Please note that my books are currently closed and I am not working with new people.

I am a clinical psychologist who provides therapy to adults and older adolescents (16+) from a private practice located in Burleigh Heads on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia.

Therapy requires investment of time, money, trust and effort. The quality of the therapeutic relationship is central to the effectiveness of treatment. It is also important to feel able to talk with your therapist about whatever is on your mind. For all these reasons, when you are looking for a therapist, it is crucial to find someone who feels as if they are a good-enough fit with who you are in the world and what you want from therapy.

More information about my clinical interests, professional experience and approach to therapy is found below. The best way to see if we might work well together is for us to meet in person. Contact me to arrange an initial session.

Clinical Interests

I work with adults and older adolescents (16+) who present with a variety of psychological questions, symptoms and difficulties. These often stem from challenges with:

• Emotion experience, expression, management and communication
• Sustaining connected and meaningful relationships with appropriate boundaries within home, social, workplace and family environments
• Effects of single incident trauma and complex trauma (repeated experiences, often early in life, of adverse events including abuse, neglect and community violence)
• Sense of self, identity, purpose, self-worth
• Trust, shame, guilt, fear, sadness, anger
• Sex, sexuality, gender identity, LGBQTI+ issues, desire
• Procrastination, self-sabotage, indecision
• Experiences of bereavement, loss, stress, change, and adjustment

The therapy I offer is guided more closely by collaborative exploration and understanding of each person’s individual experience than by diagnostic labels. What depression looks like for one person – what factors contribute to depression developing and being maintained and how depression is experienced in this person’s life – is going to be particular to that person. This will differ in important ways from what depression looks like for the next person. Honouring individual difference in therapy is essential. We all have a different temperament that interacts in a distinct way with different environments that we experience within different cultural settings. We all make different choices.

Professional Experience

Clinical

Since 2013, I have gained clinical experience within the private and public sectors, working in private practice, inpatient and outpatient hospital settings, a university counselling service and with professional musicians and sportspeople on performance-related issues.

I have experience working with people who fit the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition) diagnostic criteria for disorders that include:

• Mood and anxiety disorders (e.g. depression, bipolar, anxiety, OCD)
• Trauma, stressor-related and dissociative disorders (e.g. PTSD, adjustment disorder, depersonalisation/derealisation)
• Personality disorders
• Substance-related and addictive disorders
• Sexual dysfunction and gender dysphoria

Academic

Prior to training as a psychologist, I completed a PhD that investigated the experience of music performance for the professional musician. I worked in academia as a lecturer, tutor and researcher. I continue to maintain an active teaching and research profile. More on my work in academia can be found here.

Therapy

The experience of therapy differs for everyone because we are each our own person. Broadly speaking though, therapy is a collaborative process of exploration, understanding and challenge, conducted in an open and non-judgmental environment, with a view to fostering change, deepening engagement and increasing freedoms in life.

My Approach

I have an integrative and flexible approach to therapy. This means that I combine elements of approaches shown to be effective by current research into treatment tailored to the unique constellation of each person I work with in therapy. I draw on treatment modalities that include psychodynamic psychotherapy, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), mindfulness and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). I conduct therapy within short-, medium- and long-term frameworks. Where possible, I work with people not only on managing symptoms but also on addressing the causes underlying these symptoms.

Fees, Referrals and Rebates

I charge $240 per session. A session lasts for 50 minutes.

You are welcome to see me without a referral, however a referral is required if you want to claim a Medicare rebate for any of our sessions.

I am registered with Medicare as a provider of specialist clinical psychology services under the Medicare Better Access to Mental Health Care Initiative. This means that my fees for psychological treatment attract a Medicare rebate if you have a current referral under a Mental Health Treatment Plan (MHTP) from your GP or psychiatrist. The referral letter for this MHTP needs to contain my name and practice address. Under this plan, you are eligible for up to 20 Medicare-rebatable sessions per calendar year, at the discretion of your doctor. Please speak to your doctor or see this overview provided by Services Australia for further details.

Private health insurance companies may also offer rebates. These may be used as an alternative to Medicare rebates (or after the Medicare rebates have expired). Please contact your insurance provider to determine whether your level of cover includes psychology services.

Supervision

I am a board-approved supervisor. I offer primary supervision to fully-registered clinicians and clinicians enrolled in the Clinical Psychology registrar program, and secondary supervision to clinicians completing the 5+1 pathway to registration. Please note I do not supervise clinicians completing the 4+2 pathway to registration. If you are interested in talking more about engaging in supervision, please contact me.

Podcast: Three Associating

Along with two other therapists, Gill Straker and Rachael Burton, I produce and feature in the podcast Three Associating: Adventures in Relational Psychoanalytic Supervision. Listening to this podcast will give you some idea of my way of being the world, how I practice and how I supervise.

Three Associating offers its listener a peek behind the closed doors of therapists working within a relational psychoanalytic model. In each episode, a relational dilemma arising in the context of work with a fictitious patient is explored. While reasons of confidentiality and privacy mean that none of the people discussed are real, the relational dynamics are.

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