FAQs

There’s no perfect moment to start therapy, and waiting for one usually means waiting a long time.

Some people come in because something’s cracked open, a loss, a diagnosis, a relationship ending, some kind of moment they can’t just push through. Others come in when nothing dramatic has happened at all; it’s more like just a low, steady sense that things aren’t quite right, that they’re managing rather than living, and that the same patterns keep showing up no matter how much they try to think their way out of them.

Both of those are good reasons to start! 

You don’t need to be in crisis to justify it, and you don’t need to have tried everything else first. If you’re asking yourself whether now is the time, that’s usually a sign it’s worth having a conversation, even if you’re not sure yet what you’d want to work on.

The only real prerequisite is being willing to look honestly at what’s going on. The rest we can work out together. And you also only have to go one step at a time. 

Maybe. Sometimes the answer is yes.

Most of us can work through a lot on our own, and with the support of family and friends. Therapy isn’t about outsourcing all of life challenges.

The question I’d encourage you to ask isn’t, “Should I be able to deal with this myself?” It’s probably more like:

• Have I been stuck with this for longer than I’d like?
• Have I tried the obvious things without much success?
• Is this taking up more mental energy than it should?
• Is it affecting my work, relationships, parenting or enjoyment of life?
• Would I benefit from someone independent helping me think it through?

If you’re answering “yes” to several of those questions, it may be worth having a conversation. If you’ve genuinely already tried to solve it yourself and you’re still not getting to where you want to be, another perspective, professional opinion and strategies may be more valuable than just trying harder. Sometimes it’s just a bit ridiculous to expect yourself to solve a problem with the same mental tools that haven’t quite been working. 

You don’t have to commit to months of therapy. Sometimes a few sessions are enough to gain clarity, learn some useful skills, or work out the next step.

That’s a fair question, and a common one. 

Not every psychologist is the right fit for every person, and that’s got nothing to do with how good or open or skilled or nice or personable either of you are! Some of it is style. Some of it is timing: the work that didn’t land three years ago might land now, because you’re a different person asking different questions. And some of it is just chemistry. Someone can be a excellent psychologist and still not be the right psychologist for a particular person in a particular season of their life. Or that psych may have had a quirk that really frustrated you that you didn’t talk about, or reminded you of your high school teacher!! 

So if it didn’t help last time, that’s real information, but it’s information about that fit, not about whether therapy itself might “work”, or whether you’re someone it can work for.

Finding the right psychologist is a bit like finding the right GP. Sometimes you get it right straight away, but sometimes it takes a couple of tries before something clicks, before you find someone whose way of working actually matches how you think and what you need. That’s normal, not a failure on your part, or theirs. 

If you’ve had an experience that didn’t help, but you’ve got enough desire to get started, we will talk about this in our first session (it’s a standard question I asked everyone). I will ask you to share with me what didn’t work last time, what felt off, what you needed more of, what you needed less of, and what aspects may have had nothing to do with the psychologist at all. That tells me a lot about how to approach working with you, and it tells you whether this might be a better fit before you commit to anything. And I hope that other psychologists do that with clients who weren’t a good fit with me.

This is also a big reason why I do feedback-informed treatment, which is mentioned in the main pages of the website. 

Ahpra is our regulating body, and the Psychology Board of Australia is our Board, which is part of Ahpra. Psychologists must be registered with Ahpra to use the title Psychologist and to practice.

We also have two options for peak bodies we can join – Australian Psychological Society and the Australian Association of Psychologists Inc. I was a member with the APS for a long time but I’m now with with the AAPi. Psychologists don’t have to be a member of either of these, like they must with Ahpra.

If it turns out we don’t click, or you already suspect we won’t be a good match from my website, keep looking! The APS has a good Find A Psychologist page – have a look here. The AAPi also has a page like that – here.

Keep in mind that only psychologists with membership to that body + who have paid extra to have their details there will come up. You can also ask your GP for recommendations. I’d generally avoid asking close friends and family for recommendations, as we can’t work with people who are closely connected to other clients of ours – I’ll ask you about any possible connections we have before we get started. It can be tricky in smaller towns to avoid working with people who know each other, but the rule of thumb is that we avoid this unless there’s absolutely no choice.

