About Andrew Howie
Life rarely continues along a straight line. Life changes, circumstances change, and situations change. And my life was no different.
For many years, I worked as a television producer and was responsible for some of the highest-rating dramas seen on our screens. I thoroughly enjoyed working with writers and actors as we came together to create the characters and stories that were to become firm favourites with our audiences. I particularly enjoyed the complexity of drama: how the various stories became interwoven around and with each other, and how the various characters behaved and what motivated them. Why did a character behave in one way with one person and a different way with another? What sort of problems were a couple experiencing, and why? How could their problems be solved – or could they indeed be solved?
This was challenging and satisfying work as some of the best and most creative minds in the television business robustly worked through these questions that would finally result in what our viewers would eventually see in their homes.
However, after many years and as I got older, something changed in me. I gradually started to lose interest in this world of make-believe. And the corporate life, which I never really found attractive, became decidedly unattractive. On the one hand, this was frightening territory to move into because by then, I had become largely defined by my career, and without it, I didn’t know who I was.
But following a period of unwelcome but very necessary uncertainty, the mist cleared a little and I gradually came to see that my keen interest in people could move from the world of made up characters and stories to the world of real people and their real circumstances, issues, problems, anxieties, hopes and dreams. The enjoyment and sense satisfaction I once received from my work in television, now has moved to another and more deeper and richer level entirely as people share with me, in trust, their most intimate and personal concerns, worries and secrets. To be able to empower people to bring about the changes in their lives they desire and to become the person they really want to be, as opposed to the person they have been turned into or told to be, is the greatest of all privileges.
In addition to my private practice, I was, until recently, the Senior Clinician and Clinical Lead of the drug and alcohol unit at St John of God Hospital, Burwood, a private psychiatric facility. I also have extensive experience working with people who have anxiety and depression, trauma, and personality disorders. I also work pro bono for The Cleveland Centre, Redfern – a counselling and therapy centre run by The St Vincent de Paul Society.
My qualifications:
- Bachelor of Theology (CIS)
- Master of Clinical Counselling (ACU)
- Clinical member: Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia (PACFA)
