About Me
My Personal Journey
Trauma is not a life sentence. As someone who has moved through PTSD and substance addiction as a result of complex childhood trauma, incest and partner violence, I understand exactly how it feels to believe it might be. I understand the panics, the self-sabotaging behaviours, the grief, the shame and the rage. I understand the bone deep feeling of ‘there is something wrong with me’.
At the start of my healing journey, I spent five years undertaking traditional therapy – talking to a person one-on-one and unpacking my trauma in the way most of us understand therapy to be. However, there came a point where I felt like I had hit the end of the road. My heart was heavy with grief and pain and it didn’t feel like it was getting any easier. It was at this crossroads that I discovered plant medicines such as ayahuasca and san pedro and the wisdom of Zen Buddhism and yoga. I spent a further 5 years in this space.These teachings and experiences allowed me not only to heal but to see the collective trauma that we all experience, simply for being born human.
Expanding my approach to healing led me to a Hakomi therapist, who had trained in somatic meditation, tantra and sexuality (from a Tibetan Buddhist lineage). It was here that I learnt to tie all the threads together and to truly be with those fractured parts in myself; with love, compassion and acceptance.
I did not get rid of my trauma like I initially thought and felt I would. Instead I found a way to make friends with it, to hold it with tenderness and care. I found a way to bring the lost parts of myself home. I now live in a body that feels vibrant and alive. I can contact safety from the inside out. I have accepted the disowned parts of me as parts that deserve to be in the light of this beautiful one precious life that we get to live.
My Professional Journey
For the last 12 years, I have been researching and working in the trenches of complex trauma. Equipped with foundational training in psychology, I spent a number of formative years facilitating group therapy for traumatic stress in Melbourne, and providing individual counselling for people struggling with anxiety and panic. I then worked for 6 years with emergency services in Queensland, helping paramedics and call takers recover from traumatic jobs, as well as teaching managers how to better support their staff by providing psycho-education around trauma and post traumatic growth.
I have also spent considerable time in the research space. From exploring attachment and post traumatic growth in the Australian population, to teaching developmental psychology at universities, to working with sex trafficking survivors in Nepal. My more recent learnings have been in the somatic space, with Hakomi, somatic meditation, tantra and trauma-focused somatic therapy.
In my private practice I have the absolute pleasure of teaching and sharing my knowledge and also learning from every person I work with.
My Approach
To me, therapy is human-to-human work. I won’t sit in front of you with a overwhelming list of surveys and tests and a clipboard, legs crossed, asking “how do you feel?”. I will be there, leaning in, present with you as you unpack whatever might be on your heart that day. We will walk into the depths and the darkness together.
Safety and compassion are always at the forefront. For many people who have experienced complex trauma as a child, safety is something that needs to be learnt, and once we discover what safety feels like in our bodies, and how to act from that, everything can change.
My work is primarily with individuals who have experienced complex childhood trauma, relational trauma (fractured/disorganised attachment), sexual abuse, and assault and domestic violence. I use a blend of Internal Family Systems, Hakomi, attachment theory and somatic meditation with Buddhist principles. I couch all of this in a post traumatic growth framework. My sessions always involve mindfulness and meditation, tailored to the individual.
I do this work because teaching people to discover the maps hidden in their nervous systems that connect them to their own innate wisdom is one of the most beautiful and honouring journeys in the world. If I can do what I can to facilitate that, then my purpose has been met.
Learn more about my approach and how I work by clicking here.