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Seaside Holistic Psychology Online Therapy. Trauma Informed Counselling

I have not been on here much recently and wanted to take time to introduce myself again!I am a psychologist & trauma the...
12/09/2026

I have not been on here much recently and wanted to take time to introduce myself again!
I am a psychologist & trauma therapist.
I am passionate about breaking the cycle of historical & intergenerational trauma, so we can connect back to ourselves & to each other.
To free the joy & peace that is at the essence of our being so we can find our passion & excitement for life.
I have been a psychologist for 25 years working in a variety of settings around Sydney, Australia.
Most recently I worked with our defence force providing evidence based Focused Psychological Strategies (FPS) to serving ADF members.
I left with a deep appreciation of the culture, as well as the unique & complex challenges facing our defence community.
Prior to this I specialised in working with PTSD & CPTSD in a variety of settings.
Providing support & therapy to individuals impacted by sexual abuse, domestic violence & addiction issues.
Also working with individuals struggling with difficult & high conflict relationships, anxiety, depression, burnout & a broad range of mental health issues.
I am & always have been an ally to the LGBTQIA+ community 🏳️‍🌈❤️
Today, I work with clients via Telehealth Australia Wide & also Face to Face from Crows Nest which is just over the Harbour Bridge.
A few more bits & pieces…
My own journey informs my approach to healing.
I was born in Yugoslavia.
I am an only child.
My parents immigrated to Australia when I was barely a teenager.
I live on the Northern Beaches of Sydney.
Don’t judge 😖😂🫣 but I have an unhealthy relationship with 90 Day Fiancé & I am a sucker for TV shows, any genre, that are set in a small town! (Feel free to send me recommendations!)
I love walking & being in nature.
I absolutely love books & reading, fiction & non fiction.
I enjoy travelling & getting lost & discovering new places 😁
And I love cooking, especially following a complex recipe, it keeps me focused & I find the experience meditative.
I would love to hear about you, feel free to stop by & say hello :)

11/09/2026

I love bookshops, they bring me so much joy.
But I wince walking past the catchy title & visually appealing “finding meaning & purpose” books that are notorious for dominating social media algorithms but could probably have been summarised in a single blog or post.
They worry me.
They make everything sound so easy!
They drip toxic positivity & have you believing if you just get this one thing right or follow these simple 5 steps, your life will be filled with meaning, purpose, riches, anything & everything!
(And I know this because I also used to buy these books and it took me a while to realise, after the initial hit of hope, it was all down hill.)
It is just not that easy.
Especially if you have a history of complex trauma.
You just end up feeling even worse after that initial high of buying something hoping ‘this time it will be different’.
Dreaming Big.
Finding your meaning & purpose.
Feeling and believing you are deserving of these things.
They are a real struggle when you have lived on crumbs and the bare minimum.
Taking & receiving can feel deeply uncomfortable, selfish and dangerous.
When someone offers to pay for your lunch or offers to help you with something, an intense neurobiological threat response can be triggered. We may feel trapped, suspicious & trigger our flight, flight, responses.
Approaching meaning & purpose through a trauma informed lens is part of the healing process & a powerful way to reclaim power & control over our lives x

04/09/2026

For someone outside an abusive or complex relationship with a person (or in my case recently, a toxic workplace), it may seem simple.
“Why don’t you just leave?”
If making the decision to leave was purely based on logic & thinking, it would be much easier to walk away.
Leaving a complicated situation is not a decision purely based on thought.
There are many psychological, emotional & neurophysiological factors at play.
When our nervous system is calling the shots it can be very hard to break the relationship. Sometimes we cannot walk away until we find a new relationship or workplace, & only then do we feel like we can leave.
The chemistry involved in a neurophysiological bond can be incredibly strong, even when we know it is not right for us. It does not necessarily mean we even like the person or situation, it means that we struggle ending the connection.
These bonds are rooted in our biology, in our nervous system & usually stemming from old, entrenched neural networks & patterns around love & loyalty that follow us from childhood.
Neurophysiological bonding can be very intense
It has a similar chemistry to addiction & removing ourselves can be difficult & painful.
Even when we know it’s bad for us & we no longer enjoy the connection.
When we do leave, it will take our brain & body some time to recover, so be gentle on yourself. The more toxic the relationship or situation was, the longer it can take to heal & recover.
Neurophysiological bonds to people & workplaces are very real.
Building awareness & understanding around how we connect with others, learning to recognise good & bad relationships, can help guide us when it comes to choosing people & places who are healthy for us x
,

