Fierce AF Counsellors & Coaches

19/09/2026

Supervision is meant to offer a place where honest disclosure is possible.

A place where a therapist can say:

“I am struggling.”

“Something happened with a client and I feel unsettled by it.”

“I think I may have made a mistake.”

“I am concerned about what this might mean.”

And be met with curiosity, care and thoughtful professional challenge.

Without humiliation, punishment or the immediate assumption that they’ve failed.

I know supervision also carries responsibility. Supervisors may sometimes need to ask difficult questions, name concerns or take action where somebody may be at risk.

But supervision also contains power, however collaborative we would like the relationship to be.

A supervisee may be quietly wondering:

Will I be judged?
Will this be written down?
Will my fitness to practise be questioned?
Will my training or placement be affected?
Will what I say later be used against me?

If a supervisee begins editing themselves, offering only the safest version or concealing what is really happening, I don’t think we should automatically decide that they are resistant, defensive or unwilling to reflect.

Perhaps they have learned that honesty is not safe in that particular relationship or system.

Supervision does not need to be endlessly comfortable. Growth rarely is. But challenge without sufficient safety can very easily become compliance, silence and fear.

For me, good supervision makes room for uncertainty, complexity, difference, vulnerability and repair. It allows the therapist to be a human being as well as a practitioner.

Sometimes the supervisee has not failed to use supervision well.

Sometimes supervision has failed to become safe enough to use honestly.

And I think we need to be able to talk about that.

Kas Martin
Fierce As F**k for Therapists
Working at the edge while holding the line.



**kForTherapists

19/09/2026

A therapist raises a serious ethical concern at work.

Instead of examining what she has identified, the organisation begins examining her.

Her tone. Her emotional response.
Her history. Her personality.

Whether she is a “good fit” for the team.
Whether she is resilient enough.
Whether she is becoming too involved.

The original concern quietly disappears and the woman who raised it becomes the new “problem”.

Eventually, she may become anxious, physically unwell, unable to sleep and frightened of saying anything at all.

Then her distress is presented as further evidence that she was the problem all along.

This can be particularly powerful within psychology, psychiatry, social work and healthcare, where professional language can be used to make the dismissal sound compassionate, clinical and reasonable.

Therapy with me offers you the opportunity to explore what happened, to be seen and heard, and believed.

We can look at the hierarchy.
The ethical concern.
What belongs to you and what never did.

If you have been left doubting yourself after speaking out about something that felt profoundly wrong, you are welcome to contact me privately.

Kas Martin
Fierce As F**k

17/09/2026

Perhaps you did not burn out because you lacked resilience.

Perhaps you were repeatedly asked to practise inside conditions that violated what you knew about human beings.

Too many clients, never enough time.

Commissioning targets taking priority over care.

People discharged because their allocated sessions had ended - not because the work was complete.

Clinical responsibility without the authority to change anything.

Knowing what someone needed and being prevented from providing it.

And what happens when we say that we are struggling to cope with this?

We know our truth is not safe there.

Our honesty may be treated as evidence that we lack resilience or are somehow not fit for work.

So we pay privately for therapy or supervision.

We pay from our own pockets for somewhere to speak about the harm created by the system that employs us.

Then we work even harder to adapt.
To cope better.

To become resilient enough to tolerate the intolerable.

Perhaps the question is not only:
“What is wrong with me?”

Perhaps it is:
“What have I been required to participate in and what has that cost me?”

If you need somewhere outside the organisation to think about this honestly, you are welcome to contact me.

🔥 Kas Martin ♥️
👑 Fierce As F**k Therapy for Therapists

16/09/2026

WHEN SUPERVISION FEELS LIKE SURVEILLANCE

Supervision is meant to be somewhere a therapist can think honestly.

But what happens when the supervisor is also the manager and organisational gatekeeper?

Can you admit that you are struggling?
Can you question the service?
Can you speak honestly about the impact of your caseload?
Can you say when you believe something is unsafe or unethical?

Perhaps you carefully manage how you appear because the person “supporting” you also has power over your employment, reputation or progression?

A therapist can look reflective while actually being extremely guarded.

Therapists need somewhere outside the hierarchy.
Somewhere they are not being managed, assessed or feel gagged.

This is just one of the reasons I offer therapy specifically for therapists.

Kas Martin
Fierce As F**k Therapy for Therapists

14/09/2026

Being a therapist does not make us less human.

It can, however, make finding somewhere to be fully human rather more complicated.

You may be highly experienced, deeply capable and able to hold an enormous amount for other people - while still needing somewhere of your own.

Somewhere you do not have to perform competence.

Somewhere you are not expected to know the answer because you are a therapist.

Somewhere you do not need to protect the other person from the complexity, intensity or sheer size of what you carry.

