Relational Selfhood, Trauma, and the Limits of Individualised Psychology: Colonial Harm to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Ways of Being

Contemporary trauma theory and practice within Euro Western psychology are grounded in assumptions of an autonomous, internally bounded self, where distress is located within the individual and recovery is framed as the restoration of personal regulation, coherence, or control. While often treated as culturally neutral, these assumptions reflect specific philosophical and historical traditions that emerged alongside colonial modernity. When applied to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, such individualised models risk compounding trauma, undermining cultural responsiveness and continuing the harms of colonisation.

This webinar explores how colonisation has disrupted Indigenous Australian ways of knowing selfhood, belonging, and relational responsibility, and how these disruptions continue to be reproduced through individualised trauma frameworks. Drawing on Indigenous Australian philosophy, particularly the work of Dr Mary Graham, selfhood is presented not as a fixed identity or internal psychological property, but as a relational, locational, and ethical state of being. In this view, a person’s wellbeing emerges through lived obligations to Country, kin, community, and ancestral continuities, articulated through the formulation “I am located, therefore I am.” Central to this framework is the concept of autonomous regard: a relational form of autonomy grounded in dignity, self regulation, and custodial responsibility rather than separateness or self sufficiency. Trauma, from this perspective, is not only an individual experience of threat or dysregulation, but a profound disturbance to relational bonds, ethical obligations, and secure belonging. Colonisation, and its ongoing expressions through policy, systems, and psychological practice, can therefore be understood as a trauma that targets relational selfhood itself.

By contrasting Euro Western and Indigenous Australian ontologies of selfhood, this webinar invites practitioners to critically reflect on how trauma is recognised, interpreted, and responded to in Indigenous contexts. It argues that culturally safe trauma work cannot be achieved through surface adaptations to individualised models alone but requires a deeper re examination of the assumptions about self, autonomy, and healing that underpin contemporary psychological practice.

At the end of this webinar, you should be able to:

• Identify how assumptions of autonomous selfhood embedded in mainstream trauma frameworks conflict with Indigenous Australian relational understandings of knowing, being, doing and belonging.

• Understand Indigenous Australian understandings of selfhood as relational, locational, and ethical states of being, including the concepts of autonomous regard and relational obligation.

• Critically reflect on how differing ontologies of selfhood influence the recognition, interpretation, and cultural responsiveness of trauma work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

About the presenter

Mary is a Yuin Budawang woman, Clinical Psychologist and Ahpra Board Approved Supervisor. She has a private psychology, supervision and consultancy practice specialising in Indigenous Australian psychology and culturally responsive therapeutic practice, emotional dysregulation, performing arts psychology, PTSD and Complex Trauma. Mary has been a psychotherapist for 30 years and a psychologist for 12, with a long and varied history in community work, adult education and mental health services. She lectures in Indigenous Australian psychology as well as conducting training workshops and programs for journalists, creatives, and psychologists and other mental health and social services professionals. Mary is a Professional Practice Fellow of the University of Western Australia and a Director of the Australian Indigenous Psychologists Association (AIPA). She is a co-author of the Listening More suite of resources for providing culturally responsive supervision for psychologists, and of a chapter, “wangii wadhan biyay” – bringing Indigenous and non-Indigenous psychologies together within a decolonising framework; another on “Deep Yarning”, an Indigenous psychotherapeutic model; and is co-developer of the 6Ps x 8 domains formulation tool for working with Indigenous Australians.

The event will be hosted by Max Loomes, President of ASTSS