Frequently Asked Questions
Your counselling questions answered
Sometimes reaching out feels awkward or a bit too big. These answers should cover the basics, but if I’ve missed something, please reach out. Email or text is completely fine if talking feels like too much.
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Understanding Trauma and How Therapy Works
Why do I feel like there are different parts of me?
Most people who feel this way think something is wrong with them. It isn’t. If you’ve ever noticed a part of you that panics before you’ve even worked out what’s wrong, or a part that goes quiet and just gets through the day, or a part that still reacts like a much younger version of you, that’s not a sign you’re broken. It’s a sign you learned to survive by splitting the load.
This is especially common if you grew up having to manage things a kid shouldn’t have had to manage. One part of you might have learned to keep everyone else calm. Another might have learned to disappear. Another might still be carrying something from years ago that never got the chance to settle. They all developed for a reason, and most of them were doing exactly what they needed to do at the time.
The shift isn’t about getting rid of these parts or forcing them to agree. It’s about understanding what each one is trying to do for you, so they stop working against each other. [Learn more about parts work therapy here]
What is complex trauma?
Complex trauma isn’t one bad thing that happened once. It’s what happens when hard things kept happening, usually over years, usually starting young, often at the hands of someone who was supposed to keep you safe. It’s the difference between surviving a single frightening event and growing up inside an environment where you never quite knew what was coming next.
Because it built up slowly, complex trauma doesn’t always look the way people expect trauma to look. It’s not always a clear flashback or a single moment you can point to. More often it shows up as a pattern, always being on alert, struggling to trust your own judgement, feeling too much or feeling numb, relationships that keep going wrong in the same way, or a sense that something is fundamentally off with you even when you can’t say why. Those patterns aren’t a personality flaw. They’re what your nervous system built to get you through.
This is different from single incident trauma, and it needs a different kind of care. Standard trauma treatment built for one event often isn’t enough on its own, and can even backfire if it moves too fast. Complex trauma work goes slower, builds safety first, and treats the whole pattern, not just one memory. [Learn more about childhood trauma counselling here]
How do I know if I need trauma therapy?
There’s no test that tells you for certain, but there are patterns worth paying attention to. If things that happened years ago still feel close, if certain situations trigger a reaction that seems bigger than what’s actually in front of you, if you’re exhausted from managing your own responses, or if you’ve been told you’re “too sensitive” or “overreacting” when it never felt that way from the inside, that’s often trauma still active in your system rather than something you’re making up or exaggerating.
You don’t need a dramatic story to justify getting support. A lot of people carry complex trauma from things that were never named as abuse or crisis at the time, just a childhood where you had to grow up faster than you should have, or a home where you never quite felt safe. If you’re constantly asking yourself whether what happened to you was “bad enough,” that question is often itself a sign something needs looking at.
If any of this sounds familiar and you’re not sure where to start, that uncertainty is normal, and it’s exactly what a first conversation is for.
Why does trauma stay in the body even after I understand it?
You can know exactly what happened to you, understand it fully, even explain it clearly to someone else, and still feel your chest tighten before you’ve consciously registered what set it off. That’s not a failure of understanding. Trauma isn’t only stored as a story in your mind. A lot of it gets stored in your body, in your nervous system, in the way your muscles brace or your breath shortens before you’ve had a single thought about why.
This is why insight alone doesn’t always change how you feel. You can talk through an event a hundred times and still flinch at the same trigger, because talking works with the thinking brain, and a lot of trauma lives somewhere underneath that. Your body learned to react fast, before thought, because at the time that speed is what kept you safe. It hasn’t caught up to the fact that the danger has passed.
This is where the body needs to be part of the work, not just the mind. Until the nervous system itself gets a chance to complete what it never finished, the same reactions tend to keep firing, no matter how well you understand them. [Learn more about somatic therapy here]
Is it normal to feel worse before you feel better in trauma therapy?
