Philosophy & Vision
Online Australia-wide. I work with teens and adults on the ADHD and Autistic spectrum, LGBTQIA+ folks, and anyone who has ever felt like they don’t fit in with society’s expectations. You’re not alone, and we’re surrounded by messages about how we’re supposed to be and when we don’t measure up it leaves us feeling isolated, wrong and hopeless. But you aren’t the problem, and therapy isn’t about fixing you. You’re already enough, and sometimes we all need a little help in remembering that who we are underneath the mask is someone worth knowing, loving, and learning from.
Background
I've spent time on both sides of the therapy couch and take a lot of joy and pride in knowing how scary it can be telling a stranger about yourself and hoping they "get it". I've worked as a hotel attendant, sold my art and merchandise, worked in call centres, and had a disastrous tattoo apprenticeship. But I always ended up coming back to counselling!
In mental health, I've worked and volunteered all over the place: as a live-in mentor for young people, counselling on support lines, provided training and run a mental health resilience group, supervised phone line volunteers, and was a peer supporter for LGBTQI folks with experience with suicide.
Services
Areas of Special Interest
Accreditations
- Bachelor of Counselling - 2016 - ACAP
- Masters of Narrative Therapy and Community Work - 2024 - The University of Melbourne
Modalities
DBT - Existential - Holistic - Mindfulness - Motivational Interviewing - Narrative Therapy - Person Centred - Strengths-Based
Therapy Approach
I start from the assumption that we've all done our best to survive and our decisions and choices - the things that make up who we are - were the best we could have done at the time. Even if we want to make new choices now. It's about respect, and recognising the knowledge that each of us gains from living a complicated, messy life.
I often explore how outside expectations from society, authority figures, family, the media impact how we see ourselves, and together we look at whether those expectations are fair, or helpful, or beneficial. It's all about pulling back everyone else's opinions and looking at what you want and what your personal "good" life could look like.
Professional Associations
- Australian Counselling Association - Level 2
Practice Locations
80 Paisley St
Footscray VIC 3011
Appointments
Counselling appointments are 60 minutes, with longer session of 90 minutes available on request.
Available 8am to 8pm Tuesday to Friday, and 11am to 5pm on weekends.
Fees & Insurance
Standard fees are $150 per hour.
Free 15 minute consult via phone or video.
I can work with NDIS clients who are self-managed or plan-managed. and with a selection of private health - send me a message to confirm if I'm listed for your fund.
Payment Options
I accept cash, direct debit, and eftpos.
Contact Felix
Please contact me to book a 15 minute free initial consult
A conversation with Felix Perigrie
-
High school was hard. Not just for me, but a lot of my friends (and enemies), too. I wanted to be there for them, and as I got older I wanted to be there for lots of people. Once I started studying counselling, it just felt like the right fit for me. I tried other things too, but I always came back.
-
Narrative and Existential counselling have had huge effects on me. As a baby goth kid, asking The Big Questions and thinking about death came pretty naturally, and existential counselling helped me think about how those big questions shape our lives and choices.
Narrative therapy, when I discovered it, felt like coming home. All my thoughts about language use and viewing people as complex, thoughtful beings instead of as a bundle of instincts and illnesses were suddenly right there on the page. It helped me see people as the clever and resilient creatures we are, instead of lost lambs needing to be rescued by professionals. -
Understanding neurodiversity, ADHD especially, was lifechanging for me. I'm fascinated by how our brains work, how we interact with the world, and the ways we can free ourselves from unfair and unhelpful expectations about ourselves.
-
I'm very good at connecting ideas together, which means my methods vary wildly based on what is happening in a conversation. But I often pause to notice what the body is doing, ask questions about choices, and think that "why" is a powerful question when asked at the right time.
-
Progress isn't linear, unfortunately! My clients often find that the first or second session has a moment of "yes, this feels right" and that feeling of finding the right therapist is its own kind of progress. After that, it depends on the kinds of conversations we have. It can take many sessions to fully understand some of our more entrenched beliefs while other times someone may bring something difficult but immediate and we make progress on it that same day.
-
It showed me that I made sense, and could be understood, and slowly gave me the tools to understand myself. It's a work in progress, but therapy continues to help me unravel the parts of myself that I couldn't even look at alone.
-
There's a wonderful joy in hearing someone talk through what they feel and need, and then summarising it back, and then they look at you and go "yes, that's exactly it!" The look on their face when I reply that I didn't do anything, that was all them, makes my day.
-
Not since I started shaving my head. But now I have 'bad hat' days.
-
There are lots of problems, but the lack of support and safety for the people who want to fight those problems, but are locked into a cycle of survival mode and self-hatred for not making the changes they want to, is the one I try to have an impact on.
-
Into The Spiderverse. Watching something so incredibly new and beautiful, all I could think about was the generation of young artists who were about to be inspired by it. It made me hopeful.