My style.

As your therapist, I aim to support you in a non-judgemental, non-pathologising, identity-affirming, and compassionate way.

It is my aim to facilitate your understanding of your life experiences, and how they shape your responses in the here-and-now. Our work together may involve skills building and teaching strategies to provide you with new ways to respond in the present; promotion of your inner resources, the ability to feel emotion mindfully, and identification of your values, and ultimately; the reprocessing of experiences that continue to negatively influence you in the present. Throughout this process, as is indicated, I aim to represent a secure and stable base for you, a person to provide support, acceptance, and empathy, an encourager of your autonomy, and a model of realistic limits.

My approach to sessions.

I approach therapy flexibly, based on your needs. I will always have an agenda for our sessions, which will expand upon our work from our previous session, and that will be informed by our therapeutic goals. However, our session focus can shift based on your current needs; for example, a recent rupture in a relationship may be causing distress, and focusing on it can provide an opportunity to learn new ways of communicating, or new perspectives that allow you to shift toward repair within that relationship. This approach allows us to be as flexible or structured in our therapeutic approach as is preferred.

My preferred therapeutic approach.

Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy is my preferred therapeutic approach. This type of therapy allows us to capture (as needed) sense-making of your experiences, skills building to assist you in the here-and-now, and the crucial work of addressing the past experiences that continue to inform your present reality. This is achieved by reprocessing traumatic memories using a set of standardised techniques, until these memories are no longer experienced as distressing and no longer inform present day responses. I have engaged in extensive advanced trainings in EMDR Therapy, which allows me to flexibly adapt this type of therapy for each individual client I work with.

Depending on your needs, I may incorporate elements of Schema Therapy, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Ego State Therapy, and/or DBT Skills into our therapeutic plan.

What EMDR Therapy looks like.

Phase 1 of therapy consists of history taking and treatment planning. Here, we discuss and make sense of your history in the context of your present difficulties. This may be achieved within our first session, or you may wish to spend an extended time unpacking and making sense of your life experiences - we will spend as much time here as is appropriate to your needs. I may also have you complete questionnaires during this phase to measure your baseline symptoms, which we will aim to re-administer intermittently and at the end of therapy. Finally, this phase consists of treatment planning, where we determine our therapeutic goals and our plans for the next phases of therapy.

Phase 2 consists of preparation and stabilisation. Stabilisation is the part of therapy where we work toward you being able to effectively manage your day-to-day experiences most optimally, and this is where other types of therapy are often implemented. For example, CBT techniques may be taught to assist you with unhelpful thoughts, and techniques such as breathing, relaxation, and imagery may be employed to assist you to manage difficult emotions and physical sensations.

The amount of sessions spent on stabilisation depends largely on your existing ability to manage challenging psychological experiences, your ability to regulate your emotions, and the existence of current life stressors: we may determine that you already have relative stability and so we may achieve this within our first session, or we may spend an extended period of time working toward stabilisation that spans most of our therapeutic work together. Stabilisation may be returned to at any point in time during later phases of therapy, as needed. Prior to entering into Phase 3 of therapy for the first time, you will be informed in detail about what to expect during the reprocessing phases.

Phases 3-8 involve activating, desensitising, and reprocessing distressing memory content, closure of the memory, and then re-evaluation of the previously distressing memory at the next session, to ensure complete reprocessing has occurred. These phases are repeated for each target (i.e., memory, but we can also target maladaptive urges, triggers, imagined future catastrophes, etc.) for reprocessing. Often, not every memory originally identified as related to a current difficulty will need to be targeted for reprocessing, as generalisation will often occur (i.e., the effects from working on a memory may similarly affect other related memories). We will aim to reprocess past experiences and present triggers of distress until these no longer bother you in the here and now, and you are able to respond to them in line with your values.

Therapy duration

Therapy can be brief (a few sessions) through to lasting for years - this depends on what you are hoping to achieve, the duration of time you have been experiencing your difficulties, the complexity of your difficulties, and your relative degree of stability. I approach therapy with the end in mind, where our work is goals-directed and will be completed when our therapeutic aims have been met, no matter how long that takes. As I often work with people who have had longstanding difficulties, I find the duration of therapy is at least 6 months, through to ~4 years, with the average person attending my services for at least 1 year. I generally recommend weekly therapy for at least a year (or the fortnightly equivalent) to expect to experience fundamental change.

If you have limitations on your ability to attend (e.g., you are only able to attend when receiving Medicare rebates), please let me know in our first session so that we can create realistic goals to fit the expected therapy duration.

Appointments with me

I offer all clients a dedicated and ongoing appointment time reserved specifically for you, for the time that we work together (e.g., Mondays at 8am on a weekly basis). Standard sessions are 50 minutes long, however extended sessions (75 minutes) are available at selected times during the week, by request. EMDR Intensives are also available by request, which are longer sessions (90 minutes+). Information about my fees for the different appointment types can be viewed here.