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Elizabeth has been a Psychologist and Psychotherapist for over 20years. She has extensive experience working with adults in individual therapy. While Elizabeth has also worked, at different times, in community and hospital settings, including mental health and drug and alcohol treatment, group therapy, and psychoeducation programs, her priority and focus has been the practice of long term psychoanalytic/psychodynamic therapy in private practice. She has a wealth of knowledge and skills in this area, gained through a combination of clinical practice well as supervision, teaching, and research,. This section aims to let you know a bit about what to expect from sessions with Elizabeth. 

 

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Services

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Long Term Psychotherapy :

 

Elizabeth continues to offer face-to-face, long term, therapy with a particular interest in supporting other therapists, health, and helping professionals who are interested in expanding their awareness and emotional capacity. *Enquire here about the wait times for beginning ongoing psychotherapy with Elizabeth. Priority given to previous clients. 

 

If you are a new client, and the wait is longer than 4 weeks, Elizabeth can offer some suggestions of practitioners with similar frameworks who have current availability. 

 

Brief therapy:

 

Outside of these long term therapies, Elizabeth has recently expanded her practice to offer more brief and focussed support, to parents in the perinatal period. Bulk billed Telehealth services can be booked via Mum’s Matter Psychology. For face-to-face (privately billed) sessions, please enquire on the contact page for availability. 

 

 

Experiential workshops and art therapy:

 

Elizabeth also offers brief counselling, therapy, experiential, and art-based services, these are particularly useful for people experiencing change, major decisions, or loss, but may also be suitable for processing and integrating specific difficult or traumatic experiences. 

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Supervision: 

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Elizabeth also offers private psychotherapy supervision either in person or online. Enquire via the contact page for current availability. 

 

 

Psychotherapy Framework

 

Elizabeth’s approach is supportive and client-centred, with a strong psychodynamic influence. What this means in real terms, is that the direction of session will follow the priorities of the client’s most present thoughts, feelings or dilemmas, and that Elizabeth has a sensitivity to the ways in which unconscious (or semi-conscious) conflicts, thoughts, feelings, and motivations might influence symptoms and patterns of relating. She is likely to make suggestions or enquire about what might be going on ‘underneath’ the surface. This type of exploration suits patients who are willing to ‘look beyond the surface’ and who are able to sit with the discomfort of uncertainty and ambivalence. 

 

Taking a psychodynamic (or analytic) frame for therapy also means that Elizabeth pays attention to the patterns in your attachment relationships, including the ways in which those patterns might enter the therapy room. This is more relevant for longer term therapies, but can also be an important part of briefer engagements. 

 

Elizabeth invites clients to make the most of this relational focus by using the here-and-now experiences arising in the therapy to clarify the their underlying desires, fears, and expectations (and she is likely to also invite you to question and update some expectations or assumptions, which might have been formed under stressful circumstances in early relationships, and which may not apply to your current life - this can be challenging but very illuminating, especially when access and understood via safety of an empathic therapy relationship). 

 

Expected goals and outcomes

 

Elizabeth aims to support growth by assisting patients to expand in: 

 

• clarity of self-reflection

• depth of self-acceptance,

• integration of previously ‘unacceptable’ or intolerable feelings or aspects of self. 

 

While therapy that works at this level can be very difficult emotionally, Elizabeth’s way of working is grounded, patient, and steady. She offers therapy that honours not only the client’s pace and readiness, but also their individuality, autonomy, and emotional truth. She encourages clients in their bids to establish and cultivate their right to be the authority in their own lives, where they might have lost touch with this through a context of difficult circumstances, past experiences, or major interruptions in early development of their sense of self. People whose aim is to better understand themselves, find their ‘centre’ and strengthen their sense of self cohesion and autonomy, will appreciate her approach.   

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Context matters too. Elizabeth understands that changes in life (and the world around us) can sometimes be deeply unsettling, and that stress and overwhelming emotional responses need not be always be pathologised. Adjustment to challenging events or circumstances can also be a time for accessing additional support. (Re)orienting oneself after shock, and sorting through emotional responses amidst the chaos and confusion of uncertain times, may be the reason for accessing counselling or therapy (with or without a clinical diagnosis such as depression or anxiety). 

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