| Counseling: A special kind of conversation |
| Post Traumatic Stress Disorder |
| Hearing Voices Network WA |
| Restorative Justice and the Catholic Church |
When studying to be a high school music teacher in 1983 I came across the works of Carl Rogers. I hadn't read much psychology before and I found his thoughts very liberating. I only lasted one year as a teaching student.
I started offering counseling on a professional basis around 1985. I started into the field by doing Tarot readings for friends and that developed into a professional activity. I also got into crystal healing (I attended a work shop with Marcel Vogel and did some healing for him) and I developed using my guitar music for healing. I also use the didgeridoo for healing and meditation. If you would like an appointment to see me please phone 0408929186. I can offer phone counselling if you prefer.
POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER
I am particularly interested in stress management, hence my interest in meditation. While studying psychology(1996-2002) I visited the Vietnam Veterans Association in Perth. I found out how Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) had been identified in Vietnam Veterans. It probably affected World War veterans also but at the time it was dissmissed as being 'bomb happy'. My father was sent out of the line in France in 1944 for ONE WEEK! because he was 'bomb happy. I wrote a song this year for him and have put it on You Tube for Remembrance Day 2012. Below is the link to it.
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HEARING VOICES NETWORK WA
I am a Hearing Voices Group facilitator for Richmond Fellowship WA. Richmond Fellowship introduced the Hearing Voices Network approach to the phenomena of Voice Hearing into Australia over 5 years ago. For a long time voice hearing was treated purely as a delusion by psychiatry. We know now primarily through the work of Marius Romme, a Dutch psychiatrist, that the voices are meaningfull and should be examined contrary to the normal psychiatric advice which is to ignore the voices and suppress them with psychotropic drugs. We have found that the voices are very often unexpressed emotional reactions to past trauma and/or excessive ongoing stress. If you are a voice hearer and want to know more contact me davidrivett@iinet.net.au or The Hearing Voices Network Australia HVNA.
RESTORATIVE JUSTICE AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
The catholic church in Australia is having a bad time lately. Perhaps it is because it refuses to come into the 21st century. There are some things it could attend to to win the acceptance of non catholics, and perhaps end the embarrassment of devout and honourable catholics in our community.
The catholic church in Australia is the only catholic church in the world to have made it impossible for victims of abuse by priests to make legal compensation claims against the church. I wonder why this is so.
Also I wonder why the catholic church believes it is outside the law of Australia in that priests can hear confessions about serious crimes and not be bound to report them to the relevant authority, i.e. the police. Any other professional human services worker is bound by law to report anything which indicates a person has or is likely to do anything which could cause harm to anyone else or themselves. The church believes its priests can grant forgiveness/absolution on the pain of a penance which they set.
Clearly the only person who has the moral right to offer forgiveness is the victim. No one else can grant forgiveness. This is the basis of 'Restorative Justice'. Restorative Justice is a healing process where victim and perpetrator come together with a mediator to heal the wrong doing. For more information on Restorative Justice here is a link; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restorative_justice
I am a natural energy healer. I was told that when I was 20 years old by a palm reader, but I was very naive about such things and I didn't understand what she meant. Years later I learnt that there is an energy that you and I can channel through our hands that facilitates healing. It's a simple act of allowing it to happen. There is nothing intellectual about it, no secret words or thoughts. many people can do it, some can do it better than others.
Just simply place your hands on your friend's head and let it happen. Don't own it, let it come through you. The healing energy is the life force of the universe, nobody own's it. If you let yourself be an instrument for this energy your friend will soon experience a profound peace and contentment and sometimes even severe pain simply goes away. Just do it. Don't let pretentious people lead you to believe there is a secret technique that only they know. They will say it's handed down from master to novice, and they will offer to sell you the secret for a big sum of money. The secret, if there is one, is that this power is unconditional love. Get out of the way and let it flow.
I found that healing occurs when someone is ready to listen to themselves openly and honestly. The job of a counselor is to facilitate that experience, nothing more. I have found that counseling can be enhanced through intuition but it can be problematic to rely on intuition. Nobody is 100% accurate with psychic impressions because they are filtered through the mind of the receiver. There is no substutute for the basic skills of counseling that anyone can study. Some people quite naturally have many of the skills but there is always room for improvement so with that thought I began formal study. I believe I am a much better counselor because of that study.
I wanted to study what the greatest minds in history and our world have thought about the human mind so I studied Psychology from 1996-2002 gaining a Bachelor of Psychology from Curtin University in Western Australia. I also studied Counseling at Notre Dame University in Fremantle and obtained a Graduate Diploma in Counseling.
When I was at Notre Dame I went on placement to Holyoake; the Australian Instute for Drug and Alcohol Addiction Solutions. I completed my counseling training there by learning how to be a group facilitator in the Holyoake model.
Good counseling is a very powerful instrument for change. Many people working in the field of recovery from mental illness openly state that we must reverse the current trend towards increasing use of medication which although can be useful in the very short term, used long term can sometimes be problematic. If you are on psychiatric medication and are concerned about it please read the information on this site (left click here for a Harm reduction guide for coming off psychiatric drugs).
I will build a library on this page of articles I have read which have influenced me. Watch this space!
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