Rizna (she/they) is a queer Integrative Psychotherapist & Youth Worker of Sri Lankan, Irish, and Scottish ancestry based in Australia as a settler. Their therapeutic approach is gentle, collaborative, rooted in cultural humility, grounded in a steady slowness that rests in curiosity that respects each person’s lived experience and ancestral history

They have worked with Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Youth within residential care in Djugun-Yawuru country, and community-based mental health settings across the Kulin Nations. Supporting individuals navigating what the western medical model would classify as depression, anxiety, suicidality, psychosis, schizophrenia, eating disorders, AOD dependencies, ADHD and ASD.

It’s important to Rizna that they work from a non-pathological lens. Informed by decolonising, abolitionist, and trauma-informed perspectives, they recognise that emotional and psychological distress is shaped by inter-generational trauma, colonisation, systemic inequality, and pressures of post-modern secular society

Their work centres both the individual self, as well as the soul that belongs to a wider ecological weaving story that we are a part of in this human experience that we call life.

Rizna is a student of Sufism, and alongside this devotional practice, the way of Dzogchen has shaped them to cultivate a passion for end-of-life care, to which they are seeking mentorship.

They consider themselves as a soul-activist and grief tender. These traditions and practices deepen their commitment to presence, compassion, justice, truth, and advocacy for protecting the Earth