I offer therapy to qualified counsellors and therapists who want to be met as a person, not as a professional role.

You do not have to arrive in crisis. You may simply know that something in your own life needs attention, depth and an honest therapeutic relationship.

I bring nearly 30 years of experience. I am comfortable with complexity, and strong feelings.

We all need somewhere to lean too.

Deeply relational therapy for women who are counsellors, psychotherapists or supervisors and need somewhere they do not have to perform professional competence.

11/09/2026

Control does not always look like control.

Sometimes it looks like growth, healing, transformation, surrender, empowerment and belonging.

It can feel like an exciting beginning.
It can feel like being understood.
It can feel like being welcomed into something extraordinary.

And gradually, a person may be encouraged to trust the group, the leader or the method more than she trusts herself.

Her questions might be labelled “resistance”.
Her doubt called “fear”.
Her boundaries described as “self-sabotage”.

She is told her discomfort means she should surrender and trust the process.

What does a practitioner do when she begins to recognise this pattern?

I do not want to become another external authority telling somebody what to think, believe or do.

However, I also believe there are times when standing quietly by becomes collusion.

Sometimes, we need to interrupt the process.

Gently, but clearly.

Not by taking control of the person.
Not by rescuing her.
Not by replacing one certainty with another.

But by helping her hear her fear beneath the excitement.

By taking her concerns seriously.

By noticing the language she has begun to use.

By questioning anything that removes her authority over her own life.

And by remaining beside her while she finds her own way back to herself.

This is work for a Fierce As F**k Practitioner.

A practitioner who can recognise coercion beneath the language of empowerment.

Who can speak when something feels profoundly wrong.

Who can tolerate not being believed or agreed with.

Who can examine her own potency and certainty while refusing to collude with harm.

Who can interrupt a toxic process without taking possession of the person.

This is what I mean by working at the edge whilst holding the line.

These are the conversations I want us to be able to have through Fierce As F**k.

Kas
Fierce as F**k

11/09/2026

THE UNSPOKEN RULES
AROUND THE TABLE

When belonging depends upon knowing what not to say, people learn to disappear.

Most organisations have spoken rules.
But they also have unspoken ones.

Around the table, practitioners quickly understand what is expected.

They know who holds authority.

They know whose account will become the official version.

They know which questions are welcome and which will be experienced as a challenge.

They know when disagreement must be softened.

They know which emotions will be considered professional and which may be used to question their competence.

They know what has happened to other people who have spoken too clearly, challenged the hierarchy or refused to support an agreed version of events.

Nobody necessarily has to tell them any of this.

They can feel it in the room.
They understand the power.

They understand what might happen to their position, reputation, safety or sense of belonging if they say what they truly think.

And so they adapt.
They become careful.
Measured.
Appropriate.

They find acceptable language for something that does not feel acceptable at all.

They may remain silent when they have something important to say.

This is not dishonesty, it’s survival.
It’s an intelligent response to power.

Then the meeting ends.

Some may sit around a coffee table, walk back to their rooms.

Their shoulders drop.
Their voices change.
The real conversation begins.

“What the f**k just happened?”

“I wanted to challenge it, but I knew what would happen.”

The truth did not suddenly appear after the meeting.

It was present in the room all along.

It simply was not safe enough to be spoken there.

The culture has not removed disagreement, anger or ethical concern.

It has displaced them from the room in which they might have made a difference.

The organisation can take compliance for consent. Professional presentation for the truth.

Yet it loses access to the knowledge, experience and ethical intelligence of the very people it employs.

Practitioners need somewhere safe enough to speak freely and be completely real.

Somewhere they can say what happened, what they noticed, what they felt and what they were unable to say around the official table.

But private safety is not the whole answer.

Organisations must also be willing to ask what their own culture makes unsayable.

Who is permitted to question?
Who is expected to comply?
Whose discomfort matters?
What happens to people who name harm?

And how much of themselves must practitioners conceal in order to remain acceptable and belong?

When people can preserve their belonging only by becoming quieter, smaller and less visible, the problem is not their inability to speak.

The problem is what the hierarchy has taught them it will cost.

Fierce As F**k welcomes conversations about these experiences.

Not to investigate organisations.
Not to gather evidence or build a case.
Not to decide who was right or wrong.

But to offer therapists somewhere safe enough to speak about what happened, what they noticed, what they could not say and how the experience has affected them.

Somewhere they can begin to separate what they know from what they fear, recover trust in their own perceptions and consider what choices are genuinely available to them.

The intention is not to push anybody back into an unsafe room and tell them to speak more loudly.

It is to help therapists recover the voice that hierarchy may have taught them to silence and, wherever it is possible and safe, carry more of their voice back into the rooms where it matters.

