Friendship therapy  ·  Gold Coast

Some things can only move
if you say them
in the same room.

Relational work for two friends. For people who have been close for a long time and hit something they cannot talk their way past on their own. Whether something broke, or something drifted. In-person in Miami, Gold Coast. Telehealth Australia-wide.

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Quick answer

Friendship therapy at Jackson Hill Psychology is depth-focused relational work for two friends, not couples therapy. Both people in the room together with a psychologist who can hold what is happening between them. Sessions are $280, split equally: each person pays $140 separately. No Medicare rebate applies to joint sessions. In-person in Miami. Telehealth Australia-wide.

Something has changed between you

For some people, something happened. A moment, a conversation, a disclosure that landed wrong, a silence that stretched past comfortable and then past recoverable. They have had the same conversation three or four times. It keeps ending in the same place. Neither person meant to be here. But here they are.

For others, nothing broke exactly. Life got in the way the way it does: one person had children, one moved, one changed, the friendship changed shape around all of it without anyone deciding it should. The friendship is still there. But something between them no longer fits the way it used to. The grief of that does not have a clear name. It is not a breakup. It is not a falling out. It is harder to explain than either of those things, and it does not go away on its own.

Either way, the friendship still matters. And what you have been doing by yourselves, the conversations you have had and the things you have tried to say, has reached the limit of what it can do from inside.

What friendship therapy is

Friendship therapy is relational work for two people who are not romantic partners. Both friends in the room together, with a psychologist who can hold what is happening between them. The therapeutic frame is the same as any relational work: what is present between these two people, what has not been said, what the relationship costs and what it means. What is different is that both people are present, which means both people can say things and be heard saying them, rather than one person processing the friendship at a distance.

This is not couples therapy. Long-term friendships carry their own relational texture: a shared history that often predates adult identity, a level of assumed knowing that can make honesty harder rather than easier, a specific grief when the friendship changes that is difficult to name anywhere else. The work addresses that texture specifically. It does not assume the same entanglement, the same stakes, or the same presenting concerns that bring people to couples work.

Friendship therapy does not require a major falling out. It does not require a diagnosed problem. It requires two people who care about the friendship and want to understand what is happening between them more clearly than they can from inside it.

What a skilled third person can do

Individual therapy can help you understand your own part in a friendship difficulty. It can process the grief, map the patterns, make some things clearer. What it cannot do is move the friendship. The friendship lives between two people. Without both people in the room, the work stays on one side of it.

The thing keeping a friendship stuck is often not the content of the disagreement. It is the pattern underneath it. The way the same conversation finds the same wall. The thing that is said and the thing that is meant and the gap between them. That pattern is visible from outside. From inside the friendship it is much harder to see. A psychologist in the room can name what is happening between you in real time, so that both of you can hear it at the same time.

The aim is not to restore the friendship to how it was. That is often not possible, and it is not what the work is for. The aim is to be able to say honestly what has happened, and to decide together, with some clarity, where you want the friendship to go from here.

Jackson in the room

He is not a mediator. He does not arbitrate, take turns giving each person the floor, or move the conversation toward a predetermined outcome. What he does is pay close attention to what is actually happening between the two people in front of him: what is said and what is not, what lands and what does not, where the conversation finds its familiar wall.

When the same conversation finds the same wall for the third time, Jackson can see it. When one person says something that was intended to open a door and the other person receives it as a closing one, and the room shifts in a way neither person can quite name, he can name it, in the moment it is happening, before it becomes the next version of the same argument. That is different from what either of you can do from inside the friendship.

He holds a space where both people can be present with what is difficult. Not comfortable necessarily. Present. He does not belong to either side. He responds to what is in the room, and the room holds both of you equally.

What becomes possible

What the work makes available is not a repaired friendship. That is not something that can be promised, and anyone offering it is misleading you. What becomes available is something more honest: a room where both of you could say what has not been said, and hear what has not been heard.

Whether the friendship continues after that is a decision that belongs to both of you, made with better information than you had before. Some friendships change shape. Some end, but end clearly, without the accumulated residue of things left unsaid. Some continue in a form neither person could have reached without a room like this.

What you leave with is not a fixed friendship. It is a clearer account of what is actually true between you, and the real option to decide what to do with that.

Jackson Hill, Clinical Psychologist, Gold Coast
The psychologist

A room where both of you can speak.

MPsych Clinical  ·  AHPRA Registered  ·  Provider No. 5666808K

I am Jackson Hill, a Clinical Psychologist in Miami, Gold Coast. My orientation is relational and psychodynamic. I work with what happens between people, with the patterns that organise relationships from underneath, and with what it costs when those patterns are not visible to the people inside them.

Friendship therapy is available for pairs of people who have been close for a long time and have reached something they want outside help to navigate. My role is not to take a side. It is to hold a space where both of you can speak more honestly than the friendship currently allows, and to help you hear what the other person is actually saying.

The relational approach → Individual therapy →

Fees, format and what to expect

Session format

50 to 60 minute joint sessions with both friends present.
In-person at Suite 10, 2098 Gold Coast Highway, Miami QLD 4220.
Telehealth available Australia-wide.
Parking at the front, rear and on the street. All free.

Session fee

$280Per session
$140Per person

Split equally. Each person pays separately. No Medicare rebate applies to joint sessions.

Questions

Frequently asked

Friendship therapy is relational work for two friends who are not romantic partners. The therapeutic frame is the same as any relational work, but the focus is on the specific texture of a long-term friendship: the shared history, the assumed knowing, and the grief that comes when the friendship changes. It is not couples therapy. The relationship between two friends has its own shape, and the work addresses that specifically.

No. Some people come after a specific rupture or falling out. Others come because the friendship has quietly shifted over time and they want to understand what has changed. Neither is more or less valid than the other. The common thread is that the friendship matters enough to want to look at it honestly.

No. Many people have had the same conversation several times before they come. Others come earlier, when something has started to feel different but they cannot yet name what it is. Where you are in the difficulty is not a prerequisite. Both people need to be willing to be in the room and to hear something they may not expect. That is the relevant condition.

No. Friendship therapy is a joint session, and individual Medicare rebates apply only to individual psychology sessions. The session fee is $280, split equally: each person pays $140 separately. No referral or Mental Health Care Plan is required.

Jackson Hill Psychology is at Suite 10, 2098 Gold Coast Highway, Miami QLD 4220, between Burleigh Heads and Mermaid Beach. Telehealth is available anywhere in Australia.