This is a bit about who I am as a person, and what I do as a counsellor.
I grew up in the dust of north-western Victoria in a family of tradesmen and farmers. I spent my teens in a hot tin shed, recording jazz off the radio and learning to play it on the drums. My passion for jazz was so strong that I dropped out of high school and, with a bag of clothes and a drumkit, moved to Melbourne, where I made a living as a musician for a few years. However it was during this adventurous time that my philosophical journey also began: I developed a deep interest in spirituality, which led me to travel to Italy and enter a monastery for a year. After returning I worked in a factory for a while and began reading books. I discovered philosophy itself. In particular I read ancient Greek philosophy - the Stoics - and modern existentialism. And so I took night classes and got myself into The University of Melbourne, where I studied and eventually taught it.
For me philosophy is practical, it is about facing hardship well, finding meaning, becoming a good human being, and making life good. As you might be able to tell, I was less interested in scholarship - rather I was drawn by how I could use philosophy to help people who are suffering or who are trying to improve their lives. I decided to study counselling and to become a philosophical counsellor.
Today I am a master's qualified counsellor and am registered at the most senior level with the Australian Counselling Association. During my first decade as a counsellor I worked a lot within organisations, with the aim of becoming highly skilled. I worked in services as diverse as bereavement, men's relationship counselling, suicide intervention, career coaching, and veteran's support. I piloted one of the first nationally-funded programs in video counselling for rural Australians. I designed and delivered professional training to other counsellors. I was repeatedly approached and offered teaching roles at counselling colleges, in response to the writing I published, however I turned those down in the name of more hands-on experience. Indeed, during these years I developed an in-depth knowledge of all the major therapeutic approaches, both in theory and in practice (and even as a client - I sought to experience them from the inside). Today this gives a flexibility and depth to how I work. My goal from the start was to gain a high degree of competence in order to practice powerfully as a philosophical counsellor.
My focus these days is private practice as a philosophical counsellor (and personal coach). I come alive when talking with people in-depth about their life and their challenges and hopes, helping them grow and make life better. The essence of my counselling involves those very same things which drew me to philosophy: facing life's hardships well; finding purpose and meaning; becoming a stronger, wiser, kinder, happier human being; and making you life good, living the way you most deeply want. Depending on my client, sometimes the work is more contemplative: we reflect on your value as a human being and the meaning of your life. For people who are going through transitions, or people who have never really felt worthy, this can be transformative. Sometimes the work is more change-oriented: you are anxious, or having trouble in your relationship, and you feel that a deeper approach which taps into your fundamental desires, your purpose, and your strengths, will make all the difference. If a person simply wants symptom-reduction, if they believe that facing their life in a deeper, stronger way has nothing to do with handling their issues, then they are not a good fit for my counselling. But people who value personal growth, self-improvement, insight into themselves, wisdom about life, will find a happy home in my approach.
Philosophical counselling is a vocation for me. I walk the talk both in terms of my own personal growth work, and in using my own counsellors and coaches. It's important that a counsellor in my field has solid life experience, and my adult life emerged from poverty in a fibro house in the dusty Mallee with an abusive step-father, then the consequent struggles with depression and anxiety in my twenties, and in my thirties a shattering loss which in a sense brought all of that previous experience to a head. More importantly, the thread that ran through all of those years was the refusal to lose myself in any suffering, but rather to dig deep and make life meaningful, to make myself stronger, to learn the craft of happiness. My personal passion is facing life honestly, but growing and striving to make it all better. That's an important background which I bring to our work. Every client I see is a different person to me, with a different story and a different psychological make-up, but my counselling works from this core starting point - our shared human condition - our shared experience that life can be very hard, but also that it can become very good, and that it's worth striving to make that happen.
Over the years I have developed additional aspects to my work. For example I offer men's counselling and coaching to rural and regional men - a personal passion based on my love of the places and people where I grew up. But the big focus alongside my counselling is my general coaching work. Counselling and coaching reflect two sides to my personality. In counselling I enjoy the emphasis on reflection, on insight. In coaching I enjoy the emphasis on absolute striving: into courageous action, into a better mindset, into action and achievement. Both of these are vital sides of me - what in philosophy we might refer to as the contemplative, and the heroic. If you feel drawn to both, don't worry, it may be that we work in a way which simply blends them. Or you might start with one, do some good work there, and then realise you need to shift to the other. The definitions are less important than doing what works for you.
That's enough about me. As I say, this work is my vocation, a way of being. In 2018 I bought a cottage by a forest in central Victoria, where I now live in an increasingly self-sustaining way: growing my own food, repairing everything myself, and crafting my ideal life - doing the work that I am passionate about. This work is Online by video or phone - indeed I often walk through the forest while speaking with clients. I also previously saw people in Bendigo and Carlton, and will revisit that possibility in 2021.