Yes, and if no one’s told you that, it can feel like proof that something’s gone wrong. It hasn’t. When you start actually looking at what happened instead of managing around it, things you’ve been holding at arm’s length for years can surface, and that often feels worse before it feels better. This doesn’t mean therapy is failing. It usually means it’s working.
This is different from being retraumatised, which is not something that should happen and is not a normal or necessary part of the process. There’s a real difference between the discomfort of processing something you’ve avoided for a long time, and being overwhelmed or flooded by it. Good trauma therapy is paced carefully so you’re not left in that second state, and any therapist you’re working with should be checking in with you about which one you’re experiencing, not assuming discomfort automatically means progress.
If you’re in the middle of a hard patch right now, that doesn’t mean you’ve made the wrong decision. It usually means something real is finally being touched, not buried.
How long does trauma therapy take?
There’s no honest single number, and be wary of anyone who gives you one upfront. It depends on what you’re working with, whether it’s one difficult period or years of complex trauma, how much support you already have around you, and how your particular nervous system responds to this kind of work. Some people notice real shifts within a handful of sessions. Others are in this for a year or more, especially with complex or childhood trauma, where the work isn’t just processing memories but rebuilding a sense of safety that was never fully there to begin with.
What we can tell you is that trauma therapy isn’t meant to go on indefinitely with no sense of movement. We check in regularly on what’s actually shifting, not just how many sessions have gone by, so you’re not left wondering months in whether anything is changing. If it feels like nothing is moving, that’s worth a direct conversation with your therapist, not something to quietly sit with.
If you want a general sense of pacing before you start, that’s a completely fair thing to ask in a first conversation.
Why do I zone out or black out during sex?
This is one of the hardest things to bring up, because it can feel like something is wrong with you specifically, or like you’re the only one it happens to. You’re not. Zoning out or blacking out during sex is dissociation, and it’s one of the most common ways a body protects itself after sexual trauma, even years or decades later, even in a relationship that feels safe now.
What’s happening is your nervous system doing something it learned to do a long time ago. If your body once needed to disappear to get through something, it can still reach for that same exit now, without asking permission, without you deciding to check out. You might lose time, feel like you’re watching from somewhere outside yourself, or come back and not be sure how long you were gone. None of that means you’re broken, or that you don’t want intimacy, it means your body is still running old protection in a moment that doesn’t need it anymore.
This tends to improve with the right kind of work, the kind that goes slowly enough for your body to learn the difference between then and now, rather than pushing you to just push through it. [Learn more about somatic therapy here]
EMDR
Does EMDR work for complex trauma (CPTSD), not just single incident PTSD?
EMDR (eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing) was first developed for single incident trauma, things like a car accident or an assault, one bad event that the brain never quite filed away properly. That’s still what most people have heard it’s for. Yes, EMDR works for complex trauma and CPTSD too, but it has to be adapted for it, and that difference matters more than people realise.
Trauma from childhood doesn’t work like a single bad event. It isn’t one memory sitting there waiting to be processed. It’s hundreds of moments, stacked over years, woven into how you learned to survive in the first place. Running EMDR the standard way on that kind of childhood trauma, without adapting it, is often exactly why someone tells me it “didn’t work” for them before.
Complex trauma work means slowing right down. It means making sure you feel safe and steady before we go anywhere near a memory. It usually means working with the different parts of you too, because the part of you that’s ready to look back isn’t always the part running the show day to day. Done this way, EMDR is one of the most effective therapies available for complex trauma and CPTSD. Not in spite of how complicated that trauma is, but because the whole approach is built to hold it. [Learn more about EMDR therapy here]
What is the difference between EMDR and talk therapy?
Talk therapy works mostly through understanding. You talk about what happened, you make sense of it, you build insight into why you react the way you do. That’s valuable, and for a lot of things it’s exactly what’s needed. But understanding something and being free of it aren’t always the same thing. You can know exactly why you flinch, why you shut down, why a certain tone of voice sends you somewhere else, and still flinch every single time.
