Somewhere along the way,
you got very good
at being okay.
Depth-focused psychotherapy
for people who think too much
and feel even more.
You don’t have to be in crisis to be here.
Gold Coast · Northern Rivers
Most people who come here have been carrying something for longer than they’ve said. Often, they’re only just beginning to understand how much.
On the outside, things are often going well. Objectively. But inside can feel empty, bare, unsurprising. A private experience that doesn’t match the surface.
Sometimes it’s a disconnection that’s hard to name. From themselves, from people they love, or from a life that looks right but doesn’t quite feel like theirs.
They want a space where they can share their innermost thoughts without being spoken over or managed.
They know things can be better. They want to feel more present in their own life, not just moving through it. They just haven’t found a way to get there yet.
Most people who’ve tried therapy before arrive with a script. They know the language. They’ve reflected, processed, been agreeable. But the script is part of the problem: it stops us from learning about you.
That same script is how they unconsciously show up with everyone else too. The same moves, different rooms. This is why relational psychotherapy matters: the pattern doesn’t just get talked about. It becomes visible inside the relationship itself, in real time, where it can actually shift.
We don’t just talk about your life. We experience what it’s like to be you, in real time, a shared live exploration where your words, your silences, and the subtle shifts in how you hold yourself are noticed and held.
This is a space where you don’t need to have it together.
You can just be, and we go from there.
I’m drawn to people who don’t quite fit into the box.
The ones who think too much, feel even more, and have usually already tried to understand themselves without getting to the thing underneath.
I didn’t arrive at this work through a neat career plan. I arrived through curiosity about what actually happens between two people when one of them finally stops managing how they’re being perceived.
I find myself moved, regularly, by what people carry and what they’re capable of when they finally put some of it down. I keep a small caseload. It means I carry your thread. Every week I take my work to individual supervision and group consultation with some of the leading psychodynamic practitioners in Australia. Not because it’s required. Because doing this well demands it.
“The question is never just what brought you here.
It’s what you haven’t yet been able to say about it.”
Two people in the room.
My orientation is relational and psychodynamic. What happens between two people in the room is itself the site of change. Not just what you talk about, but what gets discovered through the process of talking, and through what can’t quite be said.
A lot of what people bring into this room isn’t really about symptoms. It’s about a sense of distance from their own life. Moving through it rather than being in it. Performing a version of themselves that works for everyone else, while something more essential has gone quiet. The question I’m most interested in is what it would mean to feel genuinely alive in your own experience. Not managing it. Not watching from a step behind. Actually in it.
What tends to change isn’t only about symptoms, though that often follows. People describe a fuller sense of themselves. Greater ease with their own anger, desire, and grief. More capacity to be in relationships without disappearing. A feeling that the life they’re living is actually theirs.
This is depth work. It takes time, and it asks something of both people in the room.
The questions underneath are rarely different.
I have worked across the full breadth of human circumstance, from institutional settings to the highest levels of professional and public life, and found the questions underneath are rarely different. What changes is the circumstance. The need to be genuinely known does not.
Since 2017, my clinical experience has spanned public and private sectors: hospital settings, university counselling services, probation and parole, brain-injury units, and services supporting veterans. I have also worked with national and international elite athletes, public figures, professional musicians, and high-performing individuals, holding senior roles and leading multi-disciplinary teams in complex environments.
In addition to clinical practice, I have lectured, tutored, and conducted research at Griffith University and Bond University.
Based in Miami, Gold Coast, with telehealth available nationwide.
- MPsych Clinical (2018) Griffith University
- Grad. Cert. Autism Studies (2015) Griffith University
- BPsych with Honours (2014) Griffith University
AHPRA Registered Psychologist
Provider No. 5666808K
Queensland Clinical Lead Psychologist,
Hemisphere Group
Hemisphere Group provides specialist psychological risk assessment and wellbeing services to the live events and touring industry. I lead the clinical psychology function across Queensland, supporting artists, crews, and production professionals in high-demand touring environments.
hemisphere.au
Individual therapy with a psychologist who will actually stay with you in the difficult parts.
I take a holistic, evidence-based approach shaped around each person’s unique inner world, history, and the way they move through relationships. No two people require the same kind of attention, and I don’t treat them as if they do. What guides the work is genuine curiosity about you specifically; what you carry, what you’ve already tried, and what might become possible when you’re finally met with the right quality of presence.
Depth-focused, relational psychotherapy
In person and online
Work that moves at the pace of your nervous system, not a predetermined program. I draw from several modalities to shape therapy around each person’s unique needs and the demands of the relationship.
