Trauma therapy  ·  Gold Coast

Trauma that lives in patterns
and relationships,
not only in memories.

Something has been shaping how you move through the world for a long time. Not always as something you can name. More often as a pattern: the way you prepare, the way you pull back, the way certain situations feel larger than they appear to others.

Individual therapy for complex trauma, PTSD, and attachment wounds. In-person in Miami, Gold Coast. Telehealth across Australia.

Book a session Medicare rebates →
You understand that something is over, yet part of you still responds as though it is not.
You keep preparing for situations that are no longer happening.
You find yourself reacting before you have had time to think. Afterwards, you wonder what happened.
You know something logically. Your body has not caught up.
There are certain situations, certain people, certain tones of voice, that send you somewhere you thought you had left.
You have managed it well for a long time. That is not the same as it not being there.
What you have been carrying

What trauma most often looks like.

If you arrived here searching for therapy for flashbacks, hypervigilance, PTSD, or trauma-related dissociation: you are in the right place. What appears as flashbacks, hypervigilance, avoidance, dissociation, emotional flooding, or bodily threat responses is often also expressed through relationships, expectations of others, and the ways a person has learned to organise safety. The two are not separate presentations. They are the same territory, seen from different angles.

Trauma does not always look the way people expect. It is not usually a memory that returns without warning. More often it lives in the body's readiness: the way a situation becomes suddenly enormous, the way you pull back from closeness before you have had time to think, the way certain people or tones of voice send you somewhere you cannot explain afterwards.

People who come here often describe themselves as anxious, or reactive, or simply worn down by something they cannot quite locate. The pattern almost always shows up in relationships: in how closeness has become complicated, in how certain people or situations send you somewhere you cannot account for, in the way you manage.

Complex trauma Attachment wounds PTSD Childhood trauma Emotional dysregulation Dissociation Relational difficulty Hypervigilance Chronic shame
The shape trauma takes

The self organises its survival.

Vigilance is the body doing its job accurately. It learned what danger looked like, and it is still watching for it. The problem is not that it watches. The problem is that it cannot easily be told when to stop.

Avoidance is an intelligent solution to an earlier problem. The gradual rearranging of life to keep certain situations, feelings, or people at a manageable distance: this is not a character weakness. It is the self protecting what it learned to protect.

People-pleasing, compliance, the careful management of how one is seen: these are often what remains of having learned that being easy to be around was the most reliable form of safety available.

Reactivity arrives before there is time to think. It appears disproportionate to what is objectively happening. It is not disproportionate to what the body is responding to. The body responds to what it recognises, not to what is present.

Numbness, flatness, distance from oneself and from the people who are closest: this is also a solution. One that worked when it formed, and one that costs something now.

Shame tends to be the deepest layer and often the last to become visible: not just that something happened, but a sense that how one responded says something about who one is.

Two people can carry the same history and carry it entirely differently. This is not a sign that one is more affected than the other. It is a sign that the self organises its survival in the ways available to it.

Jackson Hill, Clinical Psychologist, Gold Coast
The work

When something intense
arrives in the room,
I stay with it.

Most approaches to trauma move toward resolution. The urgency toward resolution tends to create greater distance from what most needs attention. This approach moves toward understanding what the intensity is carrying: staying with it until it begins to show what is there but not yet reachable. What shifts in that process tends to hold.

The work draws on psychodynamic and relational therapy, including Transference-Focused Psychotherapy and Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy. Both work with what surfaces between two people as it happens, rather than approaching it from a distance. The theory matters less than the quality of the encounter.

What early sessions require is a particular kind of reliability: that nothing that arrives will prompt a retreat. That the intensity, the difficulty trusting, the distance that forms when closeness approaches, all of it has somewhere to land.

MPsych Clinical  ·  AHPRA Registered  ·  Provider No. 5666808K
Why understanding is not always enough

The body does not yield to conclusions.

Most people who arrive here already know their history. They can trace the shape of what happened with real precision. Some have been in significant therapy and carry genuine insight into how it formed.

