Holistic Counselling and Transpersonal Therapy

 

There’s nothing wrong with you and you don’t need to be fixed.

 

Usually, when we have experienced trauma, we embark on a lifelong ‘self-improvement program’, always looking for the next thing to ‘fix us’, rather than working with what is getting in the way of us feeling whole and at peace.

 

There is a beautiful Inuit story of the bowl of light. The bowl is full of light, but it is covered in stones. As the stones are removed, the light shines out. This is a good analogy for working with our psychology.

In fact, to the recognised responses to trauma (the ‘4 Fs’)...

 

• fight
• flight
• fawn
• freeze

 

I would add a fifth - fixing: where we constantly look for what's wrong with us, and focus on fixing ourselves.

 

Rather than see you as someone with something ‘wrong’ with you, someone who needs to be ‘fixed’, I offer a more sophisticated perspective and approach that:

 

• Includes the felt senses in our physiology, working — in a trauma-informed way — with feelings of anxiety, physical symptoms such as nausea and panic, and generally ‘yucky’ feelings directly, as a way to work through triggered responses to old trauma. This is the key to the somatic experiencing approach, as detailed in this video by Peter Levine.

 

• Helps acknowledge and respect the choices (conscious and unconscious) that you’ve had to make in the past, and,
  
   

• Helps you to develop a profound and authentic self-acceptance based on a capacity to make more conscious, supportive choices.

 

What are holistic counselling and transpersonal psychotherapy? How do they help?

 

One of the mainstays of holistic counselling and transpersonal therapy is that they recognise that personal dilemmas are often greater than the individual. This means that, where relevant, we can explore particular concerns in the context of your personal and family history, trans-generational histories, or as universal human experiences.

 

I can help you to develop mature compassion and empathy for yourself and the aspects of your life that have led you to seek help.

 

As one of my teachers, Andreas Mouskous says,

 

“Whatever you are facing, your shit is your shit. It is what has made you who you are.”

 

And as another, Samved Dass , one of the Leaders of Path of Love, says,

 

“Everyone thinks they’re more fucked up than everyone else. That they’re especially damaged… but that’s not true. We’re all in the same boat. Deep down we all suffer these beliefs because this is the human condition.”

 

What does holistic psychotherapy actually mean?

 

Holistic psychotherapy works from the understanding that we are not just a mind to be reasoned with, or a set of symptoms to be managed. We are whole beings — and lasting healing needs to reach every layer of that wholeness: the thinking mind, the feeling body, and the deeper ground of who we actually are beneath our conditioned identity.

In practice, this means our work together may draw on talk-based enquiry, somatic (body-centred) approaches, expressive and creative processes, and a genuine curiosity about what your particular life experience has asked of you. Jung spoke of a different therapy being needed for each individual. No two people’s path is the same, and holistic psychotherapy adapts to meet you where you are — not where a textbook says you should be.

 

A kind, compassionate relationship with yourself.

 

I believe that there is great value in developing a kind and compassionate relationship with yourself, as a starting point to true healing.

 

It’s also said that the therapist can help ‘hold the hope’ when you feel hopeless, and to help you to recover your sense of preciousness and self-worth, even if you don’t feel it when you come into therapy.

 

My approach to counselling is soul-based, spiritual and holistic.

 

Transpersonal approaches also value and include the soul — not, in any mainstream religious sense, but as the basic ground of our being, and a place where healing can occur.

 

Working only within the realm of ego psychology (the mainstay of conventional psychology) merely keeps us in the limited world of our ego structure, our conditioned, unconscious sense of ourselves and of the world.

 

Sandra Maitrey, a Diamond Essence Teacher, and author of The Enneagram of Passions and Virtues: Finding the Way Home, puts it well:

 

“We need to remember the truth contained in that old adage that ‘the means determine the end’. If our practices and our orientation towards our personal process are those congruent with the ways our deeper nature operates and the ways it affects the human soul, our inner work is likely to bring us closer to our depths. If our practices and orientations are those of the personality, they will only lead us deeper into enmeshment with that structure”

 

A basic tenet of my approach is to help you consciously dis-identify from the conditioned, unconscious beliefs about yourself and the world that may keep you stuck and unhappy without knowing why. To enquire into your particular ego structure allows you to address the issues affecting your life, and then to focus on a deeper, inner level of healing.

 

The word “healing” comes from the Old English haelan, meaning ‘to make whole’. Our work together moves you towards that wholeness.

 

Working online: holistic counselling and transpersonal therapy across Australia and globally.

 

Working with clients all across Australia and globally via video counselling on Zoom, I bring well over a decade of experience as a Transpersonal Psychotherapist and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP) to every session.

 

Whether you’re navigating a crisis, working through long-held patterns, or simply ready to understand yourself more deeply, holistic counselling offers a genuinely different kind of support — one that works with the whole of you, not just the presenting problem.

 

Ready to begin? Get in touch.

 

To make an appointment please contact me directly on 0404 093 865 or send an email enquiry.