Dr Carly Fay

Dr Carly Fay Dr Carly Fay is a private clinical psychologist based on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland.

Located in Maroochydore, and also providing online consultations Australia-wide, Carly provides compassionate and collaborative psychological care for adults. Dr Carly Fay provides an open, warm and genuine therapeutic space to help you engage fully in therapy. Combining extensive clinical experience with evidence-based, clinically proven therapies, Carly individually tailors her treatment plan to

help you define your treatment goals and then begin to take steps to achieve these. Working collaboratively, the knowledge that draw on clients wisdom and resilience
Carly’s treatment approach incorporates Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, Compassion Focused Therapy, Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. With a focus on providing simple yet effective tools and strategies, and with a generous dose of good humour, Carly is passionate about helping you to live a fuller, more meaningful and courageous life. In private practice, Carly works individually with adults and has experience treating a range of mental health and adjustment issues including:
- Anxiety
- Cancer support (psycho-oncology)
- Grief and loss
- Depression
- Stress and burnout
- Adjustment difficulties to major challenges in life
- Chronic pain and health conditions
An area of special interest for Carly is working with those impacted by cancer, including individuals who have been diagnosed with cancer and partners or family members who provide care and support. Cancer counselling can assist with:
- Adjusting to the initial diagnosis
- Navigating the healthcare system
- Managing the rigours of treatment
- Dealing with body image changes
- Adjusting to physical change or losses
- Transitioning out of treatment
- Finding a “new normal”
- Dealing with scanxiety or fear of cancer recurrence
- Returning to work
When treatment is no longer curative, Carly also has extensive experience in supporting people dealing with anticipatory grief and bereavement. When time is precious, Carly is passionate about helping people to stay present, address fears, connect and adjust in the best way they can.

This is one of my all time favourite comics and I have probably referred to it in many sessions!! I speak to many parent...
11/05/2023

This is one of my all time favourite comics and I have probably referred to it in many sessions!!

I speak to many parents about the pressure that they place upon themselves to get their parenting role just right. People are usually hip to the idea that perfect parenting isn't actually good for kids and is also, quite frankly, impossible. So often my clients will think they are aiming for a realistic goal, something like "I just want to be an above average parent" or "I would like to remain calm and unruffled most of the time" (this last goal is really code for "all of the time"). But actually, both of these goals are still setting the bar pretty high!!

The other tricky part of parenting is that we all have aspects of our own experiences of being parented that we want to change. The thing that I love so much about this comic is not the idea that it is impossible to parent without our kids ending up in therapy 😂 (I mean, you get to meet some pretty rad people who are therapists there though 😘).

But, I love that it normalises the reality that perfect parenting is really, really impossible!! We are all going to try our very best to give our children the childhood we think they need - in reality, we are all going to have blind spots at times to what they actually do need.

There are certainly ways that we can improve our parenting toolkits, whether it's being more collaborative and less punitive; more able to soothe and regulate ourselves as we soothe and regulate them or fostering a more cohesive, less competitive family unit. But even when our toolkits are well stocked, we are still going to grab the wrong tool sometimes or leave the kit locked up in the shed by accident!! Making mistakes and repairing them with our kids is by far the MOST valuable part of parenting there is. It's not the ruptures that matter, it's the repair.

If we can demonstrate our own humanness and try to find a way back together when we muck it up, we are providing our kids with a far more robust and authentic view of our common humanity, and also a far more helpful view of themselves.
📸: Lunarbaboon

Sometimes there is the impression in popular media that psychologists want everyone to be connected to all of the feelin...
04/05/2023

Sometimes there is the impression in popular media that psychologists want everyone to be connected to all of the feelings and navel gazing all of the time!!

But actually, healthy emotion regulation requires us to be able to both TURN TOWARDS and TURN AWAY from emotion. We do need to be able to turn away from strong feelings to function and survive, sometimes we simply don't have the space, time or resources to fully engage with all of the feelings, all of the time - my 2 year old lives this way and it looks HARD!!!

The reason psychologists (like me) bang on about turning towards feelings so much, is because many of us have plenty of practice turning away from our inner worlds - Helloooo Netflix! This has often been reinforced over and over again culturally and intergenerationally.

Turning towards some of our feelings, some of the time does take a deliberate investment of a little time, energy and courage, but when we are able to do so, it offers us the opportunity to learn about ourselves, engage directly with what we need and stop automatically coping in ways that may have served us in the past, but no longer support us now.

This is a great little practice from therapy.anahata which can be paired with a little heart space breathing (hand over your heart and focus on breathing into and out from this warmth and contact).

Hi Instagram! I've arrived (with much encouragement) 😂 My regular clients know that I talk about moving from your comfor...
30/04/2023

Hi Instagram! I've arrived (with much encouragement) 😂

My regular clients know that I talk about moving from your comfort zone to work on expanding your life by moving into your challenge zone (but avoiding pushing so far that you hit the panic zone). Well, self-promotion and social media are firmly in my challenge zone!!

So, I'm working at my edge, trying to treat myself with a bit of kindness and breathing deep to allow myself to let go of the "what ifs?" and potential future judgements of others. I'm just popping up a post and seeing how all of this goes 😉

I'm so lucky to be able to work from the amazing rooms of the Sunshine Coast Couples Clinic in Maroochydore. I see adults and offer individual therapy on Mondays and Fridays here (or via telehealth), and work for the wonderful Madonna Hirning of the Sunshine Coast Couples Clinic on Thursdays offering Gottman Method Couples Therapy (also face to face and via telehealth).

I work from a range of treatment models in individual therapy including Compassion Focused Therapy, Schema Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy.

So if you are looking for an individual therapist, check out my website to see if you reckon I'd be a good fit for you and flick me an email/enquiry. Fair warning though: This is a photo of me that I had taken by the AMAZING Tarrynn from Square Carrot Photography. It's two years old now and no way does my hair look this sleek on a regular workday - I rock a mumbun 90% of my life!!



📸:

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3/235 Bradman Avenue
Maroochydore, QLD
4558

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