Counselling

Skill

Counselling is the skilled and principled use of relationship to generate self-knowledge, empowerment, mental health, emotional stability and growth, through the optimal use of personal resources. The overall aim of counselling is to provide you with the opportunity to live your life more fully and with greater satisfaction. Your experience will be facilitated in ways that respect your values, personal resources and capacity for self-determination.

Interconnection

At Life Matters: Holistic Counselling all of the various aspects of your life are perceived as being interconnected. In our work together we will not only explore the challenges presenting in the foreground of your experience but may also seek together, to better understand the undercurrents of your experiencing. In so doing, you will potentially gain both valuable knowledge about yourself and practical tools for future use.

Commitment

The counselling process requires your commitment and active participation, however it is also one which at all times will proceed at a pace comfortable for and set by you. Much of our time together will be spent in direct conversation, exploring and reflecting on your present or past life experiences. You will also be invited to engage in creative and experiential exercises both during and between sessions, to help consolidate your personal insights.

Experience

Any experiential exercises selected will be tailored to suit you, making use at different times of your body and sensations, your emotions, your imagination, creativity and intellect. There are many excellent techniques available to draw upon including: Life Mapping, Logical Analysis, Journalling, Focusing, Dreamwork, Active Imagination, Grounding, Practical Assessment, Critical Analysis and Creative Expression.

Safety

Very difficult or painful life experiences are often precursors to overthinking, acting out, mental unease or emotional instability. They may also leave us feeling at our most vulnerable. To work through such experiences can be made easier, with clear intentions and a dedicated, safe and supportive time and place for reflection. My intention in all of my work with you is to provide and encourage such a space, for the duration of your therapy and beyond.

Person-Centered (Rogerian) Therapy [AIPC]

Person-centered therapy provides the framework for all of our sessions. This model places you at the centre of the therapeutic process and is based on the understanding that you know your own experience very well and that you are fully capable of fulfilling your personal potential for growth. My role is to support you in the process of coming to know this both experientially and intellectually. Through our connection, your connection to your authentic self will be brought to the fore and deepened.

Transpersonal Counselling [more…]

My Hobart counselling practice is underpinned by a psychobiological model of consciousness entitled the Visionary Practice Model. The fundamental premise of this model is that as human beings, we live imaginatively, intuitively, intellectually, emotionally and physically in worlds of possibility. In summary, no matter how we are challenged, the VPM focus is on firstly what actions can be taken to improve our circumstances and then how we refine/integrate such into our lives, as beneficial embodied patterns of behaviour.