The work I do with clients arises from a living-systems sensibility, where meaning, healing and transformation emerge through relational participation rather than unilateral intervention. Therapy is not about applying a fixed model. It’s about adopting a stance of humility, curiosity and care – and recognising that human experience is deeply embedded in cultural, ecological and more-than-human contexts.
My orientation draws on systemic theory, second-order cybernetic thinking and the insight of the fourfold vision tradition (inspired by Blake and refined through Bateson). It moves beyond the idea that therapy is simply about reframing stories, shifting behaviours or reducing symptoms. Instead it situates therapist and client within an evolving, co-created field of relationships, histories, material conditions, ecological webs – a field that includes non-human agencies and ecological forces alongside human ones.
In this view, difficulties, symptoms or “problems” are not pathologies to be fixed. Rather they are adaptive strategies — responses that have grown out of particular life conditions, relational patterns and systemic pressures. Therapy becomes a process of illuminating and honouring those adaptations, while opening space for new patterns, new relationships, new possibilities to emerge.
This approach differs fundamentally from conventional, directive or technique-based methods. It does not rely on expert power or normative assumptions. Instead it invites therapists to relinquish control, to lean into uncertainty, and to engage with clients and their contexts as co-participants in a shared, ecological field of change.
What this means in practice
- Collaborative, co-evolving engagement: Sessions become a space where therapist and client explore meaning, context and relationship together. The therapist’s role is not to determine the “right solution,” but to support emergence — to hold the conversation, notice patterns, and remain open to new possibilities.
- Sensitivity to systemic, ecological and material contexts: Healing is not only psychological. The broader conditions — social, environmental, relational — shape what is possible. This demands attention to power, ecology, history, social structures, and more-than-human influences.
- Ethical presence and relational accountability: Rather than positioning the therapist as expert or fixer, this approach emphasises mutual respect, shared responsibility, and ethical awareness. Healing and growth are relational, not individual.
- Openness to emergence, imagination and meaning-making: Rather than prescribing interventions, therapy becomes a space for exploring what matters to the client: values, hopes, connections, and the living world they inhabit. It welcomes uncertainty, complexity and the possibility of transformation that cannot be predicted or controlled.
Why this is important
In a time marked by fragmentation, ecological crisis, social division and attachment to certainty, this approach offers an alternative. It does not promise quick fixes, but instead acknowledges that real change, be it personal, relational, or social, arises from slow, careful work in the spaces between people, systems and environment.
By working in this way, we begin to recognise how personal suffering and societal harms are interwoven. We open up the possibility of healing that honours complexity, meaning, context and interdependence. We deepen our capacity to respond not just to symptoms, but to the lived field of relationships and ecology in which we all participate.
Questions to Consider Before Beginning Therapy
You may find it helpful to pause and reflect on some of the conditions shaping your life and relationships just now. These questions are not a test. They are an invitation to notice the wider field in which your experiences are arising. Think about:
• What pressures or patterns in your life feel most present at the moment.
• How have your relationships, family history or working environment shaped the challenges you face.
• In what ways have you adapted to difficult circumstances and what have those adaptations protected for you.
• What hopes or possibilities feel important, even if they are not yet clear.
• How does the wider world influence your emotional life. You might think about social conditions, cultural expectations or ecological concerns.
• Where do you find connection or meaning, even in small or unexpected places.
• What kind of space would help you feel safe enough to begin speaking about your experiences.
Therapy can be a place to explore these questions at your own pace. There is no expectation that you arrive with answers. What matters is a willingness to enter a collaborative process that honours complexity, context and the living relationships that shape who we are.
Hugh Palmer 