Maria Gaian, Founder of the Ditch the Black Dog Virtual Retreat

This is a good question.

I believe in a fair, just, inclusive and equal society.

Which by default makes me anti-capitalist.

So why don’t I help people recover from depression for free?

The truth is I’d love to! 

The trouble is I also need to feed my kids, my feral colony and keep a roof over my head. 

I can’t give everything away for free or really cheap until my landlord decides to let me live in my house for nothing and the electricity company don’t care if I pay my bills or not.

 Knowing this doesn’t stop people criticising.

I’ve seen it come up a lot for people who have Spiritual gifts. They’re told that they’ve been given a gift by god so they should give it away. Many do and end up broke and burned out, unable to help anymore. Been there, done that!

I’ve seen witches tell other witches that they shouldn’t profit from witchcraft. They’ll often say that our ancestors didn’t charge for their magick (not true), and that to make money from magick is bad energy.

And then there’s the folks who’re used to getting counseling and therapy for nothing cos their country has free healthcare. Or they have access to charities that fundraise so they can offer free services.

But that doesn’t work for small businesses like mine.

I don’t have the resources to be hunting for funding and doing the work. I’ve also been there, done that and got the nervous breakdown. 

I wish we lived in a society where money doesn’t matter, but right now it does. 

So all I can do is make my products and services as accessible and affordable as I can without ending up unable to support myself. 

But there’s another reason that I don’t help people to recover from depression for free and you might find it a bit controversial.

 Even if all my bills were paid, I would still charge something for my work.

I can hear you yelling at me from all the way over there. 

WTAF Maria?

That doesn’t feel very anticapitalist, inclusive or even chuffing fair, right?

I guess it doesn’t sound like it.

But I have my reasons….  

 Let me explain…

When I first started my business offering equine facilitated learning to kids with autism, I wanted to help

ALL.

THE.

KIDS.

Especially really vulnerable kids that needed it the most.

So I started offering free sessions.

As you can imagine, keeping horses is not cheap.

Offering these services for free came at a cost for me and the horses.

It cost our time and our energy to offer, market, do the session, and write the notes afterwards.

Not to mention we could have been seeing paying clients instead.

I didn’t think about that at the time.

I just wanted to be helpful.

The answer seemed simple and I began adding a percentage to every paying client’s bill to help me cover the cost of the free sessions.

People were happy with that and would sometimes over pay or add a donation. 

But it didn’t solve the main problem I had. 

You would think that anyone who couldn’t normally afford to come to work and play with horses would be thrilled to be invited to come for free.

What an opportunity, right?

But I was shocked at what actually happened.

Not a single person who booked free sessions actually valued them.

Are you as shocked as I was?

Would you have turned up and given your all in a session?

I know I would, but in the real world it wasn’t like that at all.

We’d wait and wait and no-one turned up. 

People would book and then not turn up.

We’d have prepared the ponies and be standing there like lemons waiting and waiting and waiting……..Not so much as a phone call to cancel.

We had a particular woman who turned up at the time her session was due to end and expected her full hour session. She got very aggressive when we had to say ‘no’ because we had another client booked in straight after her.

These were not one off events. They became the norm.

I made the tough decision to start charging everyone something, even if it was just $5.

It made a lot of difference.

People respected us.

Not all of them, cos I was still too cheap. Many people could still chuck $5 away without getting worked up about it.

But the ones that had to think about finding that money, were much more committed clients.  

 I started a new therapy business that has since become Ditch the Black Dog.

People all over social media are struggling with depression. They can’t sleep, have nightmares, are overthinking, or suffering deep emotional pain and desperately need relief.

A couple of years ago I saw people screaming for help and wondered if I could do something.

One person was constantly begging for help with persistent nightmares.

I shared a free Paul McKenna’s Havening Technique video with them that I’d found useful when I was having flashbacks to my abusive childhood.

It’s a 10 minute video, but it’s really effective. I warned them that it was a bit odd but that they should keep an open mind and try it cos the technique has worked well for veterans suffering extreme PTSD.

(You can find it here if you’re interested: https://youtu.be/09IDxrXAi2ssi=zhMIFEmCJo4LXBp7 

A few days later I asked if they’d found the technique useful.

‘I’ve not watched it’, they said. ‘I’m not ready to try anything new.’

I felt disappointed when they said that, but imagine how deflated I felt when I saw them making the same posts the next night about how no-one could or would help them.

But I didn’t give up trying to help people recover from depression for free.

People would talk to me for hours on Twitter and I’d end up offering to create a personalised recording to help them sleep or to calm anxiety. They’d enthusiastically say  ‘yes’ and then never even open the message.

These were people who had asked me for my help. I wasn’t sending them unsolicited messages.

I wanted to be of service, but all that happened was I ended up burned out and demoralized and didn’t want to do this work anymore. I wasn’t able to help anyone in that state and so I started to investigate where I was going wrong. 

I know from my own personal experience that I don’t value free things as much as ones I have sweated blood and tears to pay for. (Unless they’re cats. My cats are free and they’re priceless to me!)

I’ve got a computer full of free PDF’s I’ve never looked at, even though I downloaded them with the best intentions.

Would I have opened them if I paid for them?

Damn right I would.

And that is why I’ll always charge something for my work. It may be a low price, it may be in return for a review, or any other exchange of energy that makes sense for both me and the client.

But there will always be an exchange of energy cos I want you to value the work we do together.

So that’s why I don’t help people with depression for free.

However, I never said I wouldn’t make them affordable! 

Make sense?

With love and magick always,

Maria xx

TL:DR I charge for my work because I have to pay to live in this capitalist society. But I also find that people value things that they pay for and get much more out of working with me.

My free stuff is my blog, my YouTube Channel and my podcast. 

The Ditch the Black Dog Virtual Retreat opens September 23rd 2026.

In the meantime, I’ll be running some taster sessions, plus you’ll have the chance to join at a very low founder member price. 

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