I am committed to the treatment of trauma, in all its forms. Ranging from one-off adulthood traumas, or multiple life threatening events to more chronic repetitive stress and relational wounding. This could include family violence, childhood sexual abuse, bullying, growing up with parental mental illness/substance abuse and childhood neglect and rejection. 

Our "better safe than sorry" nervous system is wired to learn from these survival-related experiences, especially during childhood when we are most vulnerable and our brains are growing the fastest. Memories of threatening experiences and the vital learnings of how to survive them, get locked away. These lessons program us so that even decades later, often below our conscious awareness, anything that vaguely resembles a past threat sets off our internal alarm and automatically triggers old survival strategies.

This explains how, despite our best intentions and no matter how much insight, we can find ourselves "triggered” and “over-reacting”, flooded by strong emotions and body sensations, and defaulting to habitual behaviours and thought patterns in the present. 

Understanding these stuck patterns shifts the question from “What is wrong with me?” to “What happened to me - and what did I have to do back then to stay safe and avoid suffering?”

Therapies that use memory reconsolidation allow these memories and emotional learnings to be safely reactivated (a necessary step to make a memory ‘labile’) so they can be updated to reflect your reality today. By triggering the brain’s innate update mechanism, the old worldview is transformed, allowing you to finally become unstuck from the past. Once updated, those survival patterns lose their grip, allowing us to respond to the "here and now" with more flexibility and a firmly adult perspective.

Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) is extensively researched and proven effective for resolving traumatic life events and the impact these experiences have on our sense of self and the world.  As a treatment option it is endorsed by prominent organisations such as the American Psychiatric Association, The Department of Veteran’s Affairs and the World Health Organisation.

EMDR is not simply the use of eye movements. Rather, it is a broad integrative psychotherapy approach, empirically grounded in memory reconsolidation neuroscience.

With EMDR, the target of change is the memory material (schemas) underlying and driving symptoms. Through bilateral stimulation, and the activation of the brain’s natural healing mechanisms, EMDR provides an effective approach to reduce negative emotions, and 'rewire' perceptions and core beliefs.

Because EMDR addresses the source of your distress (rather than just managing the symptoms of your distress) these changes are profound and lasting.

EMDR has been successfully used to treat:

• PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and dissociation
• Anxiety, stress and panic attacks
• Phobias
• Complicated grief
• Addictions
• Depression
• Chronic pain

Useful websites/resources:

EMDRAA website: https://emdraa.org/emdr-resources/
EMDR UK and Ireland: www.emdrassociation.org.uk
Bessel van Der Kolk describing how EMDR helps in working with
trauma: https://bit.ly/2ex0zBH

Accredited Mental Health Social Workers (AMHSWs) are regulated private practitioners who hold Medicare Provider Numbers and are eligible for rebates from Medicare for clinical mental health services. AMHSWs are accredited members of the AASW and represent one of the highest standards in professional recognition. They are subject to the same accreditation requirements as both their registered and self-regulated allied health counterparts, such as psychologists and physiotherapists, in adhering to professional and ethical standards, maintaining Continuing Professional Development and engaging in professional supervision. In order to achieve AMHSW accreditation, social workers must be able to demonstrate appropriate use of evidence-based mental health treatment interventions and the use of psychosocial assessment and formulation.