Rediscover. Reconnect. Recreate my life.
Why I do this work
There’s a version of this page where I list my qualifications first and tell you how passionate I am about helping women heal.
That is not this page.
You’re here because something in you is tired. Tired of understanding the pattern and still repeating it. Tired of doing the work and not feeling different. Tired of wondering whether there’s something in you that simply can’t be fixed.
I want to talk to that part of you directly.
I relate to what it’s like to know better and still not do better
Before I was a Counsellor, I worked for the Department of Human Services in child support for nine years. It was steady, secure work. It was also slowly making me miserable, because it had stopped matching who I was and what I believed in. People who knew me told me I should be a Counsellor. I left and retrained.
I also grew up in a home with family domestic violence. And then I was in two relationships where it happened again. The second one I was in while I was already a practising Counsellor.
I’m not telling you that for sympathy. I’m telling you because it’s the most important professional fact about me.
I was second-guessing myself constantly. Asking, am I overreacting? I believed I had to stay and make it work. That if I could just figure out what I was doing wrong and fix it, the relationship could go back to how it was at the beginning.
We both went to Counselling together, and separately. I worked on my triggers and was willing to change. On reflection, I believe we were stuck in a destructive relationship loop that couldn’t be changed because we were connected by a trauma bond.
I finally understood that I could not heal the relationship, and I could not heal his past. And I could not heal myself while I did not feel emotionally and physically safe. Staying for my son was no longer an option either. I didn’t want him growing up believing this was what a healthy relationship looked like.
I felt like a fraud. I was helping women in the same situation at work, and I was living it myself. Knowing the theory did not protect me.
Friends told me over and over to leave. I didn’t. I couldn’t. Until I could.
In 2021 I walked out with my 9-year-old son and no real plan. The pain of staying had become worse than the fear of leaving. I was done being ignored. Done waiting for someone else to change.
I asked for help, and people gave it freely. Family for a few days. A friend for 5 days. House-sitting for 6 weeks. Then a rental. People said I was brave. I felt heartbroken, embarrassed and guilty. I thought about texting and about going back so many times. I was scared of being alone. I needed a clean break to protect myself and my son. I knew in my heart the relationship was over.
That first year was daunting. Wearing a mask on the outside and inside, filled with shame. Within two years we had separated everything, with the support of professional services, and lived different lives. I’ll never forget the day I moved into a house I bought on my own. Each year that passed was easier.
Of course it was one of the hardest decisions I have ever made. And it was also the right one.
What it looks like when something shifts underneath the understanding
In the years since, my career has grown. I am focused on my business again. I have hobbies and friends. I have a really close relationship with my teenage son, which still surprises me in the best way. He also has a relationship with his dad, and they see each other regularly. I took the time to really heal. There is no way I would have had any of that inside the relationship.
And I am dating again.
I say that because I think it matters for you to hear it. Not as a promise about where you will end up, but as evidence that something can genuinely change underneath the understanding.
I drove an hour to meet someone once. The date lasted 10 minutes. When I set a boundary, he was rude and dismissive. I was shocked. I composed myself, got in the car, and went grocery shopping. When I reflected on it later, the signs had been there: too intense, wanting to meet urgently. So now I have a video call before I meet anyone in person. To ensure they are not fake or AI.
The last man I dated met someone else at the same time we started seeing each other. He told me in person. I felt disappointed, not rejected. I wished him well and I meant it. We are still friends.
On the one hand, those outcomes are ordinary. And yet on the other hand, for many of the women I work with, and for me not so long ago, they would have felt impossible.
Here’s something I believe now, and I’d like to say it carefully. Many of us carry hurt from childhood. I do too. It is not a woman’s responsibility to help a man through his childhood pain, or to prove to him that women can be trusted. That is not a fair exchange, and it is not something you owe anyone.
I put what I lived and what I learned into the FREE 7-Day Manipulation Detox: one short email a day for 7 days, to help you spot the red flags before you fall for them, before the attachment forms. If you’d like to start there, it asks very little of you each day.
- Registered with the Australian Counselling Association (Level 2)
- Diploma of Counselling
- Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and Hypnosis Master Practitioner and Trainer
What thirty years as a client taught me
I’ve been seeing Counsellors and psychologists, on and off, for thirty years. I’ve sat in a lot of rooms. I’ve done a lot of talking.
Here’s what I would like you to consider. The approach I disliked most, across all of those years, was talk therapy. Sitting across from someone, telling the story again, being listened to carefully, and leaving more or less the same as I arrived.
Of course it felt useful in the moment. Feeling heard matters. And yet on the other hand, feeling heard and actually changing are two different experiences. I kept confusing one for the other.
So I do not do that.
When we work together, I take the time to understand what’s actually happening for you, not what it looks like from the outside, and not the label that has been attached to it. Then we work out together what you want instead, and how you’ll know when you’ve got it. That second part sounds simple. Most people have never been asked it properly.
I use Counselling, NLP, Time Line Therapy and Clinical Hypnotherapy, depending on what the work calls for. These approaches reach the places that talking about something doesn’t reach. That’s the point of them.
A note on how I work with women specifically
I spent years sitting with women in couples and individual sessions, listening to the same dynamics repeat. At some point I couldn’t keep doing that without being honest about what I had worked out for myself.
On the one hand, you may have spent years being told that better communication will fix this. And yet on the other hand, you probably already know how to communicate. That is not where healing lives.
The women I work with are not broken. They’re responding to something that made sense once. Of course it made sense. The question is whether it still does.
Credentials, briefly
- Diploma of Counselling, Australian Institute of Professional Counsellors (2017)
- NLP and Hypnosis Master Practitioner and Trainer, Tad James Company (2023)
- Trained Circle of Security® Facilitator (registered 2019)
I’ve been Counselling for nearly a decade, registered with the Australian Counselling Association (Level 2) since 2017. I’m trauma-informed and attachment-based in my training.
I like to be transparent. I’m not a psychologist, and I don’t offer Medicare rebates. Some private health funds may cover sessions. I suggest you check with them.
If you’re wondering whether you can say the hard parts out loud
Most people who book with me have never said certain parts of their story to anyone. That’s OK. You do not have to arrive ready. Just arrive.
You’re not doing this alone.
Start with the free 7-Day Detox
Ready to talk? Book a free conversation.
The easiest way to connect with me is through my Contact page, where you can send me a message. I respond within three working days.