Brisbane Mind & Body Clinic

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Brisbane Mind & Body Clinic

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We provide psychology and nutrition services to help tackle mental health concerns.

12/10/2026

FROM THE CLINIC SHELF |

A child will give up being real before they give up being loved.

Gabor Maté describes two needs that every child has. Attachment — the connection, love and acceptance of the people raising them. And authenticity — being able to feel what they feel, say it, and act like themselves.

Most of the time those two sit together comfortably. The difficulty comes when they collide: when being honest about anger, or need, or sadness seems to put the relationship at risk. Faced with that, a child will almost always set aside the authenticity. It is not weakness, and it is not a mistake. For a child, connection is survival, and survival wins.

The problem is that the adaptation does not switch itself off. It carries into adult life as people-pleasing, as difficulty naming what you actually want, as a self that is easy to be around and strangely hard to locate.

Maté's argument is that the work of adulthood is reclaiming that authenticity — which does mean facing the fear of rejection that made you trade it away in the first place. What tends to follow is not less connection, but a less conditional kind.

Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal — on the shelf at the clinic.

Bowen Hills and telehealth. Link in bio.

05/10/2026

Independence and hyper-independence look the same from outside.

Both look capable. Both look self-sufficient. Neither one is visibly struggling. That overlap is why this pattern can run for years without anyone — including the person living it — naming it.

The difference sits underneath. Independence is a choice: you can handle it alone, and when help would make it easier, you ask. Hyper-independence isn't a choice. Asking feels risky, or help arrives feeling like a debt you'll owe later — so the option quietly stops existing.

It usually starts as a sensible adaptation. If depending on someone was once unreliable, or unsafe, or simply unavailable, then doing it all yourself was the strategy that worked. The difficulty is that it never switched off when the circumstances did.

Worth saying clearly: hyper-independence is a pattern, not a diagnosis. It's a useful way to describe something, not a condition you have.

If any of this is familiar, it's workable. That's much of what therapy is for.

Psychology and nutrition in Bowen Hills and via telehealth. Link in bio.

28/09/2026

EMDR, demystified.

It is one of the best-evidenced treatments we have for trauma, and one of the most misunderstood — and those two facts are connected.

The Australian Psychological Society only rated EMDR Level I evidence for post-traumatic stress in adults in 2018. Before that, the myth that it was hypnosis, or that there was no research behind it, kept people away from a treatment the evidence supports.

So here is what actually happens.

You are awake and in control throughout. Nothing is put into your mind and nothing is taken out. It does not start with the memory, either — the first sessions are groundwork: what has been going on, what support you have, and the ways you already steady yourself.

And it is not someone waving a finger at you. Through those 30-to-45-second sets your psychologist is reading your breathing and your face, and steadying you as it goes. If you get overwhelmed or stuck in a loop, they step in and change something.

The conclusions people arrive at — it was not my fault, I am safe now — are their own. That is why the APS describes EMDR as empowering: the work happens inside your own head.

It is best known for post-traumatic stress, but because it works on the meaning and the feeling attached to a memory, it is also used for anxiety and phobias, and for the guilt and shame that often sit underneath depression.

EMDR at Brisbane Mind + Body Clinic is offered by three of our psychologists — Christophe Cosson, Jeffrey Wong and Shaista Saheed.

Curious, but not sure it is for you? That is exactly what a first conversation is for. Link in bio to book, or call (07) 3520 2209.

Source: "Demystifying EMDR", InPsych, Australian Psychological Society, June 2019.

21/09/2026

MEET THE TEAM |

Meet Jeffrey Wong, a Clinical Psychologist who works across EMDR and trauma, parenting support, and adult ADHD assessment.

Jeffrey is an accredited Triple P (Positive Parenting Program) provider, so parenting work is core practice rather than a sideline. He sees adolescents and adults across anxiety disorders and depression, trauma- and stress-related conditions, and family conflict, drawing primarily on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy with a strengths-based approach, alongside EMDR, Compassion-Focused Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.

He also conducts adult ADHD assessments.

Jeffrey has worked in university, community and hospital mental health settings, and has a particular interest in supporting people from minority and marginalised groups, including immigrant and LGBTI communities.

Bowen Hills and telehealth. To book with Jeffrey, call the clinic on (07) 3520 2209.

14/09/2026

If you have ever had a wave of shakiness, a racing heart and a sense of dread arrive out of nowhere a few hours after eating, that is worth knowing about.

A blood sugar crash and a panic response share a lot of their physical symptoms, because both involve adrenaline. When blood glucose drops steeply, the body releases adrenaline to correct it - and adrenaline feels like anxiety, because in another context that is exactly what it is.

This does not mean anxiety is caused by what you eat. It is not that simple, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.

What it does mean is that if your blood sugar swings steeply through the day, your nervous system is doing extra work it did not need to do - on top of whatever else is going on.

Refined carbohydrates on their own give the steepest rise and the steepest fall. The same food with protein and fibre alongside it flattens the curve considerably.

It is one of the reasons psychology and nutrition sit under one roof here.

Bowen Hills and telehealth. Book an appointment: https://buff.ly/o2XOwSv

Questions? Call the clinic on (07) 3520 2209.

07/09/2026

Asking is the easy part.

Most of us know to ask on R U OK? Day. Far fewer of us know what to do in the three seconds after someone says "no, not really" — and that pause is where a lot of these conversations quietly end.

Usually it's because we think being asked the question makes us responsible for solving the answer. It doesn't. The most useful thing you can offer isn't a solution — it's being heard by someone who didn't change the subject, didn't rush, and didn't look uncomfortable.

Four things that help more than advice are in this month's newsletter, out this week. Subscribe here: https://buff.ly/HGe6s2i

If things feel urgent, Lifeline is 13 11 14, any hour of any day.

31/08/2026

Recovery from trauma is usually described as a series of stages. It gets mentioned less often that people move between them in both directions.

Judith Herman's model describes three.

Safety and stabilisation — settling the nervous system first, because very little else works while the body is still braced.

Processing — working with the memory itself, once there is enough steadiness to do it.

Reconnection — rebuilding a life, rather than only managing a symptom.

What the diagram is really for is the part people find hardest to believe: going back to an earlier stage is not a failure. Needing more stabilisation after months of processing is ordinary. It is the shape of the work, not a sign the work isn't happening.

Trauma-informed psychology at Bowen Hills and by telehealth.

Book an appointment: https://buff.ly/Qg43Eqs Questions? Call the clinic on (07) 3520 2209.

24/08/2026

Food doesn't have to be complicated — or something you feel guilty about.

Esther, our clinical naturopath - nutritionist, takes an honest, judgement-free look at how everything fits together — your food, your habits, your life — not just a list of rules to follow. No strict rules, no good/bad food lists. Just practical, sustainable changes that fit your real life.

If your relationship with food feels more stressful than it should, that's exactly what a first session is for.

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17/08/2026

Eight small, unremarkable habits — and the research on why they matter more than you'd think for how long (and how well) you live.

Swipe through. Chances are at least one of these is quietly working against you.

None of this is about overhauling your life. It's the small, boring, repeatable stuff — talking to a stranger, flossing, sitting down less — that adds up over decades.

If reading this made you think about your own habits and where to actually start, that's a conversation we're set up to have.

22/06/2026

Life moves quickly.

Most people become experts at functioning.

Far fewer learn how to slow down long enough to ask:

"How am I actually doing?"

Address

Suite 18/7 O'Connell Terrace
Brisbane, QLD
4006

Telephone

+61735202209

Website

https://linktr.ee/brisbanemindbodyclinic, https://brisbanemindbodyclinic.com.au/

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