How I became a philosophical counsellor

I recall the moment. I was a young, budding, rather naive yet somewhat optimistic 19 year old startup CEO. We’d raised venture funding and begun our aspirational journey (TL;DR of my motivation… I was an athlete. I had injuries. I couldn’t pursue my vision to turn pro. This hits you hard when you’re young and there’s no other direction you’ve ever envisaged. Identify crisis alert…).

I sat in a room across from a number of significantly older adults. I was selling to them. Selling them a dream. The dream of how our software could be used to decrease the risk of their athlete’s incurring certain kinds of injuries (typically soft tissue injuries that are in fact reasonably preventable in many cases if you really thoughtfully manage a number of complex, interdependent variables).

The way they engaged perplexed me a little. The things they said felt discomforting. Me: “No, we can’t do that. Of course the athlete has to have agency. It’s their data, their career, their life.” Were the athletes people, with hopes and fears and idiosyncrasies? Or were they resources? My discomfort grew.

What I didn’t know then, was, well, a lot. I didn’t know much about the history of so called civilisation. I didn’t know much about the history of capitalism. I knew very little about the nuances of human behaviour, the ways in which we are so powerfully shaped by our environment, often in ways we have absolutely no awareness of. I didn’t quite realise that what I was walking into was simply an enterprise; a legal fiction with what was effectively a singular, narrow goal orientation (profit. That doesn’t mean there aren’t other things that matter. It’s just the P atop the pyramid).

It was this discomfort, this shattering of my rather limited Overton, that led me towards philosophy (here’s what I mean by philosophy).

Over the years I have been very fortunate to become a philosopher that gets paid to lead work all around the world. Most of this work has been applied ethics work (I have, however, held a number of Philosopher in Residence roles, done a bunch applied research, and both developed learning curriculums and taught hundreds of students and professionals in various settings). I help organisations imagine not just possible, but preferable futures. I help them reflect in ways that clarify the values that matter most. I help them deliberate, drawing from the best available balance of evidence and a genuine diversity of perspectives. Through this, I help them make decisions that respect what we hold near and dear, help us act as the people we most want to be, demonstrate genuine care, and lead to the best overall consequences. At least that is what I so wholeheartedly attempt (it’s not always that clear cut).

Having worked with well over one hundred organisations* in various capacities, I’ve had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with diverse folks all around the world. Board members who’ve been in the game for decades. Senior executives absolutely set upon making their mark without contradicting their values (this is a very challenging endeavour). Diverse, multi-disciplinary teams that are truly passionate about what they are building or working to solve. People distressed by the moral dissonance they feel at work. Groups struggling with other groups. Teams working to evolve and set a new policy. Organisations trying to bring more ‘evidence-based’ reasoning into a given context. Organisations grappling with different legal / political / economic constraints in their attempt to ‘do good’, only to succumb to something close to corporate nihilism.

*It’s noteworthy that I get hired by people for a pretty specific reason. So I don’t exactly have a genuinely representative sample to call from here. The people who hire me tend to do so because they want to do something well (typically related to applied ethics or organisational trust) and they know they don’t currently quite know how to do it.

Every single engagement, however, outside of the core functional work (the end-to-end applied ethics process), has included a significant coaching component (I’ve long realised that this is very much part of the end-to-end applied ethics work. We cannot simple do ethics in some abstract, analytical way. We have to learn to live ethically. Doing so almost always changes us in meaningful ways. And even if this makes certain aspects of life more challenging—which it can!!!—it helps us contribute in a far more overall effective way).

I was being paid to do the ethics work. Assess this. Report on that. Offer advice here. Ensure we don’t do that over there. But I couldn’t help but be dragged into these coaching type sessions.

After some time, I realised I was helping people with the philosophical dimensions of their life. This became as clear as the words on the screen. What started off as moral dissonance became an exploration of the ideas that shaped a person’s past. What began with the discomfort of a policy proposal let to historical analysis of idea lineages. What began as grappling with conflicting evidence ended up with an inquiry into the very nature of what constitutes evidence itself.

But this wasn’t just about the nature of being or reality. It wasn’t just about what constituted knowledge. It wasn’t just about values or how someone should act. It was advice about how a person could better reflect on who they were, who they are and who they’d most like to become (the process of philosophy itself).

Here’s a small selection of testimonials from past clients. I’m sharing it here because it helps animate the point I am making. It was never just about the functional work. It was about being present, showing concern, caring, and through that process, helping others live more philosophically. Each of these people, and so many more, have sat with me, often for hours, to work through not just work difficulties, but the inherent existential tension of being alive!!!

