Elza Berk
The system failed her. So she built a better one — grounded in dignity, human rights and the belief that no one should be shamed for struggling.
- Registered counsellor · ASCHP WCW/271
- BA Psychology (2025)
- WHO researcher
- HBGI LEC Member, Addiction & Harm Reduction (2025)
- King’s College London collaborator
- Keynote speaker, Lisbon 2024
Her story
Elza didn’t found MyTruth because it seemed like a good business idea. She founded it because she needed it herself.
She entered the addiction treatment system as a person in treatment, and watched it break people down. After her own journey through mental health struggles, trauma and addiction, she spent more than 20 years working inside South Africa’s leading rehabilitation clinics, beginning in 2006.
There she sat across from people who had tried everything — and were told they weren’t trying hard enough. When the reality was they were trying with everything they had. Over time she came to see, with growing clarity, a model that too often treated relapse as the person’s failure rather than a signal to understand.
So she began working differently: online and in inpatient settings, using trauma-informed care and harm reduction. Since 2015 she has worked with clients across Africa, Europe, North America, Australia and beyond. In 2016 she founded MyTruth to build the kind of support the system refused to offer.
She has been sober for more than 26 years. And she is deeply aware that abstinence is not the goal for everyone, and has never been the only measure of recovery.
Four convictions behind everything we do.
Addiction is a mental health condition
“As a society we have decided that addiction is not the same as depression or anxiety. Yet it is. It is a desperate attempt to find a way to live inside yourself when living inside yourself feels unbearably uncomfortable.”
Relapse is not failure
“We don’t shame people for a return of symptoms of depression, anxiety or trauma — yet when someone in addiction has a recurrence of symptoms, we shame them. Why?”
Lived experience is expertise
“Systems must be built by those with lived experience, to protect the dignity and human rights of every person they serve.”
You know yourself best
“We try to understand you — knowing, always, that you know yourself better than anyone else ever could.”
From lived experience to a movement.
- Lived experience
Enters the addiction treatment system as a person in treatment — and sees first-hand how shame and ultimatums break people down.
- 2006
Begins more than 20 years of work inside South Africa’s leading rehabilitation clinics.
- 2015
Starts working online with clients across continents, putting harm reduction and trauma-informed care at the centre — long before either was mainstream.
- 2016
Founds the practice that is now MyTruth, to build what the system wouldn’t, growing it from a solo practice into a team of registered counsellors.
- 2021
Launches TherapyNow Global online, bringing registered counsellors to South Africans at home and around the world.
- Research
Collaborates with Dr Claire Brooks and Julieanne Cullen on research defining dignity and human rights through lived experience for the WHO’s Mental Health and Human Rights Guidance. Co-authors research with King’s College London.
- 2024
Keynote speaker at an addiction conference in Lisbon, Portugal, on the importance of lived experience in research.
- 2025
Completes her BA in Psychology, and sits on the Healthy Brains Global Initiative (HBGI) as an LEC Member for Addiction and Harm Reduction.
- 2026
Moves TherapyNow Global to MyTruth: the same care, with a new name. Your truth, in your words and your language.
Dignity and human rights, in practice.
Elza’s research focuses on human rights and dignity — including work with Dr Claire Brooks and Julieanne Cullen defining dignity and human rights through lived experience for the World Health Organization’s Mental Health and Human Rights Guidance. She collaborates on mental health research with King’s College London and has sat on the Healthy Brains Global Initiative (HBGI) as an LEC Member for Addiction and Harm Reduction since 2025. In 2024 she was a keynote speaker at an addiction conference in Lisbon, Portugal, speaking on the importance of lived experience in research.
She also speaks publicly — to more than 80,000+ people online — about mental health, harm reduction and the systems that are meant to protect people but too often fail them.
Counselling with Elza
Elza still sees clients herself, working with individuals and couples on 12-session packages. Her focus: addiction (harm reduction), trauma, eating disorders, narcissistic abuse, coercive control and divorce trauma.
Book with Elza →Workshops & speaking
Workshops and talks for organisations, universities and professionals on harm reduction, trauma-informed care and wellbeing.
Enquire →The pain, shame and grief can be walked through. You are not alone.
Book a session with Elza or one of the counsellors she has hand-picked.