To me, in the context of counseling and working with clients, post-human is a blurring of the boundaries imposed by separation and the epistemologies and ontologies associated with separation such as capitalism, coloniality and the epoch of the Anthropocene. This means going beyond the 'human' as simply a body that merely thinks, feels and behaves on it's own. Agency, in post-humanism is within and among the ecosystems which one is entangled in, not within you or within me to control or force to change or to be something it isn't.

 

Post-humanism in counseling involves being with your pains, sufferings, joys and struggles, not ignoring them by focusing on a 'solution' or running from them with a model of 'treatment'. This is often counter to what we are taught in the modern world, though if we sit with our suffering the ecosystem will take care of it, and take care of us. Of course, there are exceptions, such as crisis, emotional/psychological or physical violence. We certainly will attend to those.

 

Post-humanism also means that I listen and offer guidance and insight from deep within my body's responses and with my intuition, not simply from superficial behavior-cognitive-emotion paradigms. This all allows for deep changes in your ecosystems that may nourish you and continue to provide you insight outside of sessions. Post-humanism re-connects you, and heals any forced separations from yourself, or from any other part of life. 

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