About my approach

Each person has a unique experience of life and the world - and so there is no one-size-fits-all therapy. I work to tailor therapy to suit to each person’s needs, learning styles and stage of readiness for different types of therapy.

Read more below to find out about my approach and some of the modalities I incorporate into therapy, or contact me if you prefer to chat if you have further questions.

  • A person-centred philosophy underpins my approach. This means I deeply respect each client’s innate capacity and desire to heal, and I will work with you to uncover and grow this. My role is to use my therapeutic skills to support you in understanding and reclaiming yourself to be able to live your life to the full, placing your wisdom, strengths and experience at the centre.

  • A trauma-informed approach to therapy means understanding how traumatic experiences can impact our lives and cause many of our negative symptoms. My role as therapist is to provide a safe therapeutic space, ensuring that any processing of trauma happens at a pace you can cope with, working with you to develop and strengthen strategies to self-regulate and stay safe while in session, as well as in between sessions. I use therapies to assist your emotions, body and mind to heal and re-integrate after trauma.

  • Our nervous system has an important role in keeping us safe. Sometimes it can get confused and cause us to react in ways that are not helpful, because of past trauma we have been through. We can learn to heal, tone and make friends with our nervous systems again, so it can return to protecting us when we need it, and relaxing when we don’t. I incorporate polyvagal theory and techniques, breathing, Tapping (EFT) and sensory strategies to assist with this.

  • We are many faceted-people. Mind, body, emotions, culture, context and other elements make up who we are - and so therapy can address all these important areas. Sometimes talking to find solutions is helpful, and at other times it is not enough, because we are holding the trauma in our body, or the context we are in keeps us stuck in the same situation.

    I will make ongoing assessments with you throughout your therapy about where to focus our work together, respecting what you feel comfortable trying. We might use motivational interviewing or narrative therapy for a more cognitive “top-down” approach, or somatic techniques, creative therapies or emotion-focussed techniques to work from the “bottom-up”. If appropriate, modalities such as EMDR, Brainspotting, or Sensorimotor Guided Drawing may be used for left-right brain integration and/or for processing of trauma and content stored in our implicit memory. I also bring an existential lens to my approach, supporting explorations of meaning making where needed.

  • We all have cultural identities, whether we are aware of them or not. I will respect your cultural identity, however you wish to express this.

    I seek to offer a service that is safe for LGBTQI+ people.

    I acknowledge the cultural lens I bring to therapy as a female identifying, Teochew child of migrants living on Aboriginal land.

  • We are all part of many systems - relational, societal, political, cultural, religious and more. These interact and can impact our ability to move about in the world as our true selves. I will work with you to understand and examine the systems that impact your life, whether relational or family systems, workplace systems, cultural, environmental, political or even your internal systems, with the aim of supporting you to find your voice and agency within these. Narrative therapy, family systems theory and Internal Family Systems therapy are some modalities that inform this part of therapy.

  • Sometimes focusing on words and talking gets us tied up in knots, and at other times we simply cannot find any words to describe our experience. Creative therapies can help us express our experience by accessing the “right side” (creative, non-verbal side) of our brains to assist with healing, and it can also give a us a safe distance to look at our internal world by externalising it in a gentle way. It can also help us access our subconscious selves where our deeply held wisdom is found. I utilise art therapy, sandtray therapy and music where it is appropriate to bring into sessions.

  • Best-practice trauma therapy integrates multiple modalities in a dynamic and purposeful way to suit each client’s needs. I will collaborate with you to bring the modality you need at each part of your process to support your different parts to work together.

  • We heal in relationship. As mammals, we are biologically wired to relate to others, and when we are dysregulated, our nervous systems can settle down when we find someone who can safely co-regulate with us. Additionally, when our trauma has originated in relationships, experiencing an appropriate, healthy relationship in therapy can help us reset our relationship patterns. Therefore the therapeutic relationship in counselling is a tool I intentionally use as part of the growth process.