But every psychologist who is registered will appear in the Ahpra registry (if they don’t appear there, they are not a regsitered psychologist, and aren’t allowed to use the name psychologist). Always check your psychologist is actually a psychologist!

A psychiatrist is a medical doctor. They can diagnose mental illness and prescribe medication, and their training is grounded in medicine first. Some also do therapy, but a lot of psychiatric work is focused on diagnosis and medication management, especially for more complex or severe presentations.

A psychologist has university training specifically in how people think, feel and behave, usually six years or more, plus supervised practice before registration. Psychologists can assess and diagnose mental health conditions and provide therapy using approaches with an evidence base behind them, things like CBT, ACT, or attachment-based work. We can’t prescribe medication. Registered psychologists in Australia are regulated by AHPRA, which means there are formal standards, ethics requirements and complaints processes behind the title.

Counsellor is a less regulated role. Counsellors vary in their qualifications and years of experience. Others have done a short course. The title itself isn’t protected the way “psychologist” is, so it’s worth asking directly about someone’s training and registration if you’re not sure. Counselling often focuses more on support and processing a specific issue, rather than formal assessment or treatment of a diagnosable condition.

A coach works differently again. Coaching isn’t a mental health service. It’s usually focused on goals, performance or a specific area of life, career, leadership, habits, and it doesn’t involve diagnosis or treatment. Good coaches know where the edge of their scope is and will point you toward a psychologist if what’s coming up is clinical rather than developmental.

None of these are ranked above the others. And there are other professionals I have not mentioned who are also highly skilled – like mental health social workers.

These professionals offer different tools for different things. If you’re not sure which one fits what you’re dealing with, that’s a completely reasonable thing to ask me directly, and I’d rather have that conversation upfront than have you in the wrong kind of support for what you actually need.

No, psychologists are not trained or allowed to prescribe medication.

If it looks like medication might be worth considering alongside our work, we’ll talk about that together first, what’s driving the thought, what you’re hoping it might help with, and whether it fits with what’s going on for you. From there, the usual path is a conversation with your GP, since they can prescribe directly, or refer you on. If your situation is more complex, or if a GP feels a specialist view would help, we might look at a referral to a psychiatrist instead.

I’ll write to your GP or psychiatrist if that’s useful, so they’ve got a clear picture of what we’ve been working on and why medication has come up, rather than you having to explain the whole thing from scratch in a short appointment.

Medication and therapy aren’t in competition with each other. For some people, one is enough. For others, having both running together gives each one more room to actually work. Either way, it stays a decision you’re making with the right people involved, not something that happens on the side without you being part of it.

Psychologists can’t see people who are closely connected to existing clients, so if a friend or family member recommends me, it’s worth checking with me first. I’ll ask about this at the start of the process too.

The same goes if you’re already connected to me through my other work. I also do organisational development and consulting, so if I’m already working with your organisation, your team, or your leadership group in that context, or I have before, or may again in future, I can’t take you on as a therapy client as well. The two roles need to stay separate for both of us to trust the space.

This isn’t about being precious. It’s about making sure you have a space that’s completely yours. If I’m seeing your sister, or your business partner, or your best friend, or if I’m already in your workplace wearing a different hat, there’s a risk (or an absolute reality) that things overlap in ways that aren’t fair to you.

In terms of if I’m seeing you and someone else for therapy that’s in your world, maybe I notice a pattern in one conversation that colours how I hear the other, or maybe you hold back on something because you know it’s connected to someone else in the room, or to a context I’m already part of. Either way, you lose something that’s supposed to be yours alone.

In small towns, this gets tricky fast. Working separately with people who know each other is avoided unless there’s genuinely no other option. If that’s the situation, we’ll have an honest conversation about what’s possible and what isn’t. All psychologist working in small areas or towns consider this aspect of their work very carefully. 

Sometimes people say it almost apologetically, as though they need to convince me they’re worthy of taking up an appointment.

What has consistently struck me over the years is that people are often remarkably good at minimising their own needs and underestimating the impact something is having on them. They gradually adapt to carrying stress, anxiety, self-doubt, relationship difficulties or unhappiness until it simply becomes “normal.”

Then, as we start talking, it becomes clear just how much space it has been taking up in their life.

