Rather than taking a conventional pathological approach to what's going on for people, my work allows me to accept everyone and everything as whole, purposeful and complete right from the very beginning. Perhaps it's my open-ended curiosity that inspires such compassion, or maybe it's the other way around. All I know is caring about everyone makes me curious about each person's story, in their own words.

I'm also a professional development curator with a specialty in 'intercultural' networks. That is, I help to translate actual needs into institutional language so that everyone ticks their boxes. Really, all I do is see the unseen opportunities for people to do what they love while they work from within to change the system.

I like Star Trek and animated kids movies and find myself watching horror films (even though they end up in my dreams). I don't watch TV or read newspapers, but I do take in a lot of data. Crazy, almost dizzying, amounts of information from every discipline and wisdom known and unknown. 

I'm a metasen, which is someone who senses information. I ask a lot of questions, and I was once diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. I'm also a published poet and lyricist, visual artist in hiatus and a really terrible whistler.

THERAPIST | CONSULTANT | PD CURATOR

The bulk of my work has me crossing lines on a regular basis from one job title to another and back again since we are all more than one thing.

THERAPY

Cosmo-counselling

Acausal counselling

Oracle therapy

Mise-en-scene processing

CONSULTATION

Community program develpment

New business or branding

Organisational Communication

PD CURATOR

Professional development

Personal development

MELANIE BROCKWELL

Long before I fell into academia, I was "learning" how to be with people as they are no matter their history, labels or aesthetic.

EDUCATION

Diploma of Counselling (2015)

BA Society, Life & Learning (2014)

Child Development and Effective Parenting (2010)

BACKGROUND

Youth work

Arts co-ordinator

Social and emotional well-being facilitator

Private practice

Online learning design

LIFE EXPERIENCE

(Circles) Urban gangs, drugs, sex workers, child- and domestic-abuse survivors, racism, poverty, single-parents, ex-cons, rape and sexual assault, PTS.

(Personal) ethereal and other-worldy encounters, parental divorce, sibling separation, drugs, homelessness, miscarriage, death of a loved one, depression, stigmatised diagnosis, agoraphobia, chronic pain, undiagnosed illness, suicidal ideation and heartbreak.

EXPERTISE

Personality disorders

Organisational communication

Living relationships

Transdisciplinary PD

As part of my counselling diploma I chose two study majors - child development and effective parenting, and grief and loss. These, along with my university studies, were an easy way to familiarise myself with traditional mental health approaches and understandings of two central experiences of society -- how to raise little people, and the nature of connection lost.

Ethics

Critical Thinking

Education: Psychology/History

Human Behaviour

Power, Difference and Recognition

Cognitive Science

Youth & Society

Terrorism: It's Causes and Consequences

Advanced Research in Cultural Studies

Methods of Social Research

Australian and Global Society

Culture and Healing

Myth in the Ancient World

Understanding Contemporary Societies

Personality & Development Theories

Learning Theories

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

Person Centred Therapy

Gestalt Therapy

Solution Focused Therapy

Narrative Therapy

Family Therapy

Case Management

Group Counselling