Kaniva based counsellor Ashley Grant wants to help people experiencing heightened emotions due to COVID-19 by offering free phone counselling sessions.
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Mr Grant works full-time as a farmer and provides counselling after hours, for which he is registered as an NDIS provider.
Mr Grant said the confidential sessions available on Wednesday and Thursday night would be 20 minutes long and were aimed at providing people with coping strategies for anxiety induced by the pandemic.
"Perhaps you can't (in that time) strip that right back (to the root cause) but you can deal a lot with the symptoms and provide people with some strategies that can assist them to work through any anxiety that they're feeling at this time," he said.
"If we're talking about how the coronavirus is affecting everyone's day to day life at the moment, my sort of simple plan is to try to get people to connect their feelings to that issue and just going from there.
"It's just an amount of time to get people to understand that they can manage this," he said. "Just by being aware of your anxiety and those thoughts that you're having, all those negative emotions.
"Letting people know that there is hope, that's a big thing in my line of work.
"I try and get people to just focus on the current issues, don't try and deal with too much," he said. "And just try and strip it all back to what a person needs to deal with at a certain time in their life."
Mr Grant said he recently began trialling eco-therapy, which involves talking about issues outside on the farm rather than in a formal room.
"Some people with anxiety find it easier to talk about their issues out on the farm and out in nature," he said. "It really provides them with those visual cues that can help them with anxiety.
"An example of that is when feeling anxious they can draw on simple things in nature, like the wind blowing the trees or the ducks on the lake, little things like that that bring peace and calm into people's life."
Mr Grant said most of his work is outreach based so he does a lot of travelling, including to Bordertown in South Australia which would be impacted by border closures on Tuesday.
"I'm going through the process of applying for a permit through South Australian Health so I can still travel over the border," he said. "Hopefully it should be ok because I think for essential services, such as healthcare workers you should still be able to cross the border.
"I'm meant to be heading over there tomorrow afternoon so whether I get there or not, I'm not too sure."
People wishing to utilise the free phone counselling sessions could call Mr Grant on 0403 034 590 between 7pm and 9pm on Wednesday 25 and Thursday 26 of March.
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Eliza Berlage
Eliza Berlage made the move to Horsham to report for the Wimmera Mail-Times in October 2019. Originally from Sydney, she has a sociology background and spent two years working in the press gallery in Canberra.
Eliza Berlage made the move to Horsham to report for the Wimmera Mail-Times in October 2019. Originally from Sydney, she has a sociology background and spent two years working in the press gallery in Canberra.
