Janine Rod Bondi Junction Psychologist

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Sydney, NSW
Janine Rod Bondi Junction Psychologist

Empathic and professional, I will enable you to rediscover your resilience, boost your inner strength and achieve your unlimited potential.

I tailor my approach to each individual I work with, no one size fits all way of working. As a psychologist and hypnotherapist, my primary goal is to provide you with the highest quality of care within a supportive and nurturing environment. In our sessions, we will delve into the dynamics between your conscious and unconscious minds, exploring how they interact and influence your thoughts, behavi

ours, and attitudes. I approach therapy from a psychodynamic perspective, meaning that together, we will examine the underlying factors that shape your experiences and behaviors. This comprehensive approach allows us to gain insights into the root causes of your challenges and work towards long-lasting change. I understand that each person is unique, and I believe in tailoring your therapy sessions to meet your specific needs. Rather than relying on a single system of intervention, I draw from a variety of evidence-based sources, incorporating diverse techniques to provide you with a more comprehensive and personalized approach. Creating a safe and supportive environment is crucial to the therapeutic process. In our sessions, I will actively listen to your thoughts, feelings, and worries, offering a space where you can freely communicate, gain insight, and develop new skills. Together, we will work towards clarifying your inner conflicts, confronting barriers to your success and well-being, and ultimately achieving your goals. I invite you to connect with me on social media or book an appointment through my webpage so we can start a conversation about how we can address your challenges. Let’s explore the inter connection between your thoughts, behaviours, and mindset, and discover the transformative potential of therapy for your personal growth and well-being.

03/08/2026

Mia couldn’t point to a single moment. That was the hardest part. There was no affair to name, no lie she could hold up as proof. What she had instead was a pattern: her partner’s voice dropping when he took certain calls, the way he’d get up and leave the room mid-conversation, the small gaps in what he told her about his day that never quite added up. Nothing dramatic. Everything deniable.

When she raised it – gently, at first – he told her she was overthinking. Reading into nothing. Being paranoid. Over time, she stopped raising it. Not because it stopped bothering her, but because raising it cost her more than staying quiet ever did.

[Mia’s story is a composite drawn from common patterns seen in practice; identifying details have been changed to protect privacy.]

Read on… https://janinerod.com/when-small-things-add-up-to-a-loss-of-trust-and-a-loss-of-voice/

23/07/2026

“I still don’t know what I did.” That’s how a client of mine – I’ll call her Claire – opened one of our sessions.

Claire’s story is a composite drawn from common patterns I see in practice – details are changed to protect privacy.

She’d been part of the same friendship group for over a decade: weekend trips, group chats, the lot. Then one day the messages just… stopped. No argument. No falling out she could point to. When she reached out to each friend individually, she got vague, one-line replies, or nothing at all. Nobody would tell her why.

Claire isn’t alone. Ghosting isn’t just a dating app phenomenon – it happens in friendships, families, and workplaces too. And when a whole group goes quiet together, the silence can feel even more disorienting, because there’s no single person to make sense of it with.

Here’s the thing Claire eventually came to terms with: ghosting says almost nothing about the person left behind, and everything about the people who leave. It usually comes down to one of these four reasons...

Read on at https://janinerod.com/i-still-dont-know-what-i-did-the-silent-sting-of-being-ghosted/

16/07/2026

Scroll through social media and it can look as though everyone else has an enormous, glittering social life: group holidays, birthday brunches, hundreds of followers. If your own world feels smaller, you might wonder whether you are doing friendship wrong. The research offers a reassuring answer: you almost certainly aren’t.

Evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar, who has studied human friendship for over fifty years, found that our relationships form layers. At the very centre sits what he calls the support clique – roughly three to five people we can call in a crisis, cry with, and truly rely on. Beyond that sit about fifteen good friends, fifty friends, and around 150 meaningful contacts. Crucially, studies show that life satisfaction tracks the innermost layers, not the outer ones. It is the handful of “shoulder to cry on” friendships - not the size of the crowd - that predicts how content we feel.

There is a simple biological reason for this. Your nervous system doesn’t crave popularity; it craves safety, trust, and security. Stephen Porges’s polyvagal theory describes how our autonomic nervous system constantly scans for cues of safety, and how the felt presence of a trusted person helps regulate us – a process called co-regulation. In a now-famous fMRI study, psychologist James Coan found that when people anticipating a mild electric shock held the hand of someone they trusted, the brain’s threat response measurably quietened. A close friend is not a luxury; physiologically, they are a resource the brain expects to have.

Read on to find out if people with countless friends are happier... https://janinerod.com/why-three-to-five-friends-may-be-all-you-need/

30/06/2026

I want to talk about something that doesn’t get discussed the way it should.

Not in the way that makes people feel judged, or broken, or like they just need to “try harder.” But in a way that might, I hope, make some of you feel a little more understood.

Because if you have ever found yourself eating when you weren’t hungry, or not eating when you were, or following rules around food that felt impossible to break, or using food to get through a day that felt completely overwhelming, then this is for you.

And the first thing I want to say is: you are not weak. You are not out of control. You are not failing.

You are coping. And coping, even when it costs us something, is a form of intelligence.

When we talk about difficult relationships with food, whether that’s restricting, bingeing, obsessing, over-controlling, or anything in between, the conversation almost always focuses on the behaviour itself. Stop doing this. Change that. Here’s a meal plan. Here’s a goal.

But here’s the question that I think matters so much more and it's a question nobody usually asks...

What was your relationship with food actually doing for you, at the time it started?

Because it was doing something. It always is.