I grew up in the dust of north-western Victoria in a family of tradesmen and farmers. I spent my teens in a hot tin shed, recording jazz off the radio and learning to play it on the drums. My passion for jazz was so strong that I dropped out of high school and, with a bag of clothes and a drumkit, moved to Melbourne, where I made a living as a musician for a few years. However it was during this adventurous time that my philosophical journey also began: I developed a deep interest in spirituality, which led me to travel to Italy and enter a monastery for a year. After returning I worked in a factory for a while and began reading books. I discovered philosophy itself. In particular I read ancient Greek philosophy - the Stoics - and modern existentialism. And so I took night classes and got myself into The University of Melbourne, where I studied and eventually taught it.
For me philosophy is practical, it is about facing hardship well, finding meaning, becoming a good human being, and making life good. As you might be able to tell, I was less interested in scholarship - rather I was drawn by how I could use philosophy to help people who are suffering or who are trying to improve their lives. I decided to study counselling and to become a philosophical counsellor.
Today I am a master's qualified counsellor and am registered at the most senior level with the Australian Counselling Association. During my first decade as a counsellor I worked a lot within organisations, with the aim of becoming highly skilled. I worked in services as diverse as bereavement, men's relationship counselling, suicide intervention, career coaching, and veteran's support. I piloted one of the first nationally-funded programs in video counselling for rural Australians. I designed and delivered professional training to other counsellors. I was repeatedly approached and offered teaching roles at counselling colleges, in response to the writing I published, however I turned those down in the name of more hands-on experience. Indeed, during these years I developed an in-depth knowledge of all the major therapeutic approaches, both in theory and in practice (and even as a client - I sought to experience them from the inside). Today this gives a flexibility and depth to how I work. My goal from the start was to gain a high degree of competence in order to practice powerfully as a philosophical counsellor.
My focus these days is private practice as a philosophical counsellor (and personal coach). I come alive when talking with people in-depth about their life and their challenges and hopes, helping them grow and make life better. The essence of my counselling involves those very same things which drew me to philosophy: facing life's hardships well; finding purpose and meaning; becoming a stronger, wiser, kinder, happier human being; and making you life good, living the way you most deeply want. Depending on my client, sometimes the work is more contemplative: we reflect on your value as a human being and the meaning of your life. For people who are going through transitions, or people who have never really felt worthy, this can be transformative. Sometimes the work is more change-oriented: you are anxious, or having trouble in your relationship, and you feel that a deeper approach which taps into your fundamental desires, your purpose, and your strengths, will make all the difference. If a person simply wants symptom-reduction, if they believe that facing their life in a deeper, stronger way has nothing to do with handling their issues, then they are not a good fit for my counselling. But people who value personal growth, self-improvement, insight into themselves, wisdom about life, will find a happy home in my approach.
Philosophical counselling is a vocation for me. I walk the talk both in terms of my own personal growth work, and in using my own counsellors and coaches. It's important that a counsellor in my field has solid life experience, and my adult life emerged from poverty in a fibro house in the dusty Mallee with an abusive step-father, then the consequent struggles with depression and anxiety in my twenties, and in my thirties a shattering loss which in a sense brought all of that previous experience to a head. More importantly, the thread that ran through all of those years was the refusal to lose myself in any suffering, but rather to dig deep and make life meaningful, to make myself stronger, to learn the craft of happiness. My personal passion is facing life honestly, but growing and striving to make it all better. That's an important background which I bring to our work. Every client I see is a different person to me, with a different story and a different psychological make-up, but my counselling works from this core starting point - our shared human condition - our shared experience that life can be very hard, but also that it can become very good, and that it's worth striving to make that happen.
Over the years I have developed additional aspects to my work. For example I offer men's counselling and coaching to rural and regional men - a personal passion based on my love of the places and people where I grew up. But the big focus alongside my counselling is my general coaching work. Counselling and coaching reflect two sides to my personality. In counselling I enjoy the emphasis on reflection, on insight. In coaching I enjoy the emphasis on absolute striving: into courageous action, into a better mindset, into action and achievement. Both of these are vital sides of me - what in philosophy we might refer to as the contemplative, and the heroic. If you feel drawn to both, don't worry, it may be that we work in a way which simply blends them. Or you might start with one, do some good work there, and then realise you need to shift to the other. The definitions are less important than doing what works for you.
That's enough about me. As I say, this work is my vocation, a way of being. In 2018 I bought a cottage by a forest in central Victoria, where I now live in an increasingly self-sustaining way: growing my own food, repairing everything myself, and crafting my ideal life - doing the work that I am passionate about. This work is Online by video or phone - indeed I often walk through the forest while speaking with clients. I also previously saw people in Bendigo and Carlton, and will revisit that possibility in 2021.
