Consult with me
Please fill out the form below and I’ll be in touch!
I offer consultations for mental health practitioners and loved ones of folks diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, to support you in caring for folks diagnosed with BPD. My work takes an anti-ableist, disability justice, harm reductionist lens that directly opposes much of the harmful, retraumatising advice that is shared in books and other material written on BPD.
Much of the literature that exists on these experiences and struggles tends to offer advice that can be very activating and even harmful for folks with this diagnosis and may activate original attachment wounds, such as advice that punishes people for exercising their agency (for eg. withholding compassion or care when someone self-harms or forcing people into treatment').
You can share with me a particular issue or issues that you've been facing with supporting or caring for your client or loved one and we can process them together. I can offer advice, insights and tools.
I have several years of experience in caring for folks struggling with chronic suicidality, self-harm and substance dependency, and in holding space and advocating for survivors of child abuse, sexual abuse and intimate partner violence, all of which constitute a large portion of the people diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder.
I am not a therapist, this is not a substitute for or meant to constitute medical or legal advice.
"Candice provided me with incredibly valuable consultation about a client that I care deeply for but was feeling stuck with. Though I've been working with this client for 3 years, Candice helped me see nuance and highlighted dynamics that I hadn't fully understood before. Candice facilitated me thinking more deeply and more compassionately about this unique client. In particular, she provided me with education about the specific manifestations of anger for people with BPD as well as the attachment wounds that likely influence the way my client expresses her discomfort and pain in our relationship. After receiving consultation from Candice, I feel more confident and capable of meeting my clients needs for deeper healing. Candice is an incredible person to consult with- she is kind, curious, and speaks from a place of profound understanding about the experiences of people with BPD. I highly recommend pursuing her support and gaining clinical clarity that will help you serve your clients.”
-Dr. Jennifer Wang-Hall, Licensed Psychologist, California
What can we explore?
We can work together on things like:
helping you to better understand specific experiences and traits that are often poorly understood and misrepresented, from a more internal and humanising lens, such as rage.
supporting someone through difficult emotional and mental states in ways that are compassionate and still support their agency and autonomy.
supporting people through coping mechanisms that can cause harm to themselves through a compassionate, harm reductionist approach.
determining what triggers of your own may be escalating difficult situations.
ways of communicating your boundaries that can be less activating for complex trauma survivors.
fears you may have of “not getting it right”.
My work includes taking an anti-oppressive lens, which means:
- Not defining recovery in terms of someone's ability to partake in ableist institutions, and instead impressing why it's important to centre individuals’ definition of healing.
- Not moralising the coping mechanisms that people diagnosed with BPD use to survive, such as self-injury.
- Advocating for consent in treatment and care, as opposed to the vast majority of advice on BPD that advocates for non-consensual and potentially retraumatising ways of 'caring' for and supporting people with this diagnosis.
- An understanding that many of these traits are coping mechanisms to current and ongoing systemic traumas as well, and that we can't expect everyone to be able to give them up or to "heal" entirely from them. This includes things like identity struggles and dissociation.
- An understanding that a lot of “BPD symptoms” are reactions to systemic oppression, and that bringing a systemic analysis to recovery can help to deepen healing— however people define that for themselves.
"Candice is my go-to person for support and education for working with clients with BPD. Candice's lived experience and anti-oppression lens is so needed in the field of mental health when it comes to BPD. As a mental health provider, I have learned more from Candice than any DBT manual or clinical training I have taken on BPD. Candice helps you address roadblocks, triggers, stuck points and teaches you tools and scripts to help you support your loved one. I cannot recommend someone to consult with on BPD more highly.
-Allyson Inez Ford, LPCC, Clinical Mental Health Therapist, California.
Sliding Scale
My rates for consultations currently range from $75 - $130 for 1 hour.
I use a sliding scale to accommodate people with different financial capabilities. People book at the tier that’s most financially accessible to them. Booking at higher rates, if you’re able to afford it, helps me to take on more sessions at lower rates for those who can afford less.
Why I do this work
Bearing a BPD diagnosis is not an easy thing— it comes with an extreme amount of discrimination and a strong risk of revictimisation, particularly when you’re multiply oppressed. Like many folks with this diagnosis, I’m autistic and an abuse and CSA survivor myself and I’ve witnessed the extensive amount of harm that people bearing this diagnosis endure at the hands of mental health practitioners and carers, and the demonisation that they face by society at large.
So much of the common advice on caring for someone with this diagnosis is ableist, promoting ideas of neurodivergent and disabled people as inherently “broken” and in need of “fixing”, and as incapable of being the experts of their own bodies and minds or worthy of making decisions for themselves. It’s also extremely individualistic, failing to recognise that coping mechanisms, such as self-harm, can also be ways of surviving ongoing unsafe and oppressive conditions, and how harmful it can be to be forced to let go of one of the only things that’s helping you survive.
I offer consultations on ways of caring for people with this diagnosis— while advocating for more compassionate and helpful frameworks to make sense of their experiences— to share what I’ve learned over the years as someone who has survived many of these struggles myself and have also supported others through them, helping them to find ways to feel safe.