@afewbugs This is a complicated subject to me. I certainly recognize the risks, but at the same time I am painfully aware that those same risks exist in the licensed therapy world - I've lost count of how many stories I've heard of licensed therapists who have told (especially marginalized) folks similarly damaging things. Hell, I have a few stories of my own.

From my perspective, there seem to be a lot of people in marginalized and activist circles who need therapy, but for whom it is not accessible; not just for financial reasons, but also simply because therapists do not have their lived experience and are neither cognizant nor respectful of it.

That's essentially the context in which I'm asking - if the 'proper' (by some definition anyway) psychological care is not available, accessible or suitable... is it better for people to have *unlicensed* therapy, or to have *no* therapy? I realize that that the answer to that isn't a clear "yes", but it also isn't a clear "no", and that is the space I want to explore here, with an understanding of the care needed to do so responsibly (not too dissimilar to DIY HRT, really).