Therapy isn’t reserved for people in crisis. You don’t need a diagnosis, and you don’t need to prove that your struggles are “bad enough.” If something has been weighing on you, getting in the way, or simply making life harder than it needs to be, it’s worth exploring.

You don’t need to justify coming. You just need to be curious about whether things could be different.

Pretty much always, no, and in some cases, absolutely not. 

There’s no couch you lie on while I sit silently taking notes. No dramatic breakthrough moment where the music swells and it all suddenly makes sense. No analysing your dreams like a fortune teller, no diagnosing you in the first five minutes based on how you’re sitting.

A lot of what gets shown as normal or even romantic in films would be considered serious professional boundary crossings, in some cases boundary violations, if a real psychologist did them.

Texting between sessions, meeting for coffee, following each other on social media, running into each other and talking about how things are going outside the room. On screen it can look like closeness or care. In practice, it undermines the thing that makes therapy work in the first place. The relationship needs to stay clearly defined and contained. We won’t be connected outside the therapy room in any way, and I won’t be available to you outside session in the way film and TV often suggest is normal.

It’s also not walk-in, sit-down, start-talking. There’s a booking process, a set time, and a proper session length that we stick to. That structure isn’t a lack of care. It’s part of what keeps the space safe, professional and reliable for everyone I see.

Most sessions look like two people having a real conversation. You talk, I listen properly, I ask questions that help things get clearer, and we work out together what’s useful to focus on. The work is ordinary in its shape, and that’s exactly why it holds up.

Some of the boundaries around this work aren’t obvious until you run into them. We will talk about these things as part of the informed consent process, but many people find some of the points below are things they didn’t know!

Psychologists can’t accept gifts, beyond something very small and symbolic, like a card at the end of your work together. It’s not that the gesture isn’t appreciated. Professional guidelines are clear on this, and accepting gifts can complicate the relationship in ways that aren’t fair to either person.

If you start with a psychologist as an individual client, they generally can’t then see you and a partner together for couples work, or vice versa. Once a relationship’s been built with one person in that dynamic, it’s no longer possible to credibly hold neutral ground for both. If couples work is what you need, your psychologist should point you toward someone who hasn’t already got that history with either of you.

Psychologists can’t confirm or deny that someone is a client of theirs, to anyone, ever, even to say yes they see them. If someone calls or emails asking, the answer is always that they can’t discuss who they do or don’t see, no matter how harmless the question seems or how certain the person asking already is.

We talk about running into each other in public before it ever happens, rather than leaving it to chance. We agree in advance on what that should look like, and generally the rule is that your psychologist won’t acknowledge you first. That protects you, in case you’re somewhere with people who don’t know you see a psychologist.

Psychologists can’t advertise the way most businesses do. Testimonials, before-and-afters, “as seen in” style promotion, none of that is permitted under Ahpra’s advertising guidelines. So if you’re wondering why you won’t find glowing client reviews or persuasive marketing, or even much at all about psychologists, that’s why. It’s a deliberate restriction, not a lack of confidence in the work.

Psychologists can’t write character references, legal letters, or reports for you based on therapy sessions without a separate, formal process. Therapy notes and legal documentation serve different purposes, and blending them compromises both.

None of this is about being distant or overly formal, but are the kinds of things that actually makes the space safe enough for you to be honest in it.

So you can do therapy as a private client, and pay in full for each session, with no limit to how many sessions we have each year. Nothing will go on or to Medicare if this is the way you choose to go. 

Alternatively, you can see your GP and see if you meet the criteria for a Mental Health Care Plan. All the fine print is here.

This is a nice explainer from Lifeline too. 

Once you’ve got your Mental Health Treatment Plan, you can reach out and get booked in with me. We will ask you to send that to us over email as part of the getting started process. 

No, you don’t. You can pay privately and not come with a referral at all. See the previous FAQ for a bit more info on this one!

No, and this is a handy thing to know. 

If you get a Mental Health Treatment Plan, and your GP makes a suggestion of who to see, and pop their name on it, you can still take that referral to a different place or clinic, without revisiting the GP or getting it changed.

This means you can start with me even with another psychologist name on the referral, or even if you’ve started with someone else but it hasn’t quite clicked. And vice versa! When you see the GP and they ask you if you have a psychologist in mind, you might mention me, but then we don’t quite click… you can take that same referral to your new psychologist. Sometimes the GP will just not put a name on at all. 

