Russell Hurkens

Russell is a fastidious student and adaptable professional whose persevered life-challenges has allowed him to discover, advance, and improve the various passions which make him who he is today. Since August 2023, Russell has been studying a Diploma of Counselling, and is steadily on his way to becoming a Professional Counsellor.

Having worked within the hospitality sector since 2019, Russell developed and improved personal disciplines regarding organisation, resourcefulness, and self-direction, and interpersonal skills for communication to provide effective and satisfactory services to various individuals, many of whom Russell now has both a respectful personal and professional relationship with. The attributes Russell has built during his time in working hospitality have allowed for him to better understand the different perspectives people have and the processes they utilise in their everyday lives, and these tools are carrying over into his study and future practice of professional counselling.

Russell’s life, both personal and professional, have been drastically informed by mental-health and its direct relationship to him. Understanding first-hand how having one’s mental-health be in what is regarded as a “poor” state can cause debilitating detriment, and how therapeutic measures can relieve those pressures and create an enriched quality to life, it has become Russell’s professional intent to assist and encourage others enduring their own struggles to—in collaboration—discover, achieve, and maintain the best mental state for themselves.

Being able to enjoy every aspect of life is entwined deeply into Russell’s principles. The ability to feel satisfaction from personal comforts as well as via executive responsibilities inform Russell’s operations every day. Through his hobbies, most employing a format of liberal artistry, Russell communicates how peoples’ contentment can be used to express a mass of complex emotions in a way which only causes benefit and understanding of one’s self.

Alongside his studies of his Diploma of Counselling, Russell is undertaking the Advanced Study Majors of Relationship Counselling and Conflict Resolution, Introduction to Expressive Therapies, and Mindfulness-Based Therapies, which—in his hope—will allow Russell to encourage his future clients in identifying what can make them feel their most authentic and contented selves, and how they might go about fulfilling their goals to be their best selves every day.