Counselling · Sydney & online
When an online world becomes hard to step outside.
A place to consider what your involvement is doing in your life.
Counselling around online radicalisation concerns, pressure and changing involvement. We explore your experience without assuming a feed caused it or prescribing beliefs.
The concern is your room to think and choose, not simply how much time you spend online.
From an interest to something harder to question.
You may have followed a creator or joined a group that initially made sense of your experience. Now you may feel pressured to prove loyalty, spend more time engaging or dismiss people outside the community.
Or you may be reconsidering past involvement and dealing with shame, uncertainty or lost relationships. We do not require you to use the word radicalisation. We ask what has changed, over what period and what is difficult now.
The feed is part of the setting, not the whole explanation.
The eSafety Commissioner describes how recommender systems select and rank content. Seeing repeated material does not, by itself, establish why someone changed their views or behaviour.
We look at how what you see online, the people you engage with, community expectations and your wider circumstances affect each other. Online and offline relationships may be intertwined. We do not investigate a platform’s algorithm or claim to prove its effect on you.
What counselling can focus on.
Clarify the difficulty
Distinguish content you choose from pressures that make it hard to pause, disagree or seek other views.
Work through the personal effects
Make room for fear, anger, grief, identity questions and relationship strain without making a belief change the condition of care.
Find practical room to move
Consider other relationships, sources of information and routines that help you make choices, act on them and reconsider them.
Not a specialist violent-extremism service.
Strong beliefs, online disagreement or membership of a community do not establish a threat. Where there is concern about violence, specialist assessment and support are needed; ordinary counselling is not a substitute.
If you are concerned about involvement in violent extremism, Step Together offers specialist support and referral information. TEC does not provide formal violence-risk assessment, counter-terrorism work or a deradicalisation programme. In immediate danger in Australia, call 000; do not wait for an enquiry response.
Common questions.
Do algorithms cause radicalisation?
There is no conclusion about a particular person without evidence. Our counselling considers the wider situation rather than treating the recommender system as the whole explanation.
Will you require me to stop using social media?
No. We explore the effects of your involvement and changes that fit your circumstances. We do not start with a goal of stopping all social-media use.
Can a parent enquire about a young person?
Yes, through family consultation. This does not mean TEC offers direct specialist child or adolescent treatment. Suitable youth or safeguarding services may be needed.
Further information.
- eSafety Commissioner — echo chambers and your feed
An explanation of how algorithms select what appears in your feed and how to think about the information you see.
- Step Together — support and advice
A specialist starting point for concerns about involvement in violent extremism; not an emergency service.
Service information from The Exit Clinic. These pages are not an assessment of you, another person or a group. External resources offer other perspectives; they do not establish the facts of your situation.
The Exit Clinic
Founded by JT Kua, Counsellor, and Isabel Pham, Social Worker.