It starts with the enquiry form the Contact page (or below) – or you can just email directly. That’s just enough for us to know who you are and get a sense of what’s bringing you here.

If you’re hoping to claim a Medicare rebate, it’s worth seeing your GP first to talk about a Mental Health Treatment Plan. Not everyone needs one, but if the cost side matters to you, that’s the step that makes rebates possible.

Once we’ve got your enquiry, we’ll get back to you within a few days with a longer form to fill out. This gives me a proper picture of your situation before we ever speak, so the first session isn’t entirely spent on paperwork.

From there, we’ll have a look at whether it seems like a good fit, for the work you need and for how I work. If it is, we’ll get you booked in.

Ahead of your first session, we’ll send you a link to log into your session at your session time, and payment gets processed the day before. When your appointment time comes around, find somewhere private, log on, and I’ll bring you into the session once we’re ready to start.

We’ll do the work together and finish on time. If you’d like to keep going after that first session, my admin team handles the bookings from there.

We’ll take your card details when you first book in. Payment gets processed the day before each session, so there’s nothing to sort out on the day itself.

Straight after, we’ll send you a receipt. If you’ve got private health cover that includes psychology, that receipt is what you’ll need to claim back through your fund.

If you’re coming in under a Mental Health Treatment Plan, we handle the Medicare side for you. Once that’s processed, your rebate lands in whichever account you’ve got nominated with Medicare, no extra steps needed on your part.

All of this sits with my admin team rather than with me directly, so if you’ve got questions about billing, receipts or rebates, feel free to email them directly, anytime.

When you first get started we’ll explain all this clearly so you know exactly what to expect, and will send you a copy of that informed consent information sheet too. 

You can have a look at this page here on the website, which gives an overview, but when you get started, you’ll receive a more detailed version of this too.

We will email it to you before your first session, and we will also talk about it during your first session with me. 

I have a fantastic reception team behind the scenes. I work with an external provider (here) who offer a service for allied health practices like mine – so they are skilled with working with psychologists and their clients. I’ve been working with them for a number of years.

The most likely person you will hear from is Erica (check her out here). She’ll take good care of the process and ensure you have everything you need to get started. She’s also the one who takes care of bookings, enquiries and manages payments. The email office@melanieirons.com goes directly to her (but on my systems and platforms).

You don’t need to be technical for this, just a bit prepared.

If you haven’t used Zoom before, don’t worry. I’ll talk you through it at the start of our first session, and most people find it very straightforward once they’ve done it once.

You also don’t need to download anything. When you click the link that will be in your email from us, it opens Zoom through your internet browser, not a desktop app, so there’s nothing to install first.

Before your first session, it’s worth testing the link on whatever device you’ll actually use, phone, laptop or tablet, rather than assuming it’ll work on the day. You can click the link and you’ll be shown to a page that says something like “The host will let you in soon”. That means it should all be working well on your end (and as your session isn’t actually on, nothing will happen!)

Check your camera and microphone are both switched on and that Zoom has permission to use them in your browser. Most issues people run into come down to that, not the platform itself.

Headphones make a real difference. They keep the conversation private if anyone else is around in other rooms of the house, and the sound tends to be clearer than a laptop speaker.

Find somewhere quiet before you log on, a room with a door you can close, decent lighting, and a spot where you won’t be interrupted halfway through. You don’t need anything fancy. You just need to be somewhere you can talk freely. We will talk in our first session about if you’d like to do some walk & talk sessions too – we will still use the same link and platform, but we will be cameras off.

At the time of your session, click the link, and I’ll bring you in from the waiting room once we’re ready to start. If your internet drops out or the call cuts, just log back in through the same link. These things happen occasionally, and we’ll just pick up where we left off.

If either of us are having big internet woes, I’ll call your mobile. You’ll get a call from a no-caller ID. That will be me!

If we are having big internet woes, I will call your mobile. You will get a call from a no-caller ID. We will make that work! 

Every session is a bit different, but the shape is usually similar.

We’ll start with the ORS, a very short rating scale you’ll have seen mentioned elsewhere on this site. It takes a minute and gives us a simple read on how things have been going for you. At the end of the session we’ll do the SRS, which does the same thing for the session itself, so I know whether it’s actually landing in a way that’s useful for you. We do these most sessions, though not every single one.

