What is Psychotherapy and how does it differ from Counselling?  

Psychotherapy is a general term used to describe the interaction between a client and therapist that acts to alleviate a client's emotional and psychological difficulties. During psychotherapy, you learn about your moods, feelings, thoughts and behaviours and why you experience things as you do. 

Often the terms psychotherapy and counselling are used interchangeably, but in general counselling is a shorter process, more focussed on addressing and alleviating symptoms of a particular problem a client is facing. Psychotherapy describes a longer process that involves exploration of and development of insight into the themes and patterns in relationships across a client's life history, how they contribute to ongoing difficulties in life and provides the support required for more fundamental change to these patterns. There is much evidence now that shows that the most important aspect in healing is not the model of therapy followed but the quality of the relationship and therapeutic alliance between therapist and client. Psychotherapy explicitly highlights the quality of this relationship to acknowledge, process and experiment with new ways of being in relationship both in the room, then also in broader daily life.

Counselling may be offered as an integral part of the psychotherapeutic process.

​My approach to Psychotherapy: 

I am trained in Relational Gestalt Psychotherapy, and have also been influenced by my studies in and experience with modern approaches to psychodynamic self-psychology. Both these approaches are relational therapeutic approaches, which means they are based in the understanding that growth and change come from the development of a relationship between client and therapist, and on the therapist's capacity for relationship, inclusion and confirmation which describe specific ways of relating: the capacity for feeling into the experience of the other while still retaining full sense of our own self as individual. Gestalt also emphasises the importance of phenomenological experience in the here and now.

Relational therapies are based on the understanding that our sense of self and who we are develops from being seen, acknowledged and having our emotions recognised and validated by others. It does not take living in an environment of abuse for aspects of our selves to not have been responded to as fully as we might have needed. Many factors including caregivers' own trauma histories or ongoing social stressors despite otherwise loving family environments, may have impacted on caregivers capacities to provide good enough emotional attunement in the full complexity of infants and young children's lives. These issues can lead to ongoing emotional distress that can be diagnosed as mental disorder later in life. 

Relational psychotherapy can be helpful in addressing many mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, personality disorders, dissociation or adjustment disorders, as well as the impacts of ongoing stress and both immediate and long-term effects of trauma and abuse. Grief and loss are other life transitions for which a relational psychotherapeutic approach can be helpful in providing support and relief.


Medicare Rebate for up to 10 sessions in a calendar year is available with a Mental Health Care Plan from your GP.
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