Ryan Erispe Consulting & Therapy

08/08/2025

🌿 Therapy Isn’t About Changing You, It’s About Coming Home to You 🌿

Too often, we frame the therapeutic process as one of self-improvement, of helping someone “become better” or “fix what’s broken.” But at its essence, therapy is not about changing people into something else. It’s about helping them reconnect with the parts of themselves that have been pushed aside, exiled, or burdened over time.

The struggles clients bring into the room, anxiety, overfunctioning, shutdown, self-criticism, difficulty trusting, chronic shame, are not signs that something is wrong with them. They are parts that learned to protect in very intelligent ways. These are adaptations that arose to keep the system safe in environments that may have been unsafe, neglectful, overwhelming, or emotionally unpredictable.

These parts were never the problem. They were the system’s solution. And over time, those protective roles can become rigid, overworked, and disconnected from the Self. Therapy is the space where we can gently witness these parts, get curious about their stories, and begin to unburden them ....not because they are bad, but because they’ve carried so much for so long.

This is not a process of becoming worthy or becoming lovable. Worthiness and lovability are never up for question. They are not earned through healing. They are innate, always there, often covered but never gone. Therapy doesn’t create them , it helps parts remember that truth.

For those of us in the field, it’s vital to remember that the work is not about striving toward some perfected Self. It’s about creating space for all parts to be seen, heard, and understood. It’s about compassionately unblending from the harsh inner critics, the collapsed parts, the masks, and helping the system reorganize around the Self that has always been there.

Healing, then, is not self-improvement...it is self-reclamation.

And in that reclamation, we don’t create a new identity.
We uncover the one that has always been there , waiting, intact!

💬 Which parts of you are ready to be witnessed with compassion?


Danielle Du Plessis Consulting & Counselling
Recovery Walk Cape Town
Anxiety & Depression Support UK & Ireland
Cape Town Drug Counselling Centre

17/07/2025

Therapist dad with newborn 😆

“Is he avoiding eye contact because I didn’t sing to him enough today?”

“Do babies know if you haven’t healed your inner child yet?”

“Is this crying a secure protest or the foundation of an avoidant attachment style?”

“Am I co-regulating or just pacing around like an anxious Golden Retriever?”

“What if my baby’s first memory is me frantically Googling ‘normal newborn noises’?”

“Should I be narrating his emotions out loud right now? Or am I interrupting his nervous system?”

“Is he going to tell his therapist in 25 years that I was too emotionally available?”

“Does he feel the pressure of my intergenerational healing journey??”

Meanwhile, baby:
🍼😴💩

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What I’m learning (and unlearning):
🧘 You don’t need to be a perfect parent — just a present one.
📉 Ruining their life takes more than forgetting tummy time.
🔁 It’s not about doing it all right, it’s about doing the repair when it goes sideways.
💡 Babies don’t need therapists. They need dads who try, care, and keep showing up.
💪 Love + snacks + survival is actually a pretty solid foundation.

To my fellow therapist dads:
If you’ve ever whispered “polyvagal theory” to yourself like a spell while bouncing on a yoga ball .. you’re not alone. You’re doing great. You're not the trauma. You're just exhausted.
Danielle Du Plessis Consulting & Counselling

22/06/2025

Clever Dog 😁

Danielle Du Plessis Consulting & Counselling
Ryan Erispe

05/06/2025

My article on Men's Mental Health published for awareness week.

Men are struggling—and too often, no one is listening. Despite growing awareness around mental health and emotional well-being, one truth remains largely unspoken: men’s mental health is in crisis.…

31/05/2025

🧭 From the Margins to the Frontlines of Recovery

I didn’t enter the field of addiction treatment through conventional doors.

My earliest years were shaped by instability, exposure to substance misuse, and the absence of reliable role models. These conditions led to early substance use, contact with mental health services by age 14, and what turned into a long, winding detour through just about every system you can imagine. 🌀

Growing up on the Cape Flats in Cape Town 🇿🇦 meant confronting the complexities and harsh realities that often accompany addiction. But it was also where a deeper sense of purpose quietly began to take root 🌱.

Recovery was more than a turning point—it was the beginning of a lifelong calling. ❤️‍🩹 After completing treatment, I began volunteering at the very centre that had once held the door open for me. At first, it was about survival—housing, structure, community. But very quickly, it became something more: a driving need to give back, to learn, and to walk with others as they found their way out.

What started there grew into a vocation. From volunteering to support work, then into training and formal qualification as a counsellor 🎓, I committed myself to this field with everything I had. Over time, that path expanded—through continued education, hands-on clinical work, and programme development in a range of international settings 🌍. I’ve had the privilege of contributing to teams in South Africa, the Seychelles, Thailand, and beyond—learning from each context and deepening my practice with each step.

Today, I oversee a respected, international treatment centre 🏥 and work alongside a multidisciplinary team of clinicians—many of whom bring their own lived experience into the work. We’re united by a shared belief: that recovery is possible—and that healing happens when care is not only evidence-based but also deeply human 🤝.

This is more than a profession for me. It’s my life’s work.
And it began on the other side of the table. 🔄

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31/05/2025

In the London Daily 🙂

Challenging Mental Health & Addiction Myths: This Mental Health Awareness Month May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and in a world grappling with conflict, climate anxiety, economic uncertainty, and widening social divides, mental health challenges are rising at an alarming rate. But for many, the...

28/04/2025

19/12/2024

Engage with curiosity for the individual, rather than presumptions based on an outdated template!

03/12/2024

Self-Forgiveness in healing

15/10/2024

Yes!!!

💖✨️🫶🏻 support others through validation, leave false & toxic positivity at the door.

06/07/2024

Try to see emotions as guides, teachers even messages. Develope a relationships with them all.
Also, be careful not to label any emotions as "negative emotions". This can encourage people to avoid or deny them and have a bigger impact down the line.
Instead of "don't be scared" or "don't be angry", try "it's ok to be angry or scared".

18/06/2024

🤔 Remember when we realised that even though the world was filled with pollution, our one piece of paper still mattered?

💡 Now, let's try that with our words!!