Hello, my name is Tanya. I am a degree qualified and PACFA registered counsellor, and the founder and owner of Atlas Counselling. I’d like to take a moment to tell you, if you’re interested, why I started Atlas Counselling?
Life can be hard! Life can be messy! Life can be stressful and overwhelming and isolating! Life is full of new and sometimes unexpected transitions and challenges!
When the world was much bigger and distant, people were lucky to have caught a train to go interstate for a holiday, much less on a plane to go to work; we had family and community, friends and supports. Now that the world is smaller and easier and less expensive to access, families are scattered across the country, and the globe, our communities are no longer as intimate as they once were, and our supports have become more about which services may be able to solve the problems that we’ve been diagnosed with. As for our friends…well, “they have their own stresses”, don’t they? “They don’t need to be burdened by any more than they already are”, do they?
I started Atlas Counselling to provide a space free of judgement, from pressure to conform, from expectation and ulterior motives or agenda’s. It is a place to connect and unpack the things that many of us carry around from our experiences and the personal context within which those experiences occurred. Atlas Counselling is not about “problems” and “diagnosis”. I do not deal in labels, and I conceptually reject the prevailing notion that someone needs to first have a condition that requires fixing, before seeking support.
Not everyone has a diagnosis, but I am confident that virtually everyone experiences periods of stress, isolation, transition, loss, sadness, frustration, confusion and feelings of being completely overwhelmed…I am certain that almost everyone experiences distress in one form or another. Atlas Counselling sits with the distress, not the disorder, and provides the space to help you find your way through.
Sometimes, like Atlas from Greek mythology, we all feel the weight of the world on our shoulders, and with fewer places to go where we can relieve ourselves of that burden, Atlas Counselling might just be the place you need!