I’ll usually check early on if there’s anything in particular you want to make sure we get to today. Aside from that, we don’t work to a rigid structure. We follow the conversation where it takes us, rather than forcing it through a set of steps because that’s what the plan said. Sometimes that means working through something that happened recently. Sometimes it means looking at a pattern that keeps showing up in different situations, or slowing down on something that’s been sitting underneath the surface for a while.

I’ll ask questions, sometimes ones that make you stop and think rather than answer straight away. I’m listening for the patterns underneath what you’re saying, not just the events themselves.

It won’t always feel comfortable. Some sessions are lighter, some go somewhere harder, and both are part of the work. I’ll never push you somewhere you’re not ready to go, but I also won’t just nod along if something’s not adding up or if there’s a gentler truth worth naming.

Towards the end, we’ll bring things back together. That might mean naming what came up, agreeing on something to sit with or try before next time, or simply leaving things open if that’s where we’ve landed. Not everything needs to be tied off neatly by the end of fifty minutes.

Over time, sessions build on each other. Early ones are often about understanding your situation properly. Later ones tend to get more specific and more targeted, because we’ve built a shared picture of what’s actually going on and what’s likely to help.

The first session is an important one, even though it can feel like we haven’t got into the real work yet. It’s an intake session, and it covers several things that matter before we move into the ongoing work.

We’ll go through the consent form together, rather than you reading it alone beforehand. You’re welcome to ask questions about anything in it. I’ll also explain the ORS and SRS in more detail than what’s covered on the website, what they measure and why I use them throughout our work together.

We’ll talk through your overall goals and what you’re hoping to get out of therapy. This doesn’t need to be fully formed. It’s enough to have a sense of what’s brought you here and what you’d like things to look like as a result of this work. I’ll ask you a range of questions about your life and story so far.

The session also gives us both a chance to get a sense of the working relationship, whether the way I work makes sense for you, and whether this feels like the right fit.

Towards the end, there’s a natural checkpoint. You’ll have a chance to decide whether you’d like to continue, and if you’re unsure, that’s completely fine. We’ll talk about it openly together, rather than leaving you to work it out on your own afterwards. Therapy works best when it’s a good fit for both people, and that first session is where we start finding that out.

This is something worth being upfront about, particularly because telehealth adds a layer that in-person sessions don’t have.

At the start of our work together, I’ll ask for an emergency contact, and for the address you’re generally likely to be at during sessions. I don’t expect to need either of these, but it means I have them if I ever do.

If a session brings up something difficult, I’ll ask you to stay on the call, even if it’s hard. That’s not about pushing through discomfort for its own sake. It’s so we can work out together what you need, rather than you managing it alone once the call has ended.

It’s completely fine to need a break during a session. If that happens, I’ll need to confirm you’re safe before you step away from the call, just a straightforward check-in.

If you were to disappear from a call suddenly and I was seriously worried about you, I may contact your emergency contact. I’d always rather that never be necessary, but you should know it’s a possibility, not something that would happen without you understanding why beforehand.

If the call drops out unexpectedly, whether that’s your end or a technical issue, try logging back in through the same link first. If we can’t reconnect and I have concerns about how you were doing, I’ll follow up using whatever contact details you’ve given me.

None of this is about assuming something will go wrong. It’s about making sure that if something difficult does come up, there’s already a clear, agreed way of handling it, rather than working it out for the first time in the moment.

Telehealth is a full session, just held over video instead of in person. The conversation itself doesn’t change. What we talk about, how deeply we go, how much space there is for something difficult, all of that stays the same.

If we’re doing embodied or somatic work, that doesn’t disappear over video either. I’ll still ask what you’re noticing in your body, at various points through the session, so we still get that information. It just comes through the conversation rather than me observing it directly, which works better than people expect.

What does change is the setting, and that’s mostly on you to work out beforehand. You’ll want somewhere private, with a door you can close, where you won’t be interrupted or overheard. Headphones help, both for privacy and because the sound is usually clearer than a laptop speaker. Beyond that, you don’t need anything special. A phone, laptop or tablet with a working camera and microphone is enough.

