Psychology, healing, and a shift

Marianna Jaross

I built a life throughout my twenties that was based on adventure, learning, and travel. I was also working towards a career that ‘made sense’ (psychologist), while also being deeply uncomfortable at times with how we went about and conceptualised healing.

I have taken a break so I can think about and work in different arenas.

Growing up, I learned reiki and how to read tarot at around the age of eleven. My mother was a minister I was separated from. In my first year of study, I was told about the horrors of pseudoscience. Now, I am reading about the Yale Mental Health and Spirituality Program.

In my fourth year, I had a lecturer who taught us about research. Importantly, this was not just about the numbers on the page, but how to think critically about this: Who was funding the research? What was ‘in it’ for them? Why did pharmaceutical companies fund research, and what did this mean for results? Were there numbers or outliers removed for the sake of ‘cleaner’ data, when this could be where some of the most important information was? My lecturer colloquially mentioned published research that remained ‘in the drawers’ because it did not align to mainstream medicine, or the companies funding it.

I was a student. I put this to the side.

I took a break from traditional psychology and completed additional training in mindfulness therapy. Then, a Master of Counselling and Psychotherapy. These informed a lot of my thinking. I learned about our journey across the lifespan, understanding attachment patterns, humanistic and person-centered approaches to healing, and the importance of developing the self as you become a therapist. These were important learning points for me.

I later sat in lectures with the following key words: Formulate. Diagnose. Differentiate. Treatment plan. Intervene. There were several times I winced internally at the way we approached healing, the superficiality of certain diagnostic ‘criteria,’ and ignoring a person’s lived experience, story, and context.

I have watched mini-evolutions occur throughout my training and time as a therapist, and the interesting two paths appearing in front of us at the moment: Integrating AI into healthcare, the ethical dilemmas around this and ‘scaling’ services. On the other hand, we have a calling towards more integrated, humanistic, and thoughtful approaches to healing. The human connection. Trauma-informed care. Strength-based practice. Spirituality. Something deeper rumbling beneath the surface of a sanitised training box-ticking system.

I watched the latter evolution occur amongst the popularity of The Body Keeps the Score. People who were healing finally felt heard and seen. Practitioners who didn’t like rigid diagnostic ways of formulating a person’s experience felt validated. People who had turned towards non-mainstream, creative, or arts-based practices saw some value in what they were doing, and understanding the modalities that resonated with them beyond talk therapy.

As I entered the workforce alongside and following my studies, I began to deeply understand the need for feminist approaches to healthcare. I sat with victim-survivors who had their freedom, choices, and safety quashed in a myriad of ways. When I worked in oncology with women specifically, I heard about how women needed to advocate for themselves to make their symptoms known. I saw the ways women have been treated within psychiatric models of care, and followed Dr Jessica Taylor’s work.

I watched people struggling to withdraw from addictive substances, and also struggling to manage the side-effects of their prescribed medication. People who needed safety, money, stability, and connection; yet instead were labelled, judged, and discriminated against.

I sat in conversations throughout my training with professionals with decades of more experience and knowledge than I had, who encouraged me to accept my training and just get on with it. There was a fairly consistent theme of professionals who didn’t agree with many of our frameworks, the broader system we operate within, and the way things are done; but also shrugged and said “it is what it is.”

Importantly, there are people doing deeply honourable work who are thoughtful and reflective in their practice, work with the human in front of them, hold pain and hold hope, and provide real tools for change. However, the fact that there is so much evolution, upheaval and change happening in this space - including with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) - means that we have an opportunity to create something trauma-informed, thoughtful, and grounded moving forward.

From my perspective, we need to do this from the ground up with an appreciation of the roots of healing, rather than retrospectively trying to fit in humanistic or trauma-informed care into a system that has historically not operated as such, or necessarily trained upcoming therapists in this way.

My sense is that we are on the cusp of something deeply interesting and potentially transformative in the field of psychology, counselling, and healing. And I am going to write more about it.

© Marianna Jaross 2026