EMDR works differently. Instead of talking through a memory, it helps your brain finish processing it, using bilateral stimulation, usually eye movements, while you bring the memory to mind in a structured way. The memory doesn’t get erased or rewritten. It gets filed properly, the way an ordinary memory would have been filed at the time, if what happened to you hadn’t overwhelmed your system in the first place. That’s why people often notice the memory stops carrying the same charge, even though the facts of it haven’t changed.
In practice, most people don’t need to choose one over the other. Talk therapy builds the understanding and the language for what happened. EMDR works with the parts of it that talking alone can’t reach, because they’re not stored as a story, they’re stored in the body and the nervous system. [Learn more about EMDR therapy here]
Parts Work
What is parts work therapy?
Parts work is a way of understanding yourself that doesn’t treat you as one single fixed personality, but as a system of parts that each carry something different. Some parts protect you. Some parts hold old pain. Some parts step in to keep you functioning, even when they’re exhausted from doing it. None of them are the “real” you and the rest fake. They’re all you, formed at different points, for different reasons.
In session, this looks like slowing down enough to actually notice which part is present and what it needs, rather than powering through or trying to argue it into silence. A part that panics in relationships usually isn’t being irrational, it’s usually protecting you from something that hurt badly before. A part that shuts down in conflict isn’t weak, it learned that going quiet was safer than speaking up. Once a part is understood instead of fought, it tends to loosen its grip, because it’s no longer working alone to keep you safe.
Parts work draws on a few different approaches, including Internal Family Systems (IFS), ego state therapy, and schema therapy. It often sits alongside EMDR, since the part of you ready to process a memory isn’t always the part in charge in that moment. [Learn more about parts work therapy here]
Is parts work therapy the same as IFS (Internal Family Systems)
Not exactly, and it’s worth knowing the difference before you book with someone. IFS is a specific, trademarked model developed by Richard Schwartz, with its own training pathway and certification process. Parts work is the broader term for any therapy approach that works with the idea that you’re made up of different parts rather than one fixed self.
We draw on IFS as one of the approaches within my parts work practice, alongside others like ego state therapy and schema therapy, but I’m not a certified IFS practitioner, and we won’t call ourselves one. What that means for you in session is the same core idea, that your parts make sense and deserve to be understood rather than silenced, just without the strict step by step model an IFS-certified therapist would follow to the letter.
If you’re specifically looking for certified IFS, it’s worth asking any therapist directly whether they hold that certification, since the term gets used loosely.
Somatic Therapy
What is somatic therapy?
Somatic therapy works with the body, not just the mind, to help release trauma that’s stored below conscious thought. Instead of only talking about what happened, it pays attention to what’s happening in your body right now, the tightness in your chest, the way your shoulders creep up, the urge to brace or disappear, and uses that as information rather than something to push past.
In session, this might look like noticing a physical sensation as it comes up and staying with it briefly, rather than rushing straight into the story behind it. It’s not about reliving what happened. It’s about giving your nervous system the chance to finally complete a response it never got to finish at the time, whether that’s the fight, flight, or freeze that never had anywhere to go. Over time, this helps your body learn that the danger has actually passed, not just your mind.
Somatic work often sits alongside EMDR and parts work, since the body, the memory, and the different parts of you are all carrying pieces of the same experience. [Learn more about somatic therapy here]
What happens in a somatic therapy session?
A somatic session doesn’t look like lying on a couch talking about your week, though talking is still part of it. We’ll usually start by checking in on what’s present for you right now, not just the story you’ve come in with, but what you’re noticing in your body as you talk about it. That might be tension somewhere, a change in your breathing, a sudden urge to look away or shift in your seat.
When something comes up, instead of moving straight past it, we slow down and stay with it for a moment. That’s often the part people find strangest at first, sitting with a sensation rather than explaining it or fixing it. You’re never asked to relive an event in detail or push through something before you’re ready. The pace is set by what your body can actually handle in that moment, not by how much ground we think we should cover.