Some people worry that something gets lost without being in the same room. In practice, most people settle into it quickly, often within the first few minutes of the first session. Research comparing telehealth and in-person therapy for anxiety and mood disorders has found no significant differences in symptom reduction or functional outcomes, and therapeutic alliance, the working relationship between therapist and client, rates just as highly over video as it does in person. It isn’t a lesser version of the work. It’s a different delivery of the same thing.

There are a few practical differences worth knowing. I can’t read body language below the shoulders, so if something’s showing up in your hands or your posture, it helps to mention it rather than assume I’ve noticed. And because we’re not in the same room, we also talk early on about how we’d handle things if a session brought up something difficult, or if the call dropped out unexpectedly, so there’s a plan in place rather than working it out on the spot.

For a lot of people, telehealth also removes a real barrier. No travel, no waiting room, no need to organise your whole day around a single appointment. That can matter alot. If you’ve got little ones at home, if you’re in the early stages postpartum, or if getting to a clinic in person just feels like one more thing on top of everything else, telehealth takes that layer of difficulty away. It tends to be a bit less intense too, being in your own space rather than walking into an unfamiliar clinic room can make it easier to settle in and get to the real conversation faster.

Some prefer in-person, and that’s a fair preference too. Either way, the work itself holds up the same.

No. That’s a common assumption, and it stops people from starting long before they need to.

Plenty of people come in with a clear issue in mind, a relationship, a decision, something that happened recently. Just as many come in with something vaguer. A general sense that things aren’t quite right, a low mood they can’t explain, a feeling of being stuck without being able to say stuck on what. Both are completely fine starting points.

Part of the work is figuring that out together. If you’re not sure what’s going on, that’s not a gap you need to fill before we start, it’s often exactly what the early sessions are for. We’ll talk, and usually the actual thing worth focusing on becomes clearer once you’re saying it out loud to someone rather than turning it over alone in your head.

You also don’t need to arrive with the same thing to talk about every week. Some sessions build directly on the last one. Others go somewhere completely different because that’s what’s live for you that day. Either is fine. I’m not expecting a tidy agenda, and you shouldn’t feel like you need to prepare one.

If you’re someone who likes structure, we can absolutely use it, checking in on what you want to make sure we cover. If you’d rather just start talking and see where it goes, that works too. There’s no one right way to walk in.

No, not directly. If I’ve asked you to send something through between sessions, homework, a reflection, anything like that, you can email it to the main practice address. My admin team pops it straight into your file and lets me know it’s arrived, without reading it themselves. If you’d rather it not sit in the body of an email, you’re welcome to send it as an attachment instead.

Beyond that, nothing really needs to come up between sessions, and that’s by design. If something feels urgent enough that it can’t wait, this isn’t a crisis service, so please don’t rely on email for that. Contact 000, Lifeline on 13 11 14, or your nearest emergency department instead.

It might feel a bit strange at first, this being the only point of contact. You’re building a relationship with someone who knows a fair amount about you, sometimes quite a lot, while you know very little about me. That imbalance can feel disconnecting if you’re used to relationships running both ways. But it’s exactly how it should be, and it’s part of what makes the work possible.

In the movies, therapists and clients often look almost like friends, texting, running into each other, trading personal details back and forth. That’s not how it works here, and it’s worth being clear about that upfront. Therapy is going well when you know very little about your psychologist’s life. I generally don’t disclose personal details, and on the rare occasion I do, it’s because it will genuinely serve the work, not because we’re building the kind of relationship where that information flows naturally both ways. Sure, anyone can be Googled, and I’m sure my clients Google me, and they will certainly get a feel for my broader work and hobbies! I can’t stop that. But you can be sure that our sessions will be focused on you, not me.

That boundary isn’t distance for its own sake. It keeps the space focused entirely on you.

If we get started and discover my model of care is not quite going to meet your needs – maybe you need more regular sessions, or a different kind of care from someone with a different skillset, or my session times are not working for you – we will talk about what a referral will look like. 

Yes. Many of my clients are men.

Although men have traditionally accessed therapy at lower rates than women, this is changing. Research suggests that once men take that first step, they engage just as well in therapy. Often, the hardest part is simply getting started.

People sometimes worry that therapy is just about sitting in a room talking endlessly about feelings. While that can be part of the process, it doesn’t have to start there.

