This page is about who I am as a person, and my work as a counsellor.
I grew up in north-western Victoria in a family of tradesmen and farmers. My passion as a teenager was jazz, and I dropped out of high-school and made a living as a musician for a few years, before a passion for understanding life gripped me, to point that I left everything and entered a monastery. A year later I returned to Australia and, after working in a factory by day and reading philosophy by night, I studied my way into The University of Melbourne where I majored in and eventually taught philosophy.
Philosophy for me is less an academic and more a practical passion: it is about facing hardship well; it is about finding meaning; it is about crafting a good life, it is about being fully alive. Hence, during postgraduate study in philosophy I decided also to study counselling, so that I could combine the two disciplines. This has become my career. Today I am a master's qualified counsellor with decades of experience, and am registered at the most senior level with the Australian Counselling Association. I no longer teach philosophy, but rather integrate it into my counselling, in the context of a life commited to the arts of well-being and flourishing.
During my first decade as a counsellor I worked within organisations with the aim of becoming widely competent. I counselled within services as diverse as bereavement, men's counselling, suicide intervention, career and workplace coaching, and veteran's support. I took deep dives into the mainstream approaches to counselling and psychotherapy - humanistic, cognitive-behavioural, psychodynamic. I pursued professional projects of passion, such as piloting the first nation-wide government-funded service in video counselling for rural men. Alongside all of this I created a successful private practice in Melbourne, offering a philosophical approach to counselling known as Existential Therapy.
These days I work purely in private practice. As a counsellor I define myself as a "well-being and personal growth professional." I write elsewhere about how this is different to a clinical mental health professional. Typically, I will help you gain greater insight into yourself, and turn that into wisdom which you can use, with skill and compassion, to move in a direction which is good for you as a whole person. This is always done in terms of your specific goals. My therapy involves a feedback loop between solving your particular problems and growing as a person. My work differs according to people's wants and personalities; it is deeply contemplative with some clients (for example helping them define who they are and what truly matters in their life), and very practical with others (for example helping them develop confidence dating or their career). There is a balance of pragmatism and depth in all my work; the musician, monk, and philosopher, but from a tradesman family and with a master's in social science, is all deeply embedded in my temperament as a therapist.
While I have a deep capacity to listen to people's pain, at root I am oriented by a powerful love of life. Like many people I have suffered plenty, but I've worked hard at integrating that, while finding renewed meaning and increasing my strength and happiness, and I bring this background to my professional work. Life is intrinsically hard and painful, and intrinsically good and joyful; therapy is the art of becoming able to hold it all, and to transform what comes to us and who we are. It is about existing well. Hence the name of my original therapeutic orientation: Existential Therapy.
That's enough about me. In 2018 I bought a cottage by a forest in central Victoria, where I do this work from home, while once again working as a musician, and continuing my own spiritual and intellectual growth.
I grew up in north-western Victoria in a family of tradesmen and farmers. My passion as a teenager was jazz, and I dropped out of high-school and made a living as a musician for a few years, before a passion for understanding life gripped me, to point that I left everything and entered a monastery. A year later I returned to Australia and, after working in a factory by day and reading philosophy by night, I studied my way into The University of Melbourne where I majored in and eventually taught philosophy.
Philosophy for me is less an academic and more a practical passion: it is about facing hardship well; it is about finding meaning; it is about crafting a good life, it is about being fully alive. Hence, during postgraduate study in philosophy I decided also to study counselling, so that I could combine the two disciplines. This has become my career. Today I am a master's qualified counsellor with decades of experience, and am registered at the most senior level with the Australian Counselling Association. I no longer teach philosophy, but rather integrate it into my counselling, in the context of a life commited to the arts of well-being and flourishing.
During my first decade as a counsellor I worked within organisations with the aim of becoming widely competent. I counselled within services as diverse as bereavement, men's counselling, suicide intervention, career and workplace coaching, and veteran's support. I took deep dives into the mainstream approaches to counselling and psychotherapy - humanistic, cognitive-behavioural, psychodynamic. I pursued professional projects of passion, such as piloting the first nation-wide government-funded service in video counselling for rural men. Alongside all of this I created a successful private practice in Melbourne, offering a philosophical approach to counselling known as Existential Therapy.
These days I work purely in private practice. As a counsellor I define myself as a "well-being and personal growth professional." I write elsewhere about how this is different to a clinical mental health professional. Typically, I will help you gain greater insight into yourself, and turn that into wisdom which you can use, with skill and compassion, to move in a direction which is good for you as a whole person. This is always done in terms of your specific goals. My therapy involves a feedback loop between solving your particular problems and growing as a person. My work differs according to people's wants and personalities; it is deeply contemplative with some clients (for example helping them define who they are and what truly matters in their life), and very practical with others (for example helping them develop confidence dating or their career). There is a balance of pragmatism and depth in all my work; the musician, monk, and philosopher, but from a tradesman family and with a master's in social science, is all deeply embedded in my temperament as a therapist.
While I have a deep capacity to listen to people's pain, at root I am oriented by a powerful love of life. Like many people I have suffered plenty, but I've worked hard at integrating that, while finding renewed meaning and increasing my strength and happiness, and I bring this background to my professional work. Life is intrinsically hard and painful, and intrinsically good and joyful; therapy is the art of becoming able to hold it all, and to transform what comes to us and who we are. It is about existing well. Hence the name of my original therapeutic orientation: Existential Therapy.
That's enough about me. In 2018 I bought a cottage by a forest in central Victoria, where I do this work from home, while once again working as a musician, and continuing my own spiritual and intellectual growth.
