About Paul

Hello, I'm Paul.

I came to counselling through lived experience and a long pull toward helping others. I spent a decade in another healing profession, then found my way to crisis support with Lifeline, and eventually to studying counselling. Along the way I discovered that sitting with people in their struggles is the thing I'm actually good at.

I'm a reflective, person-centred counsellor. That means I don't try to fix you or steer you. I try to genuinely understand what you're going through and reflect it back so it makes sense. My style is warm, gentle and plain-spoken. There's very little that shakes me, so you can bring your whole, honest self.

I work best with people who have some self-awareness and want to go a little deeper. I have a particular understanding of adult adoptees, having been adopted as a baby, and of families navigating a loved one's substance use, having lived that too.

Paul King

Diploma of Counselling · Registered Counsellor, ACA (R83348) · Accredited Crisis Supporter, Lifeline · Volunteer, Family Drug Support

Paul previously co-hosted the Family Hope Support podcast, supporting families affected by a loved one's substance use.

How I work

I won't hand you techniques.

There's a kind of help that gives you tools: breathing exercises, thought records, things to try before next week. It has its place. It isn't what I do.

My work is to genuinely feel and understand what you're going through, and reflect it back until it makes sense to you. Not my sense of it, yours. I don't steer. When you get somewhere, it's somewhere you got, which is why it holds.

A space quiet enough for your own insight to surface.

Book a free 15-min call What if you don't want advice?

Areas of practice

Where I work, and why.

Lived experience

Adult Adoptees

I was adopted as a baby. I know the drifting, the disproportionate abandonment, the patterns that don't have names until someone gives them one. You won't have to explain the terrain to me first.

Family support

Families & Addiction

Someone close to me has struggled with substance use. I've lived the anticipatory grief, the exhaustion, the chaos of not knowing where the boundaries are. I've also spent years on the Family Drug Support line.

I also see adults navigating life transitions, relationship difficulties, identity questions, and the quiet sense that something is wrong even when nothing obviously is.