Psyche-Soma Psychotherapy
Rekindling the connection between mind, body, and soul
Melbourne based psychotherapist - culturally responsive - trauma informed - holistic psychology
How can we support you?
As we journey through life, there may come times we require support through a particularly difficult event or we may wish to explore and understand more deeply about our ongoing thoughts, feelings, behaviours, relationships, and experiences.
Susie is a Naarm/Melbourne based psychotherapist offering counselling and psychotherapy for people of diverse backgrounds, lifestyles, cultures, and identities. Her approach is collaborative and curious, ensuring that the client is in the driver’s seat of their therapy journey. Susie has an anti-oppressive practice that puts high value on equity and inclusivity. She feels particularly passionate about helping those with marginalised identities and welcome those who identify as LGBTQIA+, POC, folks of different abilities, Susie is sex-positive and sex-worker friendly. She embraces each individual’s uniqueness and strives to support her clients towards their own definition of wellbeing.
Recognising that the ‘one size fits all’ approach does not work in therapy, Susie integrates dynamic, evidence-based therapy methods to suit the diverse needs of each client. In doing so, she is able to develop thoughtful, individualised treatment plans that are tailored specifically to each client’s unique needs. In addition to traditional talk psychotherapy, when appropriate she also incorporates body-centred enquiries which can help strengthen the connection between thoughts and feelings, increasing awareness of emotions and assisting in emotional regulation.
Susie works with:
Anxiety
Bi-cultural/cross-cultural issues
Challenging family dynamics
Depression
Grief & loss
LGBTQIA+ matters
Life transitions
Marginalised identities
Mind/body connection
Relationships
Self-esteem
Shame
Trauma, PTSD, and C-PTSD
Women’s issues
"To heal, we must come back into our bodies. And to come back into our bodies, we must feel.”
- Resmaa Menakem
Psyche-Soma (Mind-Body)
In the dominant health care system, the mind and body are often treated as separate entities - the body as the physical thing that can be physically treated. The mind, often reduced to an imbalance of chemicals located in the brain. Challenging this narrative, psyche-soma is a notion coined by paediatrician and psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott who viewed the mind-body as a single system, where the psyche (mind) resides in the soma (body). This aligns with traditional indigenous and Eastern views of health where the mind and body are treated together as a whole system. Modern research in attachment, neuroscience and trauma studies provide scientific evidence for this belief. As a firm believer of this holistic approach, I offer culturally responsive, gender affirming therapy that does not exclude those who do not ascribe to the values of the mainstream biomedical views of health.
The acknowledgement of this mind-body connection is also important for the treatment of trauma related concerns including PTSD and C-PTSD, where the body automatically responds to perceived physical, psychological, or emotional threat by disconnecting with the body. This disconnection can show up in a number of ways including numbness, dissociation, chronic tension, or a general sense of feeling “shut down.” If you would like to discuss how I may be able to support you with your mental health concerns, please contact me to discuss how we may be able to work together.
