I’m Mark — therapist, counsellor, life coach, and the man behind Spirit Warrior.
It’s been an honour and a privilege to have been sitting with men in the old quiet therapy room for over 30 years.
What’s said in the room, what happens in the room stays in the room with no judgment.
The silences, the breakthroughs, the tears and the laughter ~ those special moments a man finally lets himself be known — is what this work is built from.
I didn’t arrive at this work from the outside.
I came to it the hard way — through my own life experiences. University came second and was the professional icing on the cake so to speak.
Like many men, I carried things for a long time without the words for them, and converted them to anger, go figure!!
Complex trauma ~ thanks God LOL ~ you know the old narrative ~ why this lifetime? 🙂
Difficult seasons & difficult reasons.
A just ‘few’ lived experiences on a number of ‘fronts’ that eventually brought me to my knees and into the therapy room myself — where I sat, and healed, and kept sitting, and kept healing.
That journey was long & potentially over-bleed it being a sensitive vegemite!! Just so glad I did. The Gift it’s given me to keep journeying is a blessing.
It was layered. And it changed everything about how I work with men today. It has given me the “presence” to be ‘present’ to those men I am fortunate to work with.
What I know from the inside out:
I know what it feels like to be lost, dazed & confused and not have a name for it but despite all that “I’m fine”.
I know what it costs to actually go through something rather than around it, ‘now’ but did know back then. Like you, I’ve used the good old male distraction techniques.
I know what it’s like to sit in that ‘chair’ and to sit in our darkness and flatness — and I know what it’s like to find your way back and believe you me, that’s the best bit ~ discovering the Best Versions of Ourselves.
That lived knowledge is not separate from this work ~ it is the work.
The professional journey:
Over 30 years I’ve trained across a wide range of modalities — talk therapy, CBT, NLP, Gestalt, Holotropic Breathwork, Symbols & Sandplay Therapy, Art Therapy, and Transpersonal and Emotional Release work.
I am an Accredited Mental Health Social Worker, which means sessions through Geelong Men’s Counselling Service are eligible for Medicare rebates.
Spirit Warrior sits above that clinical work as something broader — a space where men can begin the inner journey before they’re ready to call it therapy.
A door that’s always open.
Why men specifically:
Working with men feels like swimming against the tide sometimes.
We men, we just resist, we deflect. We go quiet. They say “I’m fine” when they’re anything but.
And then something shifts in the room (perhaps it’s the male banter??) — when their experience is safely named back to them, possibly for the first time — and the relief on their face is something I never get used to seeing.
Those are the ‘aha’ moments – the deep shift unconsciously ~ deep down something has shifted within,
That moment is why I do this work. It is why Spirit Warrior exists.
A note on this space:
Spirit Warrior is built for the man who knows something needs to change but doesn’t yet have words for it.
It is not about fixing you. It is about giving you a safe, honest, deeply human place (with some bloke banter I might add) to begin knowing yourself — physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
You don’t have to have it figured out to walk through the door.
Be Gentle.