Read on.... https://janinerod.com/what-if-it-wasnt-about-the-food/

21/06/2026

We are living in one of the most exciting eras in the history of human understanding. For the first time, we have the tools, the technology, and the science to truly look inside the brain and what we’re seeing is nothing short of remarkable. Neuroscience has given us a window into why we think, feel, and behave the way we do. And here’s the exciting part: when you understand how your brain works, you gain the power to work with it rather than against it.

So let’s explore what modern brain science is telling us, and how you can use that knowledge to make healthier, more conscious choices every single day.

Your brain is, above all else, an efficiency machine. It is wired to conserve energy, and the most efficient thing a brain can do is repeat what it has already done. Every time you think a thought, feel a feeling, or perform a behaviour, your brain creates or strengthens a neural pathway - a little groove worn into the landscape of your mind. Do it enough times, and that groove becomes a groove. Do it for years? It becomes a motorway.

This is how habits are formed. This is why your morning routine feels effortless. This is why you can drive a familiar route and arrive at your destination barely remembering the journey. Your brain ran that programme so you didn’t have to. Pretty clever, right?

But here’s the catch: the brain doesn’t distinguish between habits that serve you and habits that don’t. It runs them all with equal enthusiasm.

Read on at... https://janinerod.com/understanding-your-brain-is-the-first-step-to-changing-your-life/

05/06/2026

As a psychologist, one of the most powerful things I explore with clients is the chain reaction that governs our lives: our thoughts shape our emotions, and our emotions drive our actions.

It sounds simple. It isn’t.

When something doesn’t go our way, we rarely stop to examine the thought. We just feel the emotion - the disappointment, the anxiety, the grief - and we act from that place. We withdraw. We ruminate. We tell ourselves a story about what this setback means about us, about our future, about the world.

And here’s the critical part: that story is often wrong.

We are wired for the negative. This isn’t a personal failing. It’s neuroscience.

The human brain evolved with a negativity bias - a tendency to register threats, losses, and bad news more strongly than positive experiences. For our ancestors scanning the savanna, this kept them alive. For us, sitting in traffic or scrolling through rejection emails, it keeps us stuck.

Our threat-detection system doesn’t distinguish well between a predator and a missed opportunity. Both trigger the same alarm. And once that alarm fires, our thinking narrows. We zoom in on what went wrong and lose sight of the broader picture.

What we rarely ask in those moments is: what if this isn’t the end of the story?

Read the full post at... https://janinerod.com/when-things-fall-apart-why-your-brain-lies-about-bad-luck/

25/05/2026

It’s easy to point the finger outward. To focus on what someone else did wrong. How someone hurt us. How we were misunderstood, overlooked, dismissed, or betrayed. And sometimes, those things are true.

But growth begins the moment we become willing to pause before reacting and ask ourselves: What is this showing me? What within me needs my attention? Not from a place of blame. Not from shame. But from self-responsibility - and honesty. Because the truth is, the external world will always give us opportunities to look inward. Every trigger. Every conflict. Every repeating pattern. Every relationship that leaves us feeling unseen or unheard. These moments can either harden us - or reveal us.

But here’s what I’ve come to understand: we can only truly look within when we feel safe enough to do so.

And safety comes from boundaries. Without boundaries, self-reflection becomes self-abandonment. Without boundaries, we stay stuck in survival mode - over-explaining, people-pleasing, tolerating disrespect, shrinking ourselves to keep the peace. When we don’t feel emotionally safe, we don’t look inward with compassion. We look inward with criticism.

Read on at ... https://janinerod.com/the-courage-to-look-within/

19/05/2026

A theme I keep seeing in my work with couples and individuals

Lately, in session after session, a familiar pattern has been showing up. People come in carrying the weight of a difficult relationship – a partner who hurt them, a family member who let them down, a friendship that turned. They want to feel better. They want the pain to ease. And almost always, the first place we look is outward: what the other person did, why they did it, and how unfair it all feels.

That outward look is human, and it is valid. But it is only ever half of the story. The other half – the harder, more transformative half – is the look inward.

Self-Awareness Means Looking at Yourself

Self-awareness isn’t a buzzword. It’s a practice, and at its core it means turning the lens around. It means asking the uncomfortable questions:

- How did I show up? What did I tolerate, ignore, or contribute to? - Where did my own patterns play a role in what unfolded?

Growth starts with owning your role. Not all of it – sometimes only a small part of it – but the part that is yours. Because the part that is yours is the only part you have any power to change.

“You can be the one who was hurt, and still be the one who has work to do.”

Read on at https://janinerod.com/the-mirror-we-dont-want-to-look-into/

11/05/2026

The Day After Mother’s Day: A Quieter Kind of Noticing

If you’re reading this on the Monday after Mother’s Day, take a breath. The brunches are over. The cards have been opened or quietly recycled. The social media feeds, which yesterday were flooded with bouquets and tributes, are returning to their usual rhythms.

For some, yesterday was tender and warm. For others, it was complicated. And for many, it was simply hard.

I want to write today for everyone in that second and third group — though I hope the first group will find something here too.

Read on at... https://janinerod.com/the-day-after-mothers-day-a-quieter-kind-of-noticing/

05/05/2026

Your heart is racing before a meeting. Your stomach tightens when you open an email. Your shoulders climb toward your ears when someone says, “Can we talk?” In the span of a breath, your body has spoken – and your brain, doing what brains do, has already started translating.

That translation is what most of us experience as a thought. And here is the catch that quietly runs so much of our lives: we tend to believe the translation is the truth.

Your body sends a signal. Your brain writes the caption. Most of the time, you only ever read the caption.

Read on to understand more about thought patterns and what you can do to break them...

https://janinerod.com/the-stories-your-body-tells/

Address

Park Place, Suite 905/3 Waverley Street, Bondi Junction
Sydney, NSW
2022

Telephone

+61421990990

Website

http://www.janinerod.com/

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