• Emotional and Interpersonal Support
• Facilitation and Assistance with Adjustment and Resources
• Understanding and Insight
• Decision Making and Problem Solving
• Psycho-Education
• Symptom Amelioration
• Cure
• Crisis Intervention and Management
• Personal Development
• Self-Actualization
• Discovery of Meaning or Purpose
• Personality Change
• Systemic or Social Change

PERSONAL PSYCHOLOGICAL/MENTAL HEALTH

Anxiety

Depression and other mood disorders

Anger

Mental health issues

Eating related difficulties

Stress

Self harm and suicidality

DEVELOPMENT

Personal Development

Life Skills Development

Coping Skills Development

SUFFERING AND ENDURING

Enduring through suffering

Symptom Amelioration

Working through grief and loss

Overcome behavioural or substance dependence

VIOLANCE AND ABUSE

Domestic Violence issues

Childhood Sexual Abuse

Childhood Neglect

Childhood physical/Emotional Abuse

Family Violence

Racism

RELATIONSHIPS

Enhance relationships

Establish relationship

Resolving conflicts in relationships

Analysing communication styles and interaction

Improving communication skills

Improving attachment issues

Rebuilding after relationship ending

MARRIAGE

Pre-Marriage Counselling

Re-Marriage

Marital Issues

Marital conflicts and breakdowns

FAMILY

Family maintenance

Family formation

Family separation

Blended family issues

PARENTING

Learning to parent

Parenting after separation

Child protection issues

Parenting skills

Grand parenting

Succession planning for care of adult disabled child

CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS

Childhood Behavioural and Psychological Issues

Early childhood education issues

Schooling issues

Bullying

Adolescent Issues

Dealing with difficult parents

Forming and maintaining friendships

Internet and Cyber use issues

Separation of parents

Step parents and siblings issues

ADDICTION

Behavioural addictions: Gambling

Substance Addiction: Drugs, Alcohol etc.

AND OTHERS…

Alternatively, contact your GP. Life Line counselling can be contacted on 13 11 14 24 hours a day. Please also go to the Useful Links section of this website for more helpful contact details.

Psychiatrist

Psychiatrists are medical doctors with specialist training in physiological causes of mental disorders. Psychiatrists can prescribe medications in addition to treating patients with psychotherapeutic methods such as psychoanalytic approach. Psychiatrists belong to Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatry. Psychiatrists costs can be partly covered by Medicare if referred from a GP.

Psychologist

Psychologists are trained at least two year postgraduate level of study at university plus two years of supervised training under an experience supervisor. In Australia, psychologists belong to Australian Psychological Society. Psychologists are not doctors and does not prescribe medication. Psychologists predominantly employ Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) in treating their clients. Psychologists services can be partly covered by Medicare under referring GP’s Mental Health Care Plan.

Psychotherapist

Psychotherapists can come from psychological, psychiatry or psychotherapeutic training background. Psychotherapy training is postgraduate level training, usually at a Master Degree level. Above and beyond CBT, psychotherapists are trained in number of other therapeutic modalities such as Psychoanalysis/Psychodynamic Treatment, Client Centred Approach, Gestalt, Existential, Family Systems approaches and variety of techniques stemming from these major theoretical models. Psychotherapy is informed by developmental perspective as well as neurobiological research. Psychotherapists belong to Psychotherapists And Counsellor’s Federation of Australia (PACFA) and Counsellors and Psychotherapists Association of NSW (CAPA). Psychotheraptist’s fees are not supported by Medicare, but can be claimed through private health insurance.

Counsellors

At present anyone can call themselves a counsellor in Australia. Counsellors training could vary from a few weeks correspondence course to two years full time Master level training. Psychotherapists and Counsellor’s Federation of Australia (PACFA) and Counsellors and Psychotherapists Association of NSW (CAPA) has been established as industry bodies to ensure ethical practice and high training standards for the counsellors and psychotherapists in Australia. Counsellors’ approach can be as broad and varied, but most counsellors practice Person Centred (Rogerian) approach to counselling. Some counsellors’ fees could be claimed through private health insurance.

