Therapy

Catherine offers therapy to adults only, and is unable to see people under 18 years of age. Her areas of competence are mental health difficulties associated with trauma and complex trauma.

Please be aware:

  • There is typically a wait time of several weeks to several months to schedule an initial assessment.
  • Catherine does not offer medico-legal services.
  • Catherine us unable to offer crisis or after hours care.
  • If you have significant health difficulties that impact on the safe provision of psychological treatment in a non-medical setting, your therapy may require active collaboration with medical and allied health, and this may need to be costed with your therapy, or may not be appropriate to provide in a non-medical setting.
  • If you are not local to Brisbane, it may not be appropriate to provide treatment remotely.

How does therapy work?

The first step of therapy is an initial assessment to get a sense of the future you want to have, and develop clear and specific goals with your therapist towards that future. The assessment also serves to determine whether the therapist who assesses you is the right fit for you and your therapy goals. Assessments are normally conducted over 2 sessions, and sometimes more sessions are required for the assessment.

With Catherine, when the assessment suggests that she is able to offer therapy that is suitable to your goals, a specific number of sessions will be organised in which to work on your therapy goals, and these will be scheduled with you. Catherine offers therapy in time-limited series of sessions that are goal-focused. Most therapy series are offered on a weekly basis, and in some cases, Intensive EMDR Therapy is a possibility (see below for details). In some instances, another series of sessions may be negotiated at the end of the first series.

When?

  • Catherine works clinically on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 9:30am and 2:30pm in Spring Hill, in central Brisbane (The Johnson, Ground Floor, 477 Boundary Street, Spring Hill, 4000)
  • Based on best practice recommendations for the treatment of trauma, all appointments are scheduled for 80 minutes.

What does it cost?

  • The Australian Association of Psychologists’ recommended rate for 2025-2026 is $330 per hour, $476 for 80 min
  • Catherine’s rate for 2026 is $445 for 80min, and where you are eligible, Medicare rebates are applied
  • Bulk billing is not normally available.
  • If you are seeking a discounted rate, please discuss this prior to your first appointment, as full fees will be charged for a scheduled session where discounted rates have not been negotiated.

Therapies Offered

I work with therapies that are supported by scientific research, and combine knowledge of how people learn, and how our physiology and social structures work, to help people get more out of life.

Specific therapies I practice include:

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing)

A therapy for trauma, phobias, grief, and addictions that helps people to resolve negative beliefs about oneself or the world into more positive beliefs by releasing blocked physical sensations and memories using eye movements that facilitate reprocessing difficult memories.

What is EMDR?

The Evidence Base for EMDR

EMDR for Phobias

Intensive EMDR Therapy

Mindfulness

Mindfulness teaches people to be present, to focus deliberately on the present moment, and change the common habit of spending most of life either re-living the past or worrying about the future. There is a broad range of mindfulness practices, including focus on the breath, the body, sensations, thoughts, interpersonal awareness, developing insight and compassion, all of which may be valuable at different times.

Mindfulness Overview

Compassion Focused Therapy

Compassion Focused Therapy focuses on developing compassion for oneself, and learning to change self-critical thinking.

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy develops your mindfulness strategies to enable a closer observation of what is happening in your body. With curiosity, and a paced exploration of a part of your embodied experience, this therapy helps you develop resources to address discomfort in your body, and resolve blocked feelings and movement patterns to enhance your sense of wellbeing in your body.

Parts Work Therapies

Parts Work Therapies focus on developing a map of the functioning of your mind. I approach these with a neurobiological orientation, meaning that I am curious about your survival responses, and how these have been shaped by the adversity in your life. Anyone who has ongoingly activated survival responses is predisposed to trauma, and will have parts of their nervous system focussed on managing the trauma responses. I work integratively on parts work, drawing from the Model of Structural Dissociation, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Internal Family Systems and Ego State Therapy.

Schema Therapy

An integrative form of therapy that combines CBT with other therapies to help people recognise unhelpful, lifelong patterns of thoughts and behaviour that originated in childhood or adolescence, and choose new more helpful ways of thinking and behaving to improve wellbeing, an enhanced form of CBT that helps people recognise unhelpful, lifelong patterns of thoughts and behaviour that originated in childhood or adolescence, and choose new more helpful ways of thinking and behaving to improve well-being.

Positive Psychology

An evidence-based approach to life that underlies all the therapies that I practice.

Motivational Interviewing

Motivational interviewing is a therapeutic orientation as much as it is a therapy in itself; it's a way of doing therapy, rather than a model of mental illness or a set of techniques.

Principles of Therapy

There are some specific therapy principles that you should be able to count on from your therapist.

Working to your Values

There are some specific therapy principles that you should be able to count on from your therapist.

The Therapeutic Relationship

There is evidence to show that the quality of the relationship that you forge with your therapist- how safe, attuned and trusting it is, is a primary ingredient in your recovery.

Ethical Therapy

Therapy is a vulnerable experience, so it’s important that you understand the ethical obligations of your therapists to ensure that your experience is positive and helpful.