“Nate is one of those rare people who is able and willing to speak truth. He does this in a way that is refreshingly frank, deeply incisive and genuinely compassionate. This enables everyone involved to meaningfully connect, openly discuss our ambitions and challenges, and focus on what truly matters.” - Jack Rejtman, CEO, Biodiversity Council

“…To be perfectly honest, I have never met anyone else across universities or professional practice who has a better grasp of what it means to synthesize knowledge across such varied domains for practical applications. It has been a genuine joy to work with Nate, get to know not just his approach to sociotechnical ethics but him as a person. Having now become friends, I can earnestly say Nate works from a place of deep empathy and connection with land, nature and care - all for the future of humanity and the biosphere.” - Adrian Hindes, Civilisation Research Institute

“Not many can convey highly complex concepts with such care, passion and measured volume. Every time we talk, it gets better, my knowledge and understanding increases, and the “squashed flies” in my head don’t hurt quite so much.” - Rob Hale, Chief Digital Officer at Regional Australia Bank

“I believe Nate’s thinking in this space is second to none. He brings a huge amount of passion and energy to discussions around data ethics, consent and trust; areas where we need more proactive conversation and more impetus to challenge the status quo, both of which Nate delivers in spades!” - Jo Higgins, GM Digital Products at IAG

“Nate is among the smartest and most nuanced thinkers I’ve ever had the fortune to come across. In a couple of hours with him, you’ll see the world in whole new ways.” - Jon Alexander, CEO at New Citizen Project

To Jack, Adrian, Rob, Jo, Jon and so many others (all those who have been willing to publicly offer testimonials for LinkedIn or my website, or make introductions and recommendations), I am immensely grateful. Thank you. Anyone who works as a sole operator, especially in philosophy, knows how much these gestures help.

I was philosophically counselling people long before I became a philosophical counsellor. In fact, this process played out for more than ten years before I began to take seriously (something I must thank Prof. Luis de Miranda for due to his incredible work on philosophical health and the guidance he offered me during my SMILE_PH certification) the prospect that I might be able to formally offer counselling focused largely on the existential dimensions of our being.

As I look back it all seems like it played out as it should. Every challenge led to some new opportunity. Every closure became an unexpected opening. It sounds cliche. It is cliche. But, we can’t really see what’s going to happen. We have to make sense backwards whilst attempting to live going forwards. This can be tough. People get stuck in the past. People become obsessed with ‘grounding (only) in the present’. People spend their entire days thinking about tomorrow (or next century!).

None of those modes are individually healthy. Inhabiting all three, simultaneously, is where we find ourselves most alive in the seemingly unique way of being (an adult) human.

Learn more about ioēs

When I met Esther (my partner in life), the gifts of our love story aside, I’d also well and truly begun a journey into the nature and dynamics of my conditioning; the ways I had been shaped by the world. I’d begun learning a heck of a lot about the nervous system, the nature of psychophysiological phenomena (such as chronic pain or bodily symptoms without a structural cause, something I had experienced A LOT of). I didn’t know if she’d also be interested in these things. I recall first speaking to her about it, somewhat hesitantly, and her responding, “I love this stuff!”.

It was then I realised she had been practicing and studying various somatic modalities for quite some time. She appreciate the journey I myself had been on to learn about how I’d been shaped and conditioned and burdened by my past. She understood the challenges of meaningfully overcoming this conditioning, alleviating the types of symptoms I referred to, and living with more freedom; an ongoing process for me, for both of us.

What became apparent to us after some time was that our respective practices worked brilliantly together. Esther had been supporting me, guiding me through practices and sessions. This was helping me build more and more capacity to grow from my past and ground myself in the present.

I was supporting Esther philosophically. I may have, once or twice, become a rather annoying socratic partner. But this was helping us clarify what truly mattered, who we most wanted to be, and the vision we had for our future.

Each of us kept growing and evolving. In ways we couldn’t have predicted.

And it’s this, our personal experience, not just our professional expertise, that made us so excited about the prospect of ioēs, the organisation we founded to bring together somatic therapy and philosophical counselling to support people in their unique journey of existential flourishing (not a destination but an ongoing, creative process).

I’ll keep it at that for now. I hope this offers a brief window of insight into the trajectory that got me here.

If you’d like to discuss philosophical counselling, how it works and how it might help, please contact us.

With φιλία (philía),

Nate