Over a series of sessions, this builds your capacity to notice and tolerate what’s happening in your body without it overwhelming you, which is often what makes the difference between understanding your trauma and actually feeling different day to day.[Learn more about somatic therapy here]
Sexual Trauma and Intimacy
I’ve never told anyone, is it too late to start now?
No, and this comes up more than you’d think. Plenty of women start this work decades after it happened, not because they didn’t care enough to deal with it sooner, but because there was never a safe moment, or the right words, or someone who felt able to hear it. Time doesn’t close that door. What happened to you doesn’t have an expiry date on when it’s allowed to matter.
Starting later doesn’t mean starting behind. In some ways, you’re arriving with more self understanding than you would have had at twenty, even if it doesn’t feel that way. The work is the same whether it’s been five years or thirty five, helping what happened settle into the past instead of living in your body and your relationships right now.
You don’t have to have the words ready either. You don’t need a clear story or a tidy timeline before you reach out. That can come later, in the room, at your pace.
Can I talk about childhood sexual abuse in trauma therapy, or do I need to be ready to go into detail?
You can talk about it, but you don’t have to go into detail, not on day one, not ever if that’s not where the work needs to go. A lot of people avoid starting therapy because they imagine being asked to describe everything in full, right from the first session, and that fear alone is enough to keep the door shut for years.
That’s not how this works. We don’t need every detail to help you. What matters more is understanding how what happened is still showing up for you now, in your body, your relationships, the way you move through the world, not a full account of the abuse itself. Some people find they do want to talk through specifics eventually, and that’s fine too, but it’s never the starting point, and it’s never something you’re pushed toward before you’re ready.
You get to set the pace here. Naming that something happened is enough to begin. The rest unfolds in whatever order feels safe to you.
Does trauma therapy help with sexual intimacy, not just the abuse itself?
Yes, and for a lot of women this is actually the part that finally brings them in. Childhood sexual abuse doesn’t just live in the past, it can shape how safe your body feels in intimacy decades later, sometimes in ways that don’t even feel connected to what happened. Difficulty being present during sex, feeling disconnected from your own body, avoiding intimacy altogether, or not understanding why desire feels complicated even in a relationship that feels safe, these are common, not rare, and not something you have to just live with.
This is where sex therapy and trauma therapy meet, which isn’t something every trauma therapist works with directly. Healing from what happened and rebuilding a comfortable, wanted relationship with your own body and sexuality are related, but they’re not automatically the same process. One doesn’t always resolve the other on its own. Working with someone who holds both means you don’t have to explain the connection yourself, or find a second therapist once the first piece is dealt with.
You’re allowed to want this part of your life to feel good, not just survivable. That’s a legitimate reason to reach out, on its own.
What if I don’t remember much of what happened to me?
That’s more common than people expect, and it doesn’t mean nothing happened, or that what did happen doesn’t matter. Memory doesn’t always work the way we assume it should, especially with childhood trauma. Sometimes the brain protects you by not storing things clearly, especially if you were very young, or if it happened over and over until one instance blurred into the next. Gaps, fog, or a general sense that something was wrong without a full memory to point to, all of that is valid, not a problem to solve before you’re allowed to start.
We don’t need a complete, detailed memory to help you. A lot of the work is about how your body and nervous system are still responding right now, patterns you can feel even without a full story attached to them. If clearer memories surface over time, we work with that as it happens. If they don’t, that doesn’t stop the work from being real or effective.
Not remembering isn’t a barrier to healing. It’s just where you’re starting from.
Facing What’s Stopping You From Starting
Will I have to relive what happened in detail?
No, not in the way people usually picture it. A lot of the fear around starting trauma therapy comes from imagining you’ll be asked to describe everything in vivid detail, over and over, until it’s unbearable. That’s not how EMDR or trauma-focused work is designed to run.
