What We Do
Real People Counselling is a private, multi-practioner counselling and psychotherapy practice. We provide a variety of services including counselling for individuals and couples, group therapy, seminars, courses and workshops. We are the first and only dedicated multi-practioner humanistic counselling service in Melbourne.
Our History
Real People Counselling arose to meet a public need. When the director and founder, Paul Cullen PhD, began to offer humanistic counselling services in Melbourne it didn’t take long before there were more people who wanted appointments than he could see by himself. He soon took several like minded counsellors into his private practice. In 2011 we made the decision to expand our services to form Melbourne’s first exclusively humanistic counselling practice, Real People Counselling.
Why We Are Unique
The humanistic counselling approach is fundamentally different from the prevailing medical model that has infiltrated modern psychology. The medical model typically views people’s problems as diseases or dysfunctions that need to be treated and cured. Working from a humanistic perspective we acknowledge people’s unique situations, their histories, their strengths and their different desired outcomes. Rather than focusing on treating symptoms we explore with people their situations in totality, acknowledging their strengths and potential for growth. Instead of administering a one size fits all treatment from a manual we help facilitate people to head in the direction they want to head in a way that is specifically tailored to them. It’s not hard to see why people prefer and get better outcomes when working with our humanistic practitioners.
We Are Effective
Several large scale studies have been conducted into the effectiveness of different styles of counselling and psychotherapy. Each of these studies demonstrate that no one approach is more effective than another. What these studies did show was that a successful outcome was dependent on the qualities of the therapist and the quality of the relationship between the therapist and the client. We know this and that is why each of our counsellors are highly qualified and place an emphasis on the therapy relationship. To demonstrate our effectiveness as practitioners we randomly surveyed our clients at the completion of their counselling. Of the clients that attended 10 or more sessions, 98% reported that they had successfully addressed the difficulty they came in for or felt confidant that after the counselling they would be able to address their difficulty.
