attention needed to find these frictions.


Place your identity in context

One needs to understand the patchwork of one's marginalised and privileged identities. In a single day one can experience being the validated authority that is asked to heal/teach/advise a vulnerable other and be the "imposter" in a room of validated, high status others. One can be subject to racialized or gendered mistreatment, be an equally vulnerable and mutual companion to a lover, a brother, a friend. One can be a disabled parent, the "thought leader", a queer teacher, the "authority" on family law for a disintegrating marriage.

This reality is contrary to the "authentic individual" that consumerism likes to promote. Getting to name and know one's identities helps us feel more real. One can see how one is contextualized and one can sense the spirit that is the 'l' - expressed in many different identities and roles.