I’m a Therapist – and I Believe the Therapy World Was Never Meant to Fully Heal Us.

Let me say something that might ruffle a few feathers:

I don’t think therapy was designed to fully heal us.

Yeah, I said it.

And I know, that’s a loaded statement coming from someone inside the field. Someone who spent years studying it, living it, building a whole practice around it. But the truth is—I created Rebel Roots Therapy not because I blindly believed in the system, but because I didn’t.

I created Rebel Roots Therapy for the rebels with big feelings. For the people who’ve been told they’re too much, too angry, too emotional, too complex, too resistant, too everything.

I created it because I…was…fucking…tired…of being seen as a pathology or a diagnosis during my own mental health journey instead of being seen as human. When I shared my words, I then started hearing horror stories of others who felt shamed or wronged by the mental health field as well.

Therapy Isn’t Useless. But It Is Compromised.

Let me be clear: I BELIEVE IN THERAPY.

But I also believe it’s been deeply compromised by the systems that created it and the the systems in which it exists.

Therapy is powerful.
And also... therapy, as it’s taught and practiced in most mainstream settings, is a product of white, Western, heterosexual, hyper-individualist, capitalist, patriarchal values. Let that land for a sec.

The way it’s structured? The way we’re trained? The way we’re licensed and evaluated and reimbursed? It wasn’t designed with QTBIPOC folks, queer and trans liberation, sex-positivity, kink-affirming work, or decolonial healing in mind.

It wasn’t built for us. It was built to control us.

So yeah—maybe it helps you function. Maybe it teaches you coping skills. Maybe it helps you communicate better.

But does it liberate you?

Does it help you unlearn shame, reclaim pleasure, reconnect with ancestors, rage freely, love expansively?

Because that’s healing too.
And this field rarely makes space for it.

My Gut Knew Before I Had the Words

Back in grad school, I couldn’t name any of this clearly. All I knew was that something felt off.

I’d sit in class, nodding along, and then suddenly feel this pang in my stomach. A tightness in my chest. Especially when we started talking about diagnoses, disorders, treatment plans.

There was this unspoken assumption that people were broken—and our job was to fix them.

But I didn’t see brokenness. I saw people trying to survive systems that were never built for them. People reacting appropriately to generations of harm, erasure, and violence.

And yet, those reactions were being pathologized.

Did you check off at least 5 of the boxes in your DSM diagnosis? Cool!
Diagnose. Treat. Bill.

Something about that just never sat right with me. Still doesn’t.

The System Was Never Meant to Free Us

The more I learned, the more it became obvious:
The mental health industrial complex doesn’t want us healed.
It wants us treated. Manageable. Docile. Civil.

If everyone truly healed… If we reclaimed our anger, our joy, our ancestral wisdom, our pleasure, our rest, our fuck-no’s—would capitalism still work?

Would the same structures of power still hold?

I doubt it.

And that’s the thing. Mainstream therapy isn’t neutral. It’s embedded in the very systems that make us sick. It teaches us to be self-aware but not system-aware. It says “let’s explore your trauma” but won’t name the colonialism or white supremacy that caused it.

And somehow we become the problem for not getting better fast enough.

Healing Isn’t Solo Work. And It Sure as Hell Isn’t Sanitized.

Here’s what I know now:
Healing is NOT pretty sunshine, rainbows, and “love and light!”

Healing is fucking…Messy. Unapologetic. Loud. Sacred. Political. Rooted.
Sometimes ancestral. Sometimes erotic. Always real. And cannot be fully reached without COMMUNITY.

It doesn't happen in 50-minute sessions once a week.
It happens when you find people who don’t flinch when you talk about your rage.
People who don’t make your sexuality or your culture or your kink feel like a liability.
People who say: yeah, I get why you’re this angry—and you’re allowed to be.

But to get there, we still have to UNLEARN the systems we’ve been conditioned into. Then RELEARN our truths. Then learn how to FIND our people.

That takes a lot of solo, deep diving work.

Thus is the praxis of REBEL ROOTS THERAPY.
It was born from my own refusal to keep shrinking myself to fit the mold.
From my belief that we deserve therapy that honors the full spectrum of who we are—not just the sanitized, insurance-approved version.

This Work is For You If...

You’ve ever been told you’re “too much.”
You’ve sat across from a therapist who didn’t get your culture, your queerness, your grief, your rage.
You’ve walked out of therapy feeling more pathologized than powerful.

Or maybe you’ve just always had this gut feeling—this small, steady knowing—that there has to be another way.

I want you to know:

You’re not alone.
You’re not broken.
You’re just remembering yourself.

In healing and liberation,

Your Rebel Therapist, Maria