Guilt Is an assessment of behaviour, I DID something wrong.It is an uncomfortable feeling. If I feel guilty - it urges m...
29/08/2026

Guilt Is an assessment of behaviour, I DID something wrong.
It is an uncomfortable feeling.
If I feel guilty - it urges me to take responsibility so I don’t lose this person.
If we transgress guilt is appropriate to feel.
If we do something we think is not ok, feeling guilty guides us to go back and repair the tear.
Guilt can be appropriate when we have done something wrong. It says,
“I did wrong and I need to repair.”
Adaptive guilt is not a bad thing, it is pro social + behaviour specific.
In healthy, safe and connected relationships guilt can foster repair.
The sensation of guilt drives us to be accountable, to repair and also to build stronger and safer connections.
…
Guilt can also be maladaptive.
This happens when we FEEL we did something wrong when we did not.
Or we are TOLD we did something wrong when we did not.
Maladaptive guilt can be the glue that keeps unhealthy relationships together.
As kids we may have learnt to give up our goals and take care of someone who should be taking care of themselves.
If I can take care of this person they will then love and care for me.
But it does’t work that way when it is unhealthy.
We just get recruited into doing more for them.
This can make us very attractive to people who need someone to project their guilt on.
People who struggle with taking accountability and need someone else to blame.
In these toxic relationships it can be easier to see ourselves as a ‘bad’ person and ‘the problem’, than challenging the difficult person.
…
Healing means understanding the difference between guilt that can guide us towards a positive change vs guilt that asks us to abandon ourselves.

Relationships with unhealthy or difficult people can be tough.There is an insistence that you keep in mind what is going...
24/06/2026

Relationships with unhealthy or difficult people can be tough.
There is an insistence that you keep in mind what is going on for them at all times if you want to feel close to them.
These relationships require you to sacrifice your own perspective & take on their point of view. What they think & feel is what matters if you want to have them in your life.
In the 1950’s, a psychologist called Jean Piaget, created a 3D mountain scene.
A child was allowed to walk around the entire table & see the model from every side. A doll was then placed at different points & the child was given photos & asked what they thought the doll was seeing from their side of the mountain.
The goal, in a nutshell, was to work out around what age kids start to understand that there are other points of view. Learning that there are different points of view is part of healthy psychological development.
(His findings were that kids mature to the point where they can detach from their own perspective at around 7-11yrs old.)
Have you noticed however that when we are around unhealthy adults we have to always see what is on their side of the mountain.
If you grew up with parents who made no space for your side of the mountain, it makes sense that as an adult you would struggle to believe it matters.
To be emotionally & psychologically close to someone who is unhealthy meant always keeping in mind what their experience is.
Always having to change the conversation & focus to them.
As soon as we get in touch with our thoughts & feelings, our own healthy anger or disappointment, it threatens the relationship.
This can make us feel anxious & dangerous.
A sense of don’t go there, it won’t go well!
So we shift to doubting our feelings.
We begin to dismiss & minimise our own needs as we shift our focus back to them & what they are going through. We have learnt to have these people in our lives we have a narrow line, attention & conversation has to always be on them.
If this sounds familiar try asking yourself “what would I be feeling if I wasn’t thinking about their childhood & their past?”