With EMDR specifically, you don’t need to describe the memory out loud in detail for it to be processed. You bring it to mind, briefly, while we work with it using bilateral stimulation, but you’re not narrating a full story the way you would in some talk therapy approaches. The aim is to help your brain finish processing what got stuck, not to make you sit in the worst of it for long stretches.
You’re also never locked into going further than you’re ready for in any single session. If something feels like too much, we slow down or stop, that’s a normal part of the process, not a failure of it.
Will I lose control during EMDR?
This is one of the most common fears people have before their first EMDR session, and it makes sense, you’re being asked to trust a process you’ve never experienced before, with something that already feels overwhelming. The honest answer is no, you stay in control throughout. You’re never put into a trance, and you’re not zoned out or unaware of your surroundings. You’re awake, present, and able to stop at any point.
Part of preparing for EMDR is actually building tools beforehand, ways to feel steady and grounded, so if something feels like too much in a session, you have a way back to feeling settled before we go any further. We check in with you regularly during the process, we’re not just running a protocol on you and hoping you keep up. If you need to pause, we pause. If you need to stop, we stop.
Feeling nervous about this beforehand is completely normal, and it’s something we can talk through together before you ever start, not just something you’re expected to push through alone.
What if I can’t stop crying, or what if I feel nothing at all?
Both of these are normal, and neither one means you’re doing it wrong. Some people cry more than they expect to in trauma work, sometimes over things they didn’t realise were still that close to the surface. Others feel strangely flat or numb, especially early on, even when they expected to feel a lot. Your nervous system has its own way of responding, and there’s no correct amount of emotion you’re supposed to show for the work to be real.
If you cry, that’s not something we rush you through or hand you a tissue to wrap up quickly. It’s allowed to take the time it takes. If you feel numb instead, that’s not a sign nothing is happening either, numbing is often exactly how your body has learned to cope with too much, and that response has its own reasons for being there.
What matters isn’t how it looks from the outside. It’s what’s actually shifting for you over time, and we’re paying attention to that regardless of whether a session was full of tears or completely still.
This Stage of Life
Why is old trauma resurfacing now, in my 40s or 50s, when I thought I’d dealt with it?
This catches a lot of women off guard, and it’s more common than you’d think. You did the work, you moved on, life went on, and then somewhere in your 40s or 50s, things you thought were settled start surfacing again, sometimes harder than before. That doesn’t mean the earlier work didn’t count, or that you’re back at the start.
Perimenopause and menopause bring real hormonal shifts, and those shifts can lower the threshold your nervous system has been using to keep old trauma contained. Oestrogen in particular plays a role in emotional regulation, so as it drops and fluctuates, some of what your body had learned to manage or hold at a distance can come loose again. It’s not in your head, and it’s not a sign of failure. It’s a physiological reason old material is finding its way back up.
This stage of life can also bring its own losses and changes, shifts in identity, in your body, in relationships, that echo earlier experiences of not feeling in control or not feeling safe. If old trauma is resurfacing now, it’s often because this season of life is genuinely stirring it, not because you failed to deal with it properly the first time.
Neurodivergence
Does trauma therapy work differently if I’m neurodivergent (ADHD, autistic)?
Yes, it needs to, and if a therapist doesn’t adjust for it, standard approaches can miss the mark or feel like they’re not working when really they just weren’t built with you in mind. Trauma therapy that assumes a neurotypical nervous system can move too fast, rely too heavily on verbal processing, or expect a kind of steady focus that doesn’t match how an ADHD or autistic brain actually works session to session.
For ADHD, that might mean building in more structure and shorter, clearer segments of work rather than expecting sustained focus on one memory for a long stretch. For autistic clients, it often means paying closer attention to sensory experience, communication style, and pacing, since traditional talk-heavy approaches can miss what’s actually going on underneath. EMDR and somatic work can both be adapted well for neurodivergent nervous systems, but the adaptation has to be intentional, not assumed to work the same way it would for anyone else.