Trauma that persists despite understanding persists in the body, not in the mind. The body does not update its assessment of threat when the intellectual understanding changes. It is still scanning for what was dangerous. Still responding to signals that resembled it then. The mind knows, or begins to know, what happened and why. The body has not received that information. And the body's response to danger does not yield to the mind's conclusions about it.

The conditions that shaped the self were relational. What changes them needs to be relational as well.

How the work goes

The sessions are not all the same.

Early sessions in trauma work move carefully. There is often a period of mapping what has been carried and how it has been organised: what the body does when certain things arise, where closeness becomes difficult, what patterns appear in the room as they appear elsewhere. This is not preliminary to the work. It is the work.

The patterns that have organised survival do not step aside because therapy has begun. They appear here too: in how much is shared, in what is held back, in the distance that forms when something difficult approaches. What becomes possible over time is a gradual shift in what is bearable to bring into the room. Not because the person has become stronger in some abstract sense, but because the conditions have become reliable enough that protection is less necessary.

Later sessions are often different in character from early ones. Less mapping, more depth. The conversation becomes more direct about what is happening between us: what surfaces in the room, where it comes from, what it carries. This is where relational work tends to move something that insight alone could not reach.

There is no fixed length for this work. Some people notice meaningful shifts within a few months. Others find that longer-term work is needed, particularly where trauma is complex, developmental, or closely connected to relational patterns. This is discussed openly from the first session.

You might also find this relevant
About

Jackson Hill: clinical orientation and approach

Jackson Hill is a clinical psychologist whose work is relational and psychodynamic. His approach attends to what is actually happening between two people, not only to what is reported about the history.

Read more → Individual therapy

How sessions work and what to expect

Sessions are fifty minutes, weekly to begin with, in person in Miami or by telehealth across Australia. A first session is a conversation: nothing beyond that is assumed.

Read more → Anxiety

Anxiety, relational difficulties, and emotional dysregulation

Anxiety is often a surface presentation of something that formed earlier: a pattern in how the nervous system learned to anticipate the world. The work here addresses what it is organised around, not only its symptoms.

Read more → Reflections

Longer-form writing on psychological themes

Published writing on the psychological and philosophical questions that arise in clinical work. A place to read before you are ready to book, or simply to think.

Read more →

Fees and format.

Session fee

$225 Per session
$80 With MHCP rebate

Medicare rebates apply with a valid Mental Health Care Plan from your GP. How to get a referral →

Format & location

50 minute individual sessions.
In-person: 10/2098 Gold Coast Highway, Miami QLD 4220.
Telehealth available across Australia.
Walk-and-talk sessions available.

Questions

Frequently asked about trauma therapy

The approach is relational and psychodynamic. The work goes below symptoms to the emotional and relational patterns underneath, including the early experiences that shaped how the self and nervous system developed. Transference-Focused Psychotherapy and ISTDP are also drawn on: both work with what arises in the therapeutic relationship as it happens.

CBT for trauma focuses on identifying and changing thoughts and behaviours that contribute to symptoms. Psychodynamic therapy works with the deeper emotional and relational roots: the experiences and patterns that shaped how the nervous system and self formed. Many people find CBT genuinely helpful for managing symptoms but find that psychodynamic work is needed to address what is underneath.

Yes. With a Mental Health Care Plan from your GP, you can access Medicare rebates for trauma therapy at Jackson Hill Psychology. Sessions are $225, and with a valid plan your out-of-pocket cost is $80 per session.

This depends on the nature and history of the trauma. Some people notice meaningful shifts within a few months. Others find that longer-term work is needed, particularly when trauma is complex, developmental, or closely connected to longstanding relational patterns. This is discussed openly from the first session.

Jackson Hill Psychology is at 10/2098 Gold Coast Highway, Miami QLD 4220. Telehealth is available for clients anywhere in Australia.

Yes. Telehealth sessions are available for clients anywhere in Australia. Medicare rebates apply to telehealth sessions with a valid Mental Health Care Plan.

Beginning is a single conversation.

The work does not ask you to know what you are carrying before you arrive. A first session is a conversation: what brought you here, what you have tried before, and what you are hoping might be different. Nothing beyond that is assumed.

Book a session