Contempt is the only emotion that is unilateral i.e. it takes place on one side of the face, for example a tight lip cur...
12/06/2026

Contempt is the only emotion that is unilateral i.e. it takes place on one side of the face, for example a tight lip curl on one corner of the mouth, with or without a hint of a smile. A shoulder shrug on one side of the body. The voice is usually smug or disapproving. Often accompanied by a mild form anger, usually annoyance.
Contempt says “I don’t respect you” & “ I am better than you”.
It is a feeling of dislike of & superiority over another person.
It is considered the most poisonous of all interactions in a relationship, so it makes sense that it is the number predictor of divorce.
Contempt makes interactions ugly & toxic, it is a form of emotional abuse.
One partner sees themselves as above the other & takes a stance of power by putting the other person down. Contempt can make the person doing it, feel self righteous & confident. This feeling of power & superiority can even be a pleasurable experience for the person doing it.
For the person on the receiving end however, it takes a psychological, emotional & physical toll. It effects their ANS (Autonomic Nervous System) & also their Autoimmune system in negative & damaging ways.
It weakens both systems making us more susceptible to illness & disease.
Long term exposure to contempt can also effect our mental health, causing low self esteem, isolation, depression & anxiety to name a few.
The way out of contempt is to build a culture of appreciation & fondness in a relationship by committing to catch each other doing something right.
Effort needs to come from both people, it is impossible to re-build the relationship if one partner is deprived of respect x

As kids, we tend to blame ourselves for things that are happening. We believe our story that it is our fault, that there...
06/06/2026

As kids, we tend to blame ourselves for things that are happening. We believe our story that it is our fault, that there is something about us that makes us not worthy of being loved & cared for by our caregiver.
Blaming ourselves means that maybe if we can just work out how to behave “properly” or “fix” ourselves then everything will be ok and we will matter and be safe.
We believe that if we are hard on ourselves & beat ourselves up, we will:
Stop ruining things
Be smarter
Stop causing problems
Lose weight
Be prettier
Stronger
Better
On & on & on …
We motivate ourselves to create quick fixes that are temporary & superficial.
On a deeper level, what we are doing is making neural pathways that convince us that we do not matter, that we are worthless and unlovable. That there is something deeply wrong with who we are.
When our negative & painful stories about ourselves are triggered within us as adults, it can feel as difficult & dysregulating as when those hurts were first created. And when that wiring is laid down early in life it can feel very difficult to change it.
Our brains are wired to repeat what is familiar, think the same thoughts, feel the same emotions, and have the same reactions that formed us when we were young.
These sticky stories we replay can become an endless loop of self blame & criticism. Bringing awareness to these patterns we hold is how we interrupt, exit & start to protect ourselves from these harmful thought bombs x

All relationships with a traumatising narcissist have one thing in common. The denial of the other person’s inner world....
17/05/2026

All relationships with a traumatising narcissist have one thing in common. The denial of the other person’s inner world. Their perspectives, opinions, thoughts, feelings, beliefs and desires do not matter.
Shengold called this invisible pain “soul murder”. He described it as the “deliberate attempt to eradicate or compromise the separate identity of another person”.
The emotional and psychological pain inflicted is abuse.
When you persistently feel anxious or ashamed to voice what you think and feel, because you are afraid of the contempt and rejection that will be directed at you, it is traumatising.
What makes this trickier is the narcissistic person often feels they are being wronged. They may even proclaim their love and convince you that what you give in return is not enough because they don’t feel they are getting back what they give.
If you grew up with a parent who didn’t recognise your needs or see you as a separate person or a parent who you just could not please, there may be a strong sense of guilt associated to having your own needs and desires.
It makes sense then that we are preoccupied with the feelings, needs and desires of others. You may put yourself in the position of giver and feel shame at the idea of taking.
Sometimes the more compliant we are in narcissistic relationships, the more likely we are to develop a secret life.
Learning to find and recognise your “voice”, to believe and trust in your self can help us shift to a life that is more meaningful, creative and fulfilling.
You matter x

28/03/2026

An important part of trauma treatment is moving forward differently.
It is visiting the past while staying in the present moment.
Paying attention to our body and nervous system.
And moving forward differently.
Working through our issues doesn’t mean we automatically change.
It is not an organic or spontaneous process.
And unfortunately it is not easy a lot of the time.
We have to be deliberate in the ways we show up.
AND choose to show up differently.
Maybe you go from 0 to 100
or
perhaps you are shut down or numb.
Shifting to a new way means deliberately and intentionally stepping on a new path. Baby steps that become more automatic and organic with time, as we practice doing things differently.
We get off the reactivity highway and find more peaceful paths that we have created x

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