Existential Counselling is about YOU and your relationship with YOUR world. With your help, using a number of counselling techniques, we will seek to take a journey in your shoes.
SERVICES
Welcome to Essons of Life: Home visits available
In your shoes, from your perspective, with your upbringing, and through the filter of your psychological makeup then, can we begin the work of healing.
AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION
Existential /Person Centered Counselling
Narrative Therapy
Premarriage and Postmarriage Counselling
Family and Relationship counselling
Grief and Loss counselling
Psychodynamic assessment and implications for a new perspective.
Depression and ways to avoid it's debilitation.
Social Phobia counselling
Self Esteem/Self Image issues explored.
Conflict Resolution techniques for the everyday
Single Parenting: Separation issues and where to focus.
Massage: Remedial Swedish and Sports.
Reflexology
COMFORT AND CONFIDENTIALITY AT HOME OR AWAY
It is important to me that during counselling, you feel at ease with me, my questions, my inquiries, and my approach to your unique circumstances and situation.
Feeling uneasy in the therapeutic session is however not uncommon, and I do try to remain alert to intruding into territory which is too personal or sensitive. There are always other approaches we can utilize!
Also, notwithstanding any strong impressions which might indicate to me that you are at risk of harming yourself or somebody else, please understand that I am professionally and ethically duty bound to treat all our conversations with the utmost confidentiality.
Some clients may feel more relaxed and comfortable about accessing my services over the phone, via email, or even by home visit. These are also possible, with a nominal home visit fee charge applying where travel is practical.
Regards
John.
FOR YOU
Existential Therapy is not an approach to wellness that promises immediate revitalization or short term spiritual atunement; but it can, in a short time, have a profound and permanently beneficial affect on the way YOU view and live YOUR life.
Consider this:
As part of our biological inheritance, most of us think too much.We observe our immediate world; we evaluate and judge it and then FEEL it as an emotional response......and it's in this everyday judging, feeling and responding that we often become stuck. These preoccupations simply perpetuate a thinking/worry cycle and steer us away from that mental aliveness we perhaps only vaguely remember as children. It is profound thing that not withstanding the impacts of our physical world, how we feel is a direct result of what we think!!
Existential counselling is about you and your preoccupation with those thoughts; the ones that are unhelpful as they cycle through your days and nights. The ones that seem so hard to take shelter from; the ones that too easily build from molehills to mountains.
My first job as a counsellor is to listen to them with you; to try to get a handle on what makes them seem so dominant, so all consuming and so constantly a thorn in your side.
The idea here is for me to create for you an existential window through which; without judgement, we can see with much greater clarity, who you are and in what way you respond to your world. Our aim will be to carefully and respectfully pick apart the "sedimented beliefs" that have laid the foundation for how you believe; how you generate the thoughts and emotions that you do; and ultimately, how to deal with them and even eradicate them.
In many instances, an existential approach helps us "reality test" the validity or the "reasonableness" of well practised responses to people and events in our lives, that help maintain and perpetuate our anxieties. If we can find out where in our lives they come from, and what ideas and notions lie at their core, we are halfway home....defining the problem is, afterall, the main catalyst to fixing the problem! And don't be fooled.....most of us are often very surprised at what we find resides at the heart of our emotional lives.
Our sessions then, are not just about exposing irrational thinking, but also learning to identify and then deal with the inevitable uncomfortable emotions that run with us before that irrational thinking begins to disappear. As a bonus, we get to learn what we cherish, and why we cherish the people and the beliefs we hold!!!
Of course an Existential approach to counselling does very much more than deal with the emotional world. Your physical and spiritual worlds and their wellbeing are paramount too. Here we use the notion of "authenticity" to help us explore the extent to which we hide behind behaviors, attitudes, comments and "ways of being" that align us to the expectations of others, rather than backing ourselves to say and do what we respectfully feel.... very often to the detriment of our wellbeing. Here again, the approach is designed to help you, as client, come in contact with your real self; the self that intrinsically knows your strengths and limitations, your doubts and dreams, your debilitators and motivators. We can then explore them together, and gauge them in terms of whether they are being properly considered in your life or not........In other words, existential counselling lets you compare your AUTHENTIC healthy self with your INAUTHENTIC and anxiety producing self..
AN ECLECTIC APPROACH
(MY TOOLBOX)
Existential counselling is about finding ourselves. It is about purpose; it is about meaning; it is about our place in time and what we do within that place to give us the sense of connectedness and grounding we need. Ultimately though it's about realizing our own personal honesty (authenticity) in the process of becoming peaceful and playful within the inevitable tensions of life. Easier said than done? Sure. That's the reason for our eclectic toolbox!
One of our early objectives in session is to listen for themes in your past. They are often the best "hint givers" as to where life problems (including family problems) reside; where unproductive coping and communication habits develop.
As a practical solution we can of course work on devising new themes and narratives to descibe our lives, practice new ways of managing conflict, explore new boundaries of control and influence; perhaps try new and enlightened approaches to how you treat yourself and the world . We can even make a genogram to discover what parts of our belief systems reside in past family history; perhaps even gain the courage to recraft some outdated ideas and values!
One of my favourite and most illuminating approaches to understanding many of our personal relationships though, is through Transactional Analysis. T A is easy to recognise and understand in it's rudimentary form, and importantly, it can be used as a tool to helps us discover the way our relationships work; and often, why they do not! Using "ego states" derived from childhood, T A is helpful in identifying our states of communication that all too often, seem to chain us and our significant others into a mutual battle for acceptance and validation. These ego states can reveal too, how we so often become imbued with feelings of guilt and inadequacy as our conversations are played out with these powerful psychological forces.With little preparation, we can even playrole the very issues that keep some of our "transactions" so consistently unrewarding!
Qualifications
Graduate Diploma of Counselling and Communication
(Australian College of Applied Psychology)
Graduate Diploma of Teaching (Primary)
(Carseldine College of Advanced Education: Qld)
Bachelor of Arts Degree : Social Sciences
(La trobe University: Vic)
Diploma of Swedish Remedial and Sports Massage. Reflexology.
(Formally Verona Massage Academy)
QUALIFICATION DETAILS
MAP
Counselling, Life Coaching, Remedial Massage, Sports Massage, Swedish Relaxation Massage
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