The counsellor at Counselling Interactive have Psychology background with Master Degree in Counselling & Psychotherapy, and are member of PACFA. Depending on you private insurance level of cover a portion of  counselling cost can be claimed on Medibank Private and Bupa (from 1 July 2018).

Person-Centred Therapy perceives that human beings are positive. It attests that all humans have an inclination toward becoming fully functioning. That is that all people have in them the ability and the drive to self-actualize. The therapy helps the client to experience feelings that had been denied to awareness. The client progresses toward increased awareness, trust in self, spontaneity and inner directedness. The Person Centered Therapy attests that each and every client has the capacity to become aware of the issues/blockages and has the ability to find their resolution. All psychological difficulties stem from the incongruence between the real self and ideal self. All consequent maladjustment therefore, stems from the incongruity between what one is and what one wants to be. The therapy attempts to focus on the “here & now” and on emotional experiencing and expressing. The Person Centered therapy aims to provide safe and confident space for the client’s self exploration. To empower the client to head towards greater self trust, openness, increased spontaneity and to become more self directed.

Psychodynamic Psychotherapy assumes that human beings are basically characterized by psychic energy and by early experiences. Central to all behaviors are the unconscious motives and conflicts. That is that the sexual drives and inner impulses are the basic drives of human nature. Adult personality problems are assumed to be rooted in the childhood conflicts and early developmental traumas. Fundamental psychodynamic psychotherapy attests that a normal personality develops with successful integration and resolution of psychosexual stages of development. Hence, the problems with personality stems from inadequate or faulty resolution of a psychosexual stage during early development. Psychodynamic Psychotherapy aims to make conscious the conflicts in the unconscious in order to reconstruct the basic personality. The therapy helps the client relive early childhood experiences to work through repressed conflicts. Ultimately it aims to achieve client’s emotional and intellectual awareness.

Existential Psychotherapy focuses on the nature of the core human condition. The therapy traverse through issues including freedom of choice, search for meaning, being alone, capacity for self-awareness, being in relation with others, responsibility, striving for authenticity, anxiety, facing living and dying. It attests that each personality develops in uniqueness of each individual with a sense of self developing from infancy. The emphasis of therapy is one the present and one what one is becoming. It is future oriented and stresses self-awareness before each and every decisions. Existential Psychotherapy aims to assist clients to actualize their freedom and to become aware of their potentials while recognizing their responsibility for what is happening in their lives, and to identify factors that block their freedom.

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) addresses individual’s tendency to incorporate faulty thinking, which leads to behavioural and emotional disturbances. CBT attests that the major determinants of how we feel and act is our cognitions. Cognition and behaviour, and the role of thinking, deciding, questioning, doing, and re-deciding are the focus of the therapy. It is attested that the therapy is a learning process where a psycho-education, including learning new ways of thinking, acquiring and practicing new skills and acquiring more effective ways of coping with problems are taught. It is thought that the mental problems are based in childhood experiences and reasoning which are reinforced by present cognitive reasoning. The deepest roots of belief system is the primary source of disorders. Along with faulty assumptions and misconceptions, the person’s internal dialogue results in maladaptive behaviors. CBT aims to assists clients seek out their faulty beliefs and dysfunctional automatic thoughts to confront faulty reasoning and cognitions with contradictory evidence that they gather and evaluate in order to bring about transitions in their behaviors from maladaptive and dysfunctional to healthy ones.

Family Systems Therapy views family from an interactive and systemic perspective. It is considered that each member of the family are active and functional individuals connected to each other as a living system called a family. Hence, a change in one member will affect intrinsically connected others members of the family. The context of the family provides understanding of individual’s behaviour and functioning in relationship to others. The family systems therapy deals with a family as one organismic unit. It is thought that an individual’s dysfunction grows out of a larger system of the family and the internal interaction within the unit. The focus of the family systems therapy is on the pattern of verbal and non-verbal communication patterns within a family. Problematic relationship are considered to be a passed down from one generation to next. Some common concepts in family systems therapy are triangles, power coalitions, functional versus dysfunctional interaction patterns, differentiation, family of origin dynamics and here-and-now interactions. The main aim of family systems therapy is for the family members to acquire awareness of dysfunctional relationship patterns and to replace with new functional interactions.