If you’re neurodivergent, it’s worth asking directly whether a therapist adjusts their approach for that, rather than assuming every trauma therapist automatically does.
Practice and Booking
Can I use a mental health plan from my doctor?
Medicare rebates or mental health plans are unavailable for counsellors or psychotherapists; this is a federal government decision.
I can accept your mental health plan, and my fees are likely lower or comparable with psychologists after your rebate with no waitlist; let’s chat with your doctor to see if I am the best fit for you.
Were you aware – when accessing a mental health plan, the data stays on your medical records and can be accessed when applying for life insurance or involving careers such as police or military. For this reason, many executives or individuals with jobs requiring perfect mental health do not access mental health plans.
Mental health plans require a diagnosis; I do not work under the medical model (psychologists do) and prefer to work with your symptoms and relieve them.
You can read more about mental health plans here.
What is the difference between a psychotherapist/counsellor and a psychologist?
Psychologists primarily work under the medical model – they diagnose mental health disorders. Psychotherapists and counsellors are similar in that they are talk-based therapists. Psychotherapists will use the unconscious to uncover behaviors and thought patterns and work with them; counsellors often work with what is presented in the session by a client.
Personally, my framework is psychotherapy; I will spend time exploring your unconscious patterns for behaviors and thoughts; this allows investigation into reasons why you can be feeling depressed, anxious, or having problems within your relationships.
Do you offer after-hours appointments?
This is dependent on the practitioner.
I have NDIS. Can you work with me?
We do work with NDIS clients, both self-managed and plan-managed, claiming sessions under Improved Daily Living with Capacity Building. We’re not a registered NDIS provider, and sessions are GST-exempt.
Because of recent changes to NDIS pricing, we’re currently only able to take on four to five NDIS clients in total across the practice, with Kellie and Cheryl. If we’re at capacity when you reach out, you’re welcome to go on our waitlist for when a spot opens up as one of our current NDIS clients completes their work with us, or to pay privately if you’d rather start sooner.
What are your fees?
We work under a couple of different fee structures depending on your needs. Full payment is required before your session; your appointment time is not completely confirmed until payment has been received.
I understand that it can be frustrating to learn that GST is required to be collected from counsellors and psychotherapists as per Australian Government regulations. Please know that this is not a decision that I have control over, but I assure you that I am here to offer any assistance that I can. If you have any concerns or questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me and please contact your local MP to raise your concerns.
60 minute individual session $205 inc GST
90 minute individual session $285 inc GST
90 minute EMDR processing session $285 inc GST
90 minute couples session $320 inc GST
What payment methods do you accept?
I accept direct deposit, cash, and credit card. There is a 3% surcharge on credit card fees.
Your first session needs to be credit card or direct deposit, paid 48 hours in advance of your session.
Subsequent sessions – you can choose to have your card automatically charged 20 minutes into your session, direct deposit 24 hours before your session or let us know you are paying cash on the day.
Do you accept private health funds?
Yes!
You can claim a rebate if you are a member of the following:
Police Health Fund
Medibank Private
Bupa
Emergency Services Health
Phoenix Health
St Lukes Health
GMHBA
CUA (telehealth only)
Westfund
HCF
AHM
HBF
AIA Health
Mildura Health
Teachers Union Health
Nurses and Midwives Health
Unihealth
(Please note not all practitioners can access all private health providers, they are clinician specific).
Does anything I say in sessions get reported, or is it confidential?
What you share with us stays confidential. We don’t report what you tell us to anyone, and we don’t share details of your sessions with family, employers, or anyone else without your permission. That confidentiality is part of what makes it possible to actually say the things you’ve never said out loud before.
There are a small number of legal exceptions to this, mainly if there’s a serious risk to your safety or someone else’s, which is standard across all registered counsellors and psychotherapists in Australia, not something specific to us. Outside of those situations, what happens in the room stays in the room.
If you’re carrying something you’ve never told anyone, that privacy is exactly what this space is built to hold. You don’t need to worry about who else finds out.
