Ashley Thomson

Philosophy & Vision

The cornerstone of my practice is finding meaning and purpose with full regard for the challenges presented by work, politics and culture in the 21st century.

My greatest strengths lie in working with clients who are acutely aware of the world around them, but who struggle to know and stay centred and grounded in what is meaningful to them.

I respect the reciprocal balance between the significance of structuring environments for understanding the self, and how we must ultimately act on those structures to fully inhabit the self.

My role, as I see it, is to deepen and clarify your understanding of yourself, the ways you experience being in the world and the choices available to you at any given moment.

I welcome LGBTIQA+ and First Nations clients, sex workers, and clients from non-Anglo backgrounds and cultures.

Background

I have previously held waged and unwaged roles in retail and hospitality, publishing and the arts, the community sector, public sector and academia.

I have been a workplace organiser and group facilitator, and have studied widely across gender studies, medical anthropology, sociology and trauma studies.

I have a longstanding interest in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, as well as the social construction of health and illness as it intersects with race, gender, poverty, colonisation and other social processes.

In all this work, and in my new approach to counselling as a profession, I have been guided by my abiding interest in compassionately and empathically aiding others to know what is right for them.

Services

Therapy Approach

My training is in person-centred, non-directive, client-led counselling, and my approach may be of special use with:

- Issues in close and intimate relationships, such as communication breakdowns
- Undergoing change, such as in questions of gender, sexuality, new relationships and boundaries with friends or family
- Workplace issues, whether that be in cultural, industrial or professional matters
- Anxiety, depression, identity crisis and existential meaning and purpose.

Broadly, my work involves listening, reflecting, noticing and querying—simple tools which, in my experience, can be a key for radical insight and change.

I offer an open, curious and deeply nonjudgmental space in which to explore whatever brings you to counselling.