John Bingley
MCoun (UQ)
(MBBS, FRACS, Dip Obst, MMedSci, PhD)
Medical Practitioner Counseller
John has moved into a career in counselling on completing a Master of Counselling at UQ. This comes after nearly four decades in clinical medicine (including vascular surgery), medical administration, research and teaching. John continues to work as an AHPRA-registered medical practitioner to provide counselling.
John recognises you are the person best able to make meaning of the events that shape your life. His approach makes the most of your stories, those told and those that remain to be spoken. He listens closely to what you say and how you say it.
John is curious to understand the parts of your stories that you include and the parts that you leave out. He has special interest in the Narrative Therapy approach but draws on a variety of therapy traditions.
Being registered as a medical practitioner with AHPRA and having satisfied the GP Mental Health Standards Committee of his training in mental health, John is able to provide Medicare-rebated services for people referred under a GP Mental Health Care Plan. As a medical practitioner, John’s counselling services do not attract Private Health Insurance rebates.
John has walked his own path, sometimes straight, sometimes meandering, sometimes lost. His stories hold their own meanings. His work in health care has given him insight, interest and sensitivity to the effects of loss and trauma on people and their networks of family and friends. Within his close family he too has experienced profound loss. John survived boarding school and seeks to support those who were affected by their experience in boarding schools and similar institutions. He spent time as a house dad caring for his young children (who are now all adults walking their own paths). With Libby, John’s wife and best friend, he makes time to bushwalk, sometimes for days and even weeks. He is a member of Qld Writers Centre and remains actively unpublished.