Before we even talk about therapy, a common question is how to pronounce my name… You say it “a-ver-budge”. Yep, simple as that. Where’s it from? It’s actually made up. As far as my family can tell, it is a Spanish corruption of a Russian name, created 4 generations ago. I, however, was born in England and moved to Perth when I was 7.
Education
My education has provided me with a wide range of knowledge (from philosophy to political theory and history, as well as neurobiology and an evidence-based approach to therapy). My qualifications include:
Bachelor of Arts (Honours) - Double Major in Philosophy (UWA)
Bachelor of Letters - Majors in International Relations and History (UWA)
Bachelor of Psychology (Honours) (Murdoch University)
Masters of Applied Psychology (Clinical) (Murdoch University)
personal and professional development
I consider my personal and professional development to be synonymous: being a psychologist was a natural progression from my own drive for self-awareness and a passion for helping others with theirs. I undertook my own weekly psychoanalysis for 12 years, as this exploration of my own unconscious gave me immeasurable benefits to my personal and professional life (as I hope it will for you too). I also have a very experienced Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalyst supervisor who adds another perspective on issues I’m working with.
These are some of my past and present associations/training that contribute to how I practice:
Member of the Australian Psychological Society (2018 - current);
Member of the APS College of Clinical Psychologists ( 2020 - current);
Committee Member of the CG Jung Society of WA (2011 - 2014);
National Police Clearance and Working With Children Check (current);
The scope of my practice
My role varies with each individual I see. What it can include is: facilitating greater awareness of the unconscious patterns in your life, tools to provide motivation and engagement with the world, psychological support through making significant life changes, and any number of things specifically designed to enable you to make more productive choices (whatever that means to you). When people ask, I describe my role as a “Psychological Sherpa”.
If life was a mountain and you’re a hiker of that mountain, then I can be seen as a Sherpa helping you on that journey. In other words, I aim to provide you with ongoing understanding, insight and tools so your journey can be positive and rewarding. This also means that I am not here to patch up your wounds and send you on your way alone. Instead, we will work on the underlying issues that are causing your distress (how you hike), rather than only using cognitive or behavioural techniques to just help with the symptoms (new boots or energy drinks), which the research shows us is effective for short periods of time.
To extend the Hiker-Sherpa metaphor, you can think of the way I see psychological disorders (e.g. anxiety, depression, addiction, personality disorders) as the symptoms of poor hiker-training you’ve received in the past. So instead of seeing your symptoms as a disease that needs to be cured, I would see you as a person that needs to a) understand why you’re responding the way you do, b) learn new ways of responding and c) practice those new responses in the world to create sustainable change.
What psychologists are finding more and more is that mental illness is a dysfunctional way of coping (worrying, withdrawing, drinking, eating, cutting, obsessing etc) that is out of control and/or causing you distress.
So why do you need a Psychological Sherpa?
The psychoanalytic approach asks people to try and see therapy differently from the medical model: that I am not a doctor who can bestow a cure on you in therapy sessions, but rather a person with a set of skills and experience who will work with you to discover insights, unpack ways of thinking and practice tools to help you change yourself.
I’ve found that when we see our issues as something broken inside us or as something infecting us, it reinforces the idea that there needs to be a cure, and, that this cure can be found outside of oneself. Seeing your distress as caused by being broken or by a disease means that when people attend therapy and they don’t feel “cured” in nine or ten sessions, they tend to blame themselves and think that they must be too broken or stupid to be helped. This is can be so disheartening. And unnecessary.
Instead, I prescribe to Carl Jung’s idea (and many after him) that uncovering our unconscious process leads to understanding the ways we need to shift in order to be happy. It takes more time and will be emotionally challenging, but it has real effects.
In keeping with the Hiker-Sherpa analogy, we can see your distress and things that keep going wrong on the hike. My interpretation therefore, is that it’s likely that the training you received at the beginning of the hike (childhood) taught you bad habits that are now hindering you (or you didn’t get much training at all). The purpose of therapy is then: to work out what dysfunctional lessons/tools you acquired in childhood; to understand why you’re driven to keep using those dysfunctional tools; to develop the resilience to resist using those dysfunctional tools, and; to learn and practice using new ways of responding to challenges to help you avoid getting unnecessarily lost or hurt on the hike.
If you choose to work with me, this is exactly what I hope to provide you with. As your Psychological Sherpa, I will help carry your burdens, walk with you through the good and bad of the hike, help you to investigate why you respond to things the way you do, and, provide you with the tools to respond differently. As a Sherpa, I have no investment in how you want to climb, or what you want to get out of your journey, or even helping you reach the top. My only goal is to help you achieve your goals - whatever they are.
What type of “hikers” do I work best with?
Individuals make up the vast majority of the people I work with. People are their own universes of psychological complexity and usually by the time people come to therapy, there are many unconscious lessons and habits that have been formed that need to by unpacked and understood.
I have found that people who are seventeen and above have the type of understanding and experience necessary to get the most from therapy with me, and in fact, the openness to explore and the rawness of feelings that can be found in early adulthood can be a big advantage in therapy.
One thing to note here is that if I start working with one member of a family/couple, I choose not to work with anyone else close to that person. Once I have established a relationship with a patient, I want to ensure that there is no chance that the aims or desires or issues of someone else affects your journey with me.
So what kind of commitment are we really talking about?
Creating meaningful and sustained changes to the way you hike takes time – how much depends on what you want help with, but there are three general ways I can help…
First. I could provide you with some guidance based on a snap-shot of what I see in a single session. Clinically this is thought of as a diagnostic session, but I conceive of it as an opportunity to discuss whether your difficulties or distress is something I might be able to help with, whether I can refer them onto more specialised services in my network.
Second. We can decide to focus on particular parts of your experience. We identify a part of your experience that we will focus on in order to identify how best to resolve it. For example, if you can’t get out of bed in the morning, if you get angry for no reason, if you’re distressed at work or in a relationship or have a specific phobia. We might agree to how many sessions might be required in order to shift that experience and book in a weekly session time.
Third (my primary way of working). Our focus is on what Carl Jung called Individuation. That is, seeking to improve your experience in life by getting to the unconscious patterns and lessons and assumptions you have developed. We investigate your experience in order to create deeper understand of yourself and the tools to change the way you’re dealing with what’s distressing you. This is the true connection to the idea of a Sherpa, that is, with ongoing insights and support to create a more resilient and well-rounded explorer of life. This process continues for as long as you need, but has a longer-term perspective (at least months) simply because of the complexity of the human mind. Again, this would be a weekly commitment (with some breaks and allowances for life’s interruptions).
You can learn about the costs of therapy on my Fees/Contact page.