Email: therapy@ruthmcconnell.com
Ruth is a sought-after counsellor with 30 years experience of counselling adults, children, adolescents and families. She divides her time between private practice counselling, parenting consulting, supervision, presenting professional development seminars, conference speaking, academic research and writing as well as teaching (adjunct lecturer Masters of Counselling, Morling College, Sydney). Ruth is qualified to the highest level and is a gifted and empathic counsellor, specialist supervisor, compelling speaker and teacher.
Ruth’s driving passion is to eradicate relational poverty one encounter at a time.
In her counselling, consulting and training, Ruth specializes in attachment and relationship issues both in adults and children. She has extensive experience in working with adults, teens and children experiencing anxiety, stress, relationship difficulties, depression, and self-esteem issues. Ruth trained initially as a children’s counsellor and a family counsellor but now mostly works directly with adults and parents – consulting on behavioural and emotional issues in children and adolescents. Ruth is passionate about keeping adults healthily attached to their children so that emotional and behavioural issues do not sabotage the parent-child relationship. She also helps couples with their attachment dynamics so that their relationship is healthier. She has specialist training in supporting Partners of Sex Addicts who have suffered betrayal trauma.
If you want to make an appointment for a counselling or parent consulting session go to the services page or if you want to sign up for her newsletter click here contact us
Relational poverty is all around us. It can show up inside ourselves: self-bullying talk (at the roots of low self-esteem and depression); between us and others: inter-personal difficulties, work place stress and relationship problems; as well us at a psycho-spiritual level: feeling alone and unconnected spiritually to a deity or higher power. Ruth offers help in all of these dimensions. To read more about her work at the psycho-spiritual level go to the Retreats page.
To follow her on facebook go to her
Clinical Page: Dr-Ruth-McConnell Facebook page
Trinitarian Theology trinityinitiatives Facebook page
Ruth completed her MA (Honours) in Psychology at Aberdeen University, followed by a PhD in Counselling Psychology at the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland. The focus of her PhD research was the counselling of children of divorce and keeping children healthily attached to their parents. Ruth later trained with Dr. Gordon Neufeld in attachment-based developmental psychology with a focus on children’s emotional and behavioural issues. She is a Professional Associate of the Neufeld Institute and offers training on attachment related topics. She moved to New Zealand from Vancouver, Canada in 2010 and has since trained in Neuropsychotherapy and has a specialism in Partners of Sexual Addicts Trauma Specialist (www.apsats.org).
Currently Ruth works in a number of different capacities: as a counsellor in private practice, a supervisor, trainer as well as a retreat leader. In her private practice she offers a variety of services: personal counselling, couple counselling and parent consulting on behavioural and emotional issues in children.
Ruth is also an effective and passionate communicator and leads training and professional development workshops, and also speaks at conferences, throughout New Zealand and Australia. She worked as a Senior Lecturer in Counselling for 8 years and as an adjunct professor at Morling College, Sydney.