DCE Therapeutic Counselling Services

08/03/2026

Do you resonate?

04/03/2026

A few days after the official day…but self-harm isn’t a one-day event. Please do read this valuable insight to support yourself or others around you that may be struggling.

Today marks Self-Injury Awareness Day 💜

Many people struggle with self-injury as a way to manage deep emotional distress. It's important to know you're not alone, and help is available.

Discover how therapy can be a path to healing and understanding ➡️ https://orlo.uk/F5plQ

02/03/2026

Anxiety workshop now available!
Tailored to your setting; Corporate, Charity, Christian. Adaptable to delegate numbers. Baseline of 2 hours. Can be altered to fit your schedule.

29/01/2026

Can you resonate!!?? Looking after children or grandchildren, caring for ageing parents, earning a living…all whilst being expected look like a beautiful, graceful swan…..and yet!!!!….your hormones are having a moment; causing weight gain, huge body shape changes, thinning hair, drying skin. ‘What’s happening to me!?’ you might cry…

27/01/2026

Workshop roller banner and facilitator table. ..

27/01/2026

Grounding, exploring

27/01/2026

27/01/2026

Some natural grounding objects.

27/01/2026

Room based in Prittlewell

26/01/2026

Looking forward to delivering a workshop on ‘anxiety’ to a corporate company tomorrow. Watch this space for reels and photos!!

19/01/2026

Halfway through January. What colour are you feeling!?

11/11/2025

I think this is an incredibly helpful take. What do you think?

Recently, a professional wrote that presuming competence is dangerous because it leads us to overlook vulnerability. That by presuming competence, we fail to protect, fail to offer help, fail to teach and assume people already know skills they have not yet learned. The professional’s stance confuses competence with current performance and support with correction or training.

This is not presuming competence. This is neglect.

Presuming competence is not an instructional strategy nor a belief about skill level. Presuming competence doesn’t mean assuming the person already has every skill but not demanding of someone to prove their right to access before we are willing to help them learn.

To presume competence is to recognise that a person’s understanding, agency, emotional depth and capacity for meaning-making exist regardless of whether they can demonstrate those things in neuronormative ways.
We do not treat a person as less intelligent because they communicate, learn or express differently.
We should assume cognitive presence, even when expression is delayed, non-linear or happens through non-speech communication.
We must provide access, support, scaffolding and alternative communication methods without requiring someone to prove they deserve them.

Presuming competence is an ethical stance that does not reduce someone to what is observable, nor treat one's humanity as being contingent on performance.

Moreso, vulnerability and competence are not opposites... A person can be deeply vulnerable and competent at the same time. Presuming competence allows us to support that vulnerability with dignity, instead of controlling it through fear of what might happen if we get it wrong.

Bottom line is that we don’t presume finished ability. We presume capacity, presence and potential and we support the person in accessing and expressing it.