I have had an unconventional journey towards being a psychologist.
I started out as an economist for the Australian Government but found that writing reports was too dry for me. While still working as an economist, I volunteered as a Lifeline Australia telephone counsellor and I knew from that point what I wanted to pursue.
I went on to complete a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology. Doctorates include a lot more training than masters degrees (50% more in fact) but in completing the doctorate I realised that if you want to be a good therapist, you can’t just coast along. You have to be actively working on getting better all the time.
Since completing my doctorate, I have worked in both private practice and in public mental health. During my time in public mental health, I was lucky enough to be trained by an international expert in Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) and worked as a part of a DBT therapy program for four and a half years. Working in public mental health also helped me get a grounding in Exposure Therapy, a lot of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Motivational Interviewing and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. These different therapies probably don’t mean a lot to you (and they shouldn’t, there are a lot of different therapies out there!) but I mention them to highlight how much I have valued continuing to push myself to learn to become a more helpful therapist to my clients.
In 2021 I thought it was time for a change and left public mental health job to split my time between working as part of the chronic pain team at Austin Health and in private practice.
As of 2024 I now work full time in private practice.
