Manasi Apte (She/Her)

Her work is grounded in the expansiveness of human experience and takes a client-centred, eclectic approach informed by multiple therapeutic modalities, alternative pedagogies, and somatic practices. She approaches people beyond pathologising frameworks, understanding therapy as relational, contextual, and shaped by lived experience. Her practice is further informed by a queer-affirmative lens and her own experiences navigating mental health systems, which deepen her commitment to attuned, collaborative care.

She has worked with adolescents and adults navigating grief, anxiety, body image concerns, abuse, family conflict, stigma, relational challenges, and experiences related to addiction and recovery, approaching these through compassionate, meaning-making frameworks. Much of her work has centred on incarcerated individuals within prisons in Hyderabad and rehabilitative spaces, engaging questions of hopelessness, restoration, and community care through narrative and restorative practices.

She is particularly interested in grief, neurodivergence beyond diagnostic labels, parts work, collective wellbeing, and creative and embodied approaches to healing. 

Through this fellowship, she hopes to deepen her understanding of neurodiversity and disability justice while expanding approaches that honour diverse ways of being, knowing, and relating.

Outside of work, she enjoys spending time with her chosen family, writing, and crafting.