Hello and welcome

My name is Christa (she/her) and I am a creative arts psychotherapist and social worker with over 12 years experience in mental health and community-based settings. I am passionate about supporting people who are looking to feel more wholeness, ease, pleasure and connection within themselves and in relationships. Through centring lived expertise and experience, I prioritise building the trust and safety needed to sustain a therapeutic relationship.

I approach therapy in an integrative and relational way. This means our work together collaboratively draws on a range of theories and approaches that meet your individual needs and ways of processing. I am particularly interested in creative, somatic and movement-based therapies to nurture trust, safety, curiosity, playfulness, meaning-making, and self-expression.

I believe therapy can provide a space that supports a shift toward collective liberation, while also being individually responsive and attuned.

I draw on biopsychosocial models of care, anti-oppressive and intersectional feminist lenses, neurobiological understandings of trauma, attachment theory, and polyvagal/nervous system perspectives. Frameworks informing how I work include: Art Therapy; Internal Family Systems (IFS); mindfulness and somatic practices; Narrative Therapy; and EMDR.

My areas of special interest and themes/experiences you may wish to explore:

  • relationships and interpersonal challenges

  • sex and intimacy

  • sexuality and identity

  • bi+/queer experiences when in cishet-presenting relationships

  • understanding and exploring neurotypes

  • accessing pleasure and embodiment

  • grief and loss

  • perinatal mental health

  • birth trauma processing

  • attachment repair

  • parenting support for all types of families (including single, rainbow and co-parents)

  • parenting after experiencing childhood abuse and neglect

  • developmental and complex trauma

  • disordered eating and body image

  • anxiety and depression

  • exploring and connecting with self

  • cultivating creativity

My frameworks are continually growing and evolving, and I seek to ground myself in decolonial thinking, trauma and violence informed approaches, sex work inclusivity, LGBTQIA+ affirming and neuro-affirming practice.

Therapy aside, I enjoy: creative and confessional writing; reading autofiction and poetry; dancing wildly; swimming slowly; time with loved ones; hiking; and romantic comedies.

  • Master of Art Therapy, La Trobe University (2015)

    Master of Social Work, RMIT (2021)

    Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR), Level 1 +2 (2020)

    Yoga Teacher Training (200 hours), Gertrude Street Yoga (2022)

  • ANZACATA (professional), AASW

  • COPE (Center of Perinatal Excellence) Basic Skills in Perinatal Mental Health (current)

    TCTSY (Trauma Centre Trauma Sensitive Yoga) 20 Hour Workshop (2024)

    PANDA, Birth Trauma: how it works, symptoms, supporting clients and preventing your own burnout (2024)

    Yoga of Birth, Teaching Prenatal 50 Hours with Anahata Giri (2023)

    Yin Yoga and Functional Anatomy 50 Hours with Karina Smith (2020)

    Resisting Collusion with Male Perpetrators, Ada Conroy, Women’s Health in the North (2020)

    Response Based Practice, Ada Conroy, Women’s Health in the North (2019)

    Circle of Security Parenting (COSp) Facilitator Training (2018)

    Body as Voice and Restorative Movement Psychotherapy with Amber Gray, Part 1, 2, and 3 Dance Movement Therapy Association of Australasia (2018)

  • I draw on a combination of personal lived experience, practice wisdom, knowledge gained from working alongside people who have experienced violence and oppression, as well as formal training.

    I have worked in a range of therapeutic roles within mental health and family violence programs for organisations such as Berry Street, Collective Being, WRISC Family Violence Support, Alfred Health, Delmont Private Hospital, and Neami National. I have extensive experience facilitating groups, working with families, and offering psychotherapy for individuals.

    Lived and living experience is at the heart of my practice, and I use this passion to hold and honour the unique experiences that others so generously bring to our work together. I am committed to ongoing learning, sharing power and celebrating diversity.

WORK WITH Christa

Individual psychotherapy

Christa offers in-person and online 1-1 psychotherapy for young people and adults interested in processing their personal and life experiences through creative arts and somatic enquiry. Session durations are either standard (50 min), or extended (80 min), and can involve both talk-based methods as well as creative and somatic processes that are less reliant on cognitive and verbal self-expression. Christa also offers arts-based approaches to birth debriefing and birth trauma counselling. Limited concession rates and reduced fee places available, please enquire if you think you might be eligible.

Professional supervision

Christa offers individual clinical supervision for art therapists, social workers, and those in related fields who are curious to explore a deeper understanding of the intersections between mental health, embodiment and family violence. Supervision with Christa invites practitioners to explore sustainability, solidarity and accountability in their work; while also being led by the supervisee’s values and intentions. Christa draws on her own practice wisdom, lived experience, knowledge gained from working alongside people with lived experience of oppression and violence, as well as formal education.

Groups and workshops

Christa currently offers reflective spaces and group supervision for family violence, mental health and related sectors. Christa’s approach to groups honours the rich lived experience and expertise that individuals within groups carry, and prioritises the shared values and visions that group members hold. Utilising creative and somatic oriented processes, Christa draws on the strengths that individuals embody within their group identity to tenderly explore: relational dynamics and generative conflict to support group cohesion; workplace and systemic challenges; and opportunities for purposeful work practices.

Ready to work together?

Interested in working together? Fill out the enquiry form to get started! We can't wait to hear from you!