about me.
My name is Dr Elizabeth Kirk, but everybody calls me Ellie. I’m a counsellor who works online from a small town in rural NSW, where our young family live on a farm. I’m a member of the Australian Counselling Association (ACA), Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia (PACFA), and the Australian Centre for Grief and Bereavement (ACGB).
I’ve always been interested in people, their lives and their stories. This curiosity led me to a Doctorate in sociology (the study of people and the societies they live in) at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. My PhD explored gambling and its social contexts.
Researching and working in the field of harmful behaviours was fascinating, but I wasn’t sure academic life was for me. After completing my PhD I worked in government, traveled around Spain hiking the Camino de Santiago, and returned to Australia more connected to what I enjoy most in life: people and their stories. I started volunteering with Lifeline and enrolled in my Masters of Counselling at Monash University, and moved to Melbourne to work in some health promotion organisations while I completed my studies.
During my Masters I learned that there were many different types of counselling and I wanted to do most of them. I was fortunate to gain a placement, and later work, in schools and crisis counselling. School work and crisis work exposed me to the full spectrum of counselling issues. No two days were the same: I loved it.
When I returned to Canberra I worked in the grief, loss and trauma space and also in gambling counselling. As our family relocated to rural NSW, and the world changed with Covid, I decided that the next direction I wanted to grow in was to start an online/phone counselling service. The beauty of online/phone counselling is that we can connect and grow in ways that are a better fit for our lives. And we can do it while wearing activewear, with our cats or dogs on our laps, from the comfort of our homes.
That’s the story of how we’re here together. Let’s grow.