Finding your voice does not always mean confronting the organisation.

Sometimes it means naming the truth to yourself.

Sometimes it means setting a boundary.

Sometimes it means seeking further support or specialist advice.

Sometimes it means leaving.

And sometimes it means returning to the table knowing more clearly what you want to say, what you will no longer collude with and where your own line now stands.

Warmly
🌟Kas
👑Fierce as F**k👑

09/09/2026

Some therapists are not looking for another qualification.

They already have degrees, diplomas, PhDs, accreditation and shelves full of books.

Perhaps they are looking for the fierce as f**k practitioner inside of themselves?

The one their training may not have known how to welcome.

The therapist who is awake. Alive. Human. Deeply feeling, and no longer willing to make them self smaller in order to look professional.

I’m welcoming therapists in for real conversations about who we are, how we practise and what might be waiting to come alive in us.

These are one-to-one conversations for therapists who sense that something in them wants to become more alive, more courageous and more fully their own.

You are very welcome to come and talk with me wherever you are based.

Offered with absolutely no obligation.

Kas
FierceAsF**k Practitioners

09/09/2026

If you’re an experienced counsellor or psychotherapist and you’ve ever found yourself struggling with issues of power, hierarchy, organisational culture, speaking up - or perhaps feeling unable to speak at all - I’d love to offer you a conversation.

I’m not gathering evidence, conducting research or building cases about organisations.

I’m simply interested in creating opportunities for like-minded therapists to have real conversations about some of the things we encounter in our professional lives - particularly the things that can be difficult to say out loud especially around “those” tables.

If you’d like to come and have a conversation with me on Zoom, you’re very welcome.

No agenda. Nothing to prepare. Nothing being sold.

Just two practitioners having a real conversation.

Message me privately if you’d like one.

08/09/2026

In 1998, I began a psychiatric placement as part of my counselling training. I had been allocated three “patients” and had begun work with them.

I had also recently discovered marble gel pens. They were absolutely gorgeous. The colours changed as you wrote: peach, pink, lemon, pale green, blending into one another.

I loved them so much, I had been using them to write the patient records.

I want to state: I never aspired to work within a psychiatric system. This placement was part of my training. I appreciate that sounds judgemental. It is. My reservations about these systems are something I’m increasingly willing to speak about today.

Not long into this placement, I was in a busy Tesco near the hospital, grabbing a few things. Standing in the queue, I realised my placement manager was directly behind me.

I turned to say hello. He didn’t say hello back.

Instead, he launched into a speech, very loudly, telling me that he had been checking my notes and had discovered I was using some kind of colourful pen. He looked down at me with what felt like disdain.

I remember him saying that he didn’t think I appreciated the trouble I could be in over this.

He continued, his voice booming out in the queue, explaining how vital it was that I used a black or blue ballpoint. How serious it all was.

He looked furious. His cheeks were very red.

And there I stood, turning pink myself, heading fast towards purple, feeling the heat spread towards my chest.

I felt ashamed. Inadequate. Very small and thoroughly useless.

And there I had been, convinced that my empathy, my acceptance and my realness in relation to these humans entrusted to me, were such an important offering… but standing in that queue, you’d have thought the colour of my pen mattered more than any of it. 🙄🫤

I probably said sorry about twenty times throughout his speech. I was extremely apologetic back then. I apologised for my very existence.

After all, I was just. a. girl.

When he finished, we stood there in silence. I felt deeply uncomfortable. What he felt, I’ll never know.

I couldn’t wait to get served, leave and hide in my car, probably accompanied by a few tears.

I can understand a requirement to write clinical notes in a particular ink.

What I question is how a person entrusted with supervising a trainee chose to address it - and why this requirement hadn’t been explained before I began.

A private conversation could have explained it perfectly.

Instead, I was standing in a supermarket queue, being loudly reprimanded by someone who held power over my training.

Years later, I was mentoring psychotherapy students in the NHS. By then, notes were input electronically.

But how I related with the students mattered enormously to me.

I gave them room to work, to learn and to develop their own practice.

I wanted them to know that if anything went wrong, if they were unsure, or if they needed assistance, they could come to me without fear and we’d sort things out together.

My support was available, with space for them to find their own way.

They didn’t have to hide a difficulty or sit alone with it, frightened of my response.

I know what it feels like to stand in front of someone who has power over your training and apologise for your very existence. 😔

I wanted the students I mentored to have room to exist. To ask. To learn. And to come to me when they most needed support.

And I’m left wondering about his own training. Had someone taught him that this was how you corrected a person? That making someone feel small was part of maintaining standards?

I do know he could have told me about the pen without leaving me wanting to hide in my car.

Use a black ballpoint. Fine.

But how you treat the human holding it matters.

Kas 👑