We often use untangling- the process of freeing knots or tangles- as a metaphor for mental health and self discovery journeys. But the sibling phrase ‘detangle’ feels deeply relevant to the disabled experience. The word is typically used to describe the separating out of strands or fibres like hair or wool.

Disabled people have unique experiences to embodied experience. Where able bodied people may more easily be able to draw boundaries and distinctions between physical and mental experiences, disabled people’s experiences often tangle together.

Detangle Counselling was founded on the idea that progress can always be made toward detangling and understanding the strands of emotion that come from existing in a disabled body, no matter what physical, neurological, intellectual, cognitive, social or societal constraints a person is under.