Hello, my name is Tanya. I am a degree-qualified counsellor and the founder of Atlas Counselling, a private practice I established in 2018 with the aim of providing Counselling that is professional, effective, trauma-informed, and human-centered, without being prescriptive or directive.
The Change I Want to Create
I chose to study Counselling and not psychology or social work, because I observed the medicalisation of the human experience. I wanted to create the opportunity for people to ‘flip the script’ on how they engage with their experiences so that they can craft a life inspired by their own needs, wants and expectations rather than those that put upon them by the systems they engage with. People have been told that they earn their place. I want to remind them that they create their place!
Life can feel hard, messy, stressful overwhelming and isolating, and is full of new and sometimes unexpected transitions and challenges! This happens most often when we are trying to “solve” the wrong “problem”.
When the world was much less accessible, 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”, easier and less expensive to access, families are scattered across the country, and the globe.
Our communities are no longer as connected or as “available” as they once were, and our supports have become more about which services may be able to solve the problems that we’ve been, or “should be” diagnosed with, under the pretense that, with that label, life will magically easier to live.
The Space I Wanted to Create
I started Atlas Counselling to provide a space free of judgement, from the pressure to conform, and safe from expectation and ulterior motives or agenda’s.
It is a place of witnessing and connection, and an opportunity to learn what influences your choices and reactions. Central to how I work is the process of discovering the things you subconsciously carry around from your experiences, the individual context within which those experiences occurred, and how that influences the way you engage in your life today.
Atlas Counselling is not about “problems” and “diagnosis”. I do not work with labels and conceptually, I reject the prevailing notion that someone needs to first have a condition that requires fixing before being justified in seeking support.
The service I provide is an opportunity for you to develop a greater awareness of who you are and what you need, as well as how to claim it or create it. This is an act of self-care. Atlas Counselling does not exist for the purpose of making you more comfortable or palatable for others to be around.
Not everyone has, wants or benefits from a diagnosis. Almost everyone experiences periods of stress, isolation, transition, loss/grief/sadness, frustration, confusion and feeling overwhelmed, alone-ness or invisibility. Just about everybody experiences distress in one form or another and can benefit from having a person and a place that is safe and supportive to ‘get it out’ and work through it. Atlas Counselling sits with the distress, not the disorder, and provides the space to help you find your way through.
Like Atlas from Greek mythology, we all feel the weight of the world on our shoulders. Atlas Counselling is for when you feel like you have been carrying too much for too long!