Therapy that works with what happens inside you.
ISTDP is a structured, evidence-based approach for people whose difficulty returns despite everything they already understand about it. Anxiety that spikes before the mind has a reason. Patterns that survive full awareness. Emotional experience that is difficult to locate. In-person in Miami, Gold Coast. Telehealth available Australia-wide.
The feeling is there. Something is in the way.
ISTDP works from a clear observation: people do not stay cut off from their own emotional experience because they want to. The distance is the product of learned defences, responses that formed early, in conditions where the full weight of feeling was not possible to bear. Those defences were adaptive then. They are costly now.
The approach is structured and precise. I pay close attention to what is happening in your body as the session unfolds: where anxiety is being carried, what appears the moment a particular feeling gets close, what moves when a defence is named directly. ISTDP is unusual in this level of attentiveness to the physiological and relational texture of what is happening in real time, and to the specific mechanism by which emotional experience is being blocked.
This is different from approaches that work primarily at the level of thoughts and beliefs. The target here is not how you think about your experience. It is the experience itself, made accessible, in the room.
The triangle of conflict.
ISTDP is built around a precise clinical observation. When a feeling arises, the body produces anxiety. To manage the anxiety, the mind deploys a defence: a way of moving away from the feeling before it can fully form. Over time, this sequence becomes automatic and invisible. ISTDP works with each part of that sequence directly. The defences become visible rather than unconscious. The anxiety becomes specific and locatable rather than diffuse. And the feeling that has been blocked, the actual emotional experience underneath, becomes something that can actually be reached. The work is not about analysing this sequence from a distance. It is about interrupting it, in the room, so what has been out of reach can be accessed.
You can explain your experience precisely and still not be inside it.
ISTDP is particularly useful for people who have a high degree of self-understanding, and for whom that understanding has not produced the change they were looking for. People who know what their anxiety is about, and still cannot stop it arriving. Who have named their patterns and cannot move them. Who have been in therapy before and found it valuable without being able to locate what shifted and what did not.
The approach also suits presentations where the difficulty is showing up in the body: anxiety that is physical before it is named, depression with an affective flatness that other approaches have not been able to reach, or a persistent sense of disconnection from feeling that is hard to describe. ISTDP is attentive to the body as a site of emotional experience, not just the mind.
For people who want structured, focused work rather than open-ended exploration, ISTDP can produce significant change in months. It is not only a short-term approach: some presentations call for longer work, and the duration is shaped by what is actually needed. The first session is a genuine diagnostic conversation about what is happening, what has already been tried, and what the work that would actually help looks like.
Jackson Hill
MPsych Clinical · Griffith University 2018AHPRA Registered · Provider No. 5666808K
Member, Australian Psychological Society
I am a Clinical Psychologist based in Miami, Gold Coast. I use ISTDP within a broader integrative frame that includes relational psychodynamic and Transference-Focused Psychotherapy. The approach in any given piece of work is shaped by what the person actually needs, not by a predetermined framework applied uniformly.
My clinical background spans Veterans Affairs, the Gold Coast Academy of Sport, high-intensity trauma, brain injury rehabilitation, and acute inpatient settings. I keep a small caseload and work under ongoing clinical supervision: not because it is required at this stage of my career, but because the work demands it.
Questions people usually arrive with.
Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy is a structured, evidence-based approach that works with the specific mechanism by which emotional experience is blocked: the defences that form in response to anxiety, keeping the underlying feeling out of reach. It suits people who have insight into their patterns without being able to move them, who have found previous therapy intellectually useful but not transformative, or whose anxiety, depression, or relational difficulties have not responded to cognitive or skills-based approaches.
ISTDP has a strong research base for anxiety disorders, depression, somatic presentations, and character-level difficulties. It is also particularly useful where the person has already done significant psychological work and is looking for an approach that can reach what previous therapy could not. The first session helps clarify whether ISTDP is the right fit for what you are bringing.
CBT works primarily at the level of thoughts, beliefs, and behaviours. ISTDP works with emotional experience itself: the feelings that are being blocked, the anxiety they generate, and the defences through which they are avoided. The target is not how you interpret your experience, but the experience itself, made accessible in the session. Many people who have found CBT genuinely useful find that ISTDP reaches something CBT could not.
ISTDP is designed for shorter and medium-term work, and significant change is possible in months. Some people need longer, and the approach adjusts when the work calls for it. The first session is a genuine conversation about what you are carrying, what you have already tried, and what a meaningful course of work would look like. You should leave it with a clearer sense of what is being proposed and why.
Yes. With a Mental Health Care Plan from your GP, Medicare rebates of $145 apply. Sessions are $225 and your out-of-pocket cost with a valid plan is $80 per session. No referral is required to book; the MHCP is optional but recommended to reduce your cost.
No referral required to book.
A Mental Health Care Plan from your GP reduces your out-of-pocket cost significantly through Medicare rebates, but it is not required to begin.
Per 50-minute session
Out of pocket · $145 Medicare rebate
Sessions in-person in Miami, Gold Coast · Suite 11, 2098 Gold Coast Highway · Telehealth available Australia-wide · Walk-and-talk sessions available locally
Not an intake.
The first session is a genuine conversation: what is happening for you right now, what you are hoping for, and what it would mean for things to be different. Relevant history finds its way in when it needs to. By the end, we will both have a clearer sense of whether this work is the right fit, and what a meaningful course of treatment would look like.
Suite 11, 2098 Gold Coast Highway, Miami QLD 4220
jackson@jacksonhillpsychology.com.au · 0401 065 290
You do not have to arrive with clarity about what is wrong.
Most people do not. A first session is a commitment to one conversation: nothing more.
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