The research shows that many men appreciate understanding why they’re doing something, having a clear sense of purpose, and balancing reflection with practical strategies and action. Some find it easier to begin by thinking through problems, patterns or decisions before moving into the emotional side of things. Others are ready to dive straight into deeper conversations. There isn’t one “right” way to do therapy.

My role is to meet you where your starting point is. That means adapting the way we work to suit you—not expecting you to fit a particular idea of what therapy “should” look like.

Part of the reason I offer therapy by phone or online is that, for some people—including many men—it simply feels less intense. There’s no waiting room, no walking into a clinic, no sitting face-to-face with someone you’ve never met. If having your camera off, talking while you’re out for a walk, or simply being in your own space makes it easier to get started, that’s absolutely okay. The important thing is finding a way that feels comfortable enough to begin.

Whether you prefer a structured, practical approach, a place to think things through, or somewhere to explore difficult emotions, we’ll find an approach that works for you. Another reason I do feedback-informed treatment too!

Many of the men I work with are highly capable professionals, first responders, sportsmen, leaders or business owners.

Success doesn’t make you immune to anxiety, self-doubt, burnout, relationship difficulties or questions about purpose. In fact, the very qualities that help people succeed—high standards, responsibility, persistence and problem-solving—can sometimes make it harder to know when to ask for support and be the double-edged swords that got you stuck in the first place.

Everything – such as anxiety, overused coping strategies, burnout, panic attacks, relationship difficulties, choices they wish they hadn’t made, fatherhood in general, becoming a dad for the first time, depression in the new baby period, confidence, work stress, impactful incidents at work, cumulative stress at work, feeling like a failure, handling a hard medical diagnosis, losing someone they care about, PTSD, leadership, anger, identity, grief, trauma and simply feeling stuck.

Sometimes people know exactly what they want to work on. Sometimes they just know something isn’t quite right.

There’s no fixed number, and I’d be cautious of anyone who gives you one before they’ve actually met you.

Some people come in for something specific, a decision they’re working through, a transition, a particular pattern they want to shift, and find that a handful of sessions is enough to get real clarity and traction. Others are working with something that’s been building for years, and that kind of work tends to take longer, not because you’re doing it wrong, but because it’s genuinely deeper terrain.

If you’re accessing sessions through a Mental Health Treatment Plan, that currently allows for a set number of Medicare-rebated sessions per calendar year, and we’ll keep an eye on that together so it doesn’t catch you by surprise. But the plan itself isn’t really about the number. It’s there so you’re not paying full cost the entire way through, not a cap on how long the work should take.

We’ll check in on this as we go, not just at the end. If things are moving well and you feel like you’re getting what you need, that’s worth naming. If it feels like progress has stalled, that’s worth naming too, because it might mean adjusting the approach rather than just continuing on the same path. I’d rather have that conversation openly than have you wondering privately whether it’s still worth continuing, and this is part of why I do feedback-informed treatment.

Every psychologist brings their own life experiences, culture and worldview into the therapy room. I’m no exception.

I was born in South Africa, an immigrant, raised in Australia, and trained within a largely Western model of psychology. I’m also a white, cisgender, heterosexual woman. Those experiences inevitably shape the way I see the world, and I don’t think it’s helpful to pretend otherwise.

Clients should not carry the responsibility of educating their psychologist about race, culture, gender, sexuality, disability, faith, neurodiversity or other aspects of identity. That’s part of my professional responsibility.

For me, that means committing to ongoing learning, cultural humility, professional development, consultation and supervision. It means regularly reflecting on my own assumptions and biases, and continually developing my understanding of experiences different from my own.

That doesn’t mean I’ll know everything, and I won’t pretend to. If I don’t understand something, I’ll ask rather than assume. If I misunderstand something, I hope you’ll tell me. And if I genuinely believe your needs sit outside my areas of competence or scope of practice, I’ll be honest about that and help you find someone who is better placed to support you.

Ultimately, my goal isn’t to become an expert on every identity or culture. It’s to understand your experience of the world, and to provide thoughtful, respectful and evidence-based care within the limits of my competence.

I can’t promise it will, and I’d be wary of anyone who does (I’d be more than wary if any psychologist ‘guarantees’ anything – we can’t). What I can tell you is what the evidence actually says, and what tends to make the difference.