- Relational Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
- Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP)
- Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP)
- Inner Child Compassion Focused Therapy
Psychological assessment before surgery
Surgeon-referred · same-day written report
A thoughtful, non-judgmental conversation about your motivations and emotional readiness before cosmetic surgery. A written report is provided to your surgeon the same business day.
- Surgeon-referred single session
- Same-day written report to your surgeon
- Complimentary 6-month post-surgery follow-up support
- Medicare and private health rebates available
If you’re drawn to understanding yourself at a deeper level, not just managing symptoms but working with what’s underneath them, then yes, probably. This works best with people who are willing to stay with something difficult long enough for something to shift.
No. You can book directly without a referral. A Mental Health Care Plan from your GP does allow you to claim a Medicare rebate, reducing your out-of-pocket cost to $130 per session. If you don’t have one, you can book directly and the full fee applies. If you’d like to arrange a plan first, your GP can provide one in a standard consultation, which is worth doing if you’re planning to commit to regular sessions.
The first session is a conversation, not an assessment. We’ll cover your history, what’s brought you here, and how you move through the world. By the end, we’ll both have a clearer sense of whether this is the right fit. That question matters to me as much as it does to you.
CBT works primarily with thoughts and behaviours. It’s evidence-based and useful for many things. Relational psychodynamic work goes deeper: it’s interested in the emotional and relational architecture underneath those thoughts and behaviours, including what you can’t yet put into words. Where CBT often asks “what are you thinking?”, this work tends to ask “what are you feeling, and what has that feeling needed to stay hidden?” The relationship between therapist and client is the primary vehicle for change.
Yes. Psychodynamic and relational approaches have a substantial research base across decades of clinical study, with strong outcomes for depression, anxiety, trauma, and personality difficulties. Longer-term psychodynamic therapy has been shown to produce improvements that continue to develop after treatment ends. That finding is not consistently shown in shorter-term approaches. The relational and psychoanalytic tradition is among the most rigorously studied in psychology, and continues to be.
Long enough for the relationship to become something real: conflicted, disappointing, surprising, meaningful, and transformative; and for us to work with all of that. There’s no standard answer, and that’s part of the point. Some people work for six months and find what they came for. Others stay for years because depth work reveals itself over time. What matters is that the pace is yours, not a predetermined program.
It tends to arrive quietly. Being able to hold your ground in a conversation where you once went silent. Feeling at home in your own skin in a way that stops you mid-moment. Going somewhere new and actually being there. Catching an ordinary afternoon, light, unhurried, good, and realising you’re in it rather than watching it.
Voicing yourself in conflict. Tolerating your own grief without it becoming catastrophic. Greater presence in relationships. Going on a date and not disappearing into your head. These are small wins that are, in this kind of work, enormous ones.
People describe a fuller sense of themselves. Greater ease with their own anger, desire, and grief. More capacity to be in relationships without disappearing. A feeling that the life they’re living is actually theirs. What tends to change isn’t only about symptoms, though that often follows. The shift is quieter and more fundamental than that.
The clinic is located at Suite 11, 2098 Gold Coast Highway, Miami QLD 4220, on the Gold Coast. There is street parking available nearby. Sessions are also available via telehealth to clients anywhere in Australia, so location is never a barrier to beginning.
Yes, and it’s worth being honest about that. This is depth work: slow, relational, and often uncomfortable before it’s clarifying. If what you’re looking for is a structured skills program, practical coping tools, or a time-limited course of CBT or DBT, this probably isn’t the right fit. Those approaches have real value and may be exactly what someone needs at a given point.
This work tends to suit people for whom those approaches haven’t fully reached what’s underneath, or who know they need something more sustained, relational, and exploratory. If you’re not sure, a first session is a reasonable way to find out.
“People describe a fuller sense of themselves. Greater ease with their own anger, desire, and grief. More capacity to be in relationships without disappearing. A feeling that the life they’re living is actually theirs.”
What tends to change is not only about symptoms, though that often follows. The shift is quieter and more fundamental than that. A growing sense of being present in your own experience. Less distance between who you are and how you move through the world.
It tends to arrive in small moments. Being able to hold your ground in a conversation where you once went silent. Catching an ordinary afternoon, light, unhurried, good, and realising you’re in it rather than watching it. Voicing yourself in conflict without it costing you days. These are small wins that are, in this kind of work, enormous ones.
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when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door,
in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread.
Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Derek Walcott
You don’t have to know exactly why you’re here.
Most people don’t.
Booking a first session isn’t a commitment to therapy.
It’s a commitment to one conversation.