Seeking counselling is a choice. It may make for a beautiful and dramatic change or quiet steady growth. It’s available to everyone regardless of their place in life or their story.

Each of our lives is its own story, a journey with people coming and going, happenings coming and going – some beautiful some less so. Beginnings shaped by parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends, teachers and later husband, wives, children, grandchildren, in-laws and so, we live and love and learn. 

School, university, work, spirituality both brining joy and pain. And then, we hit a challenge: could be dramatic and evident like a death, divorce, crime, high jacking, an accident, illness growing addiction or just a seeping deadness, a lack of energy, confusion, discomfort in this place where we stand and look around and find it makes us despair, seethe with anger, weep with sadness or maybe just feel nothing. 

We pray, we breathe deeply, visit a loved one, go for a walk, busy ourselves and sometimes it helps but sometimes it is useful to reflect with someone, tell our way of being to someone outside of our circle. 

This slows our thoughts to the spoken word and opens them up to another to relook at those hard and hurtful things that are part of long ago and now. Diana Lawrenson

My path began as a lay counsellor with Anglicare. I received Basic Counselling Skills Training from The Family Life Centre – FAMSA (2010). As a counsellor under the auspice of Anglicare, I was trained and licensed. I was bound to high ethical standards, with constant training and supervision. It is in this that I came to value of the process of counselling. I perused volunteer work with Anglicare and SADAG while I was working in the Financial, ICT and Pharmaceutical industry. I completed my MSc (Clinical Psychology) at Sefako Makgatho Health Science University. 

My community service was completed at Bertha Gxowa Hospital. My internship was fulfilled at Weskoppies Psychiatric Hospital and Dr George Mukhari Hospital. My experience includes working with individuals, families, and groups on a range of mental health challenges, including acute to severe disorders such as depression, anxiety, trauma, addiction, and chronic illness–in both inpatient and outpatient.