I’d also say everyone has a different definition of “works”. Part of answering this honestly is understanding that “works” means something different for everyone. For some people, it means a specific symptom easing, sleeping better, panic attacks becoming less frequent, but for others, it’s probably less measurable than that: maybe it’s a relationship that’s less strained, or a quieter internal voice; or maybe the ability to sit with a hard decision without it consuming every waking hour. We will talk about “working” would actually look like for you.

Psychological therapy has a solid evidence base. It helps many people, a lot of the time, particularly when there’s a good fit between the person, the approach, and the therapist. That’s not a guarantee though.

What tends to matter most isn’t the specific technique or model. It’s the relationship itself, whether you feel understood, whether you trust the process enough to be honest, whether you’re actually taking part rather than just attending. That’s not something either of us can know for certain in advance. It’s something we find out together, usually within the first few sessions.

Your part matters too. Therapy isn’t something that happens to you while you sit there. It works best when you’re willing to look

It really depends on what you’re working through, so there’s no single answer that fits everyone.

Some courses of treatment are short and targeted, working through a specific issue over a handful of sessions, then finishing up. Others are longer, particularly where there’s more underneath the surface, patterns that have built up over years, or something that needs steady, ongoing work rather than a quick fix. Neither is more “real” than the other; the length fits the work, not the other way around.

What stays consistent, regardless of length, is that we don’t just set off and hope it makes sense later. Along the way, we’ll regularly check in on how things are actually going, whether the number of sessions still feels right, whether the goals we started with still hold or need adjusting, whether the pace feels right for you. That’s not a formality tacked on at the end, but is a running conversation, so neither of us loses sight of the bigger picture while we’re in the detail of any one session.

That means you should always have a reasonable sense of where things stand. Not a rigid session-by-session plan carved out in week one, life and therapy don’t really work that way, but a shared grip on the shape of the work, roughly where we are in it, and what we’re working toward.

This depends a lot on what brought you in and how the work has gone, so it really varies from person to person.

For something contained, a specific issue, a decision, a discrete pattern you wanted to work through, you might get to a point where it genuinely feels done. You’ve worked through it, things have shifted, and there’s a natural sense of completion. That’s a good outcome, and it’s fine to finish up there.

But I want to be upfront about something. Some people come in with the idea that the goal is to “graduate” from therapy entirely, work hard enough that you never need to come back, ever, for anything. That’s not really how I think about it, and it’s not a philosophy I hold. Life doesn’t stay finished. As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote, “living is being born slowly”.

You might hit a new stage, a different challenge, something you thought was resolved cracking back open in a different context, or a situation that simply makes sense to think through with someone who already knows your history rather than starting from scratch with someone new.

That’s not a sign therapy didn’t work the first time. It’s just how people’s lives actually go. I’d rather you feel able to come back if something comes up down the track than feel like returning means you’ve “failed” at “staying fixed”. That said, I’m also not interested in you continuing on without a clear reason, sessions for the sake of sessions aren’t useful to either of us. The aim is always that the work has a purpose, not that it runs indefinitely, and not that finishing means the door’s closed for good.

As things start winding down, it’s worth talking honestly about what comes after, rather than just stopping and hoping it holds.

Some of what we’ve worked on will keep unfolding after the sessions end. That’s normal. Insight doesn’t always show up neatly inside the therapy room. Sometimes the real shift happens weeks later, in an ordinary moment, when something you’d been circling finally clicks or a pattern you used to fall into just doesn’t happen this time. You might not notice it as dramatically as you’d expect. It tends to show up as things quietly working differently, not as a single before-and-after moment.

We’ll usually talk before finishing about what to keep an eye on. What’s likely to come up again, what’s actually resolved, and what might need a lighter touch of attention from you going forward, without needing a session to hold it.

And as I’ve said elsewhere, finishing up isn’t the same as graduating for good. Life keeps happening. You might hit a stage that brings up something new, or find yourself wanting to revisit something with someone who already knows your history rather than starting again from scratch. That’s not a step backward.. it’s just how people’s lives tend to go, and the door stays open if that’s ever useful.

Mostly, the next part of the journey is yours to live, not mine to script. My hope is that you leave with a bit more clarity, some more skills, a bit more capacity, and a working relationship with yourself that doesn’t always need me in the room, because you have you.