Hello, I’m Amy
I’ve been working as a social worker for seventeen years and as a counsellor for twelve of those years, specialising in working with people who have lived experience of trauma. I’ve studied social work and psychology, and I am an accredited Mental Health Social Worker. I have a masters degree in narrative therapy, which is a type of counselling or psychotherapy with particular ways of listening and responding to problems that people share in therapy.
I live and have grown up on Dharawal land from a young age. It’s important to me to honour the people whose lands we occupy, to acknowledge that it is and always will be Aboriginal land, to witness and learn from their ongoing resistance of colonisation, and to try to live in ways that honour Country, First Nations sovereignty and truth-telling.
I’ve been developing my therapeutic practice over a number of years through direct experience and continuous study. I’m committed to providing high quality services with a focus on ethical and reflective practice.
I feel rewarded and energised by having therapeutic conversations with people who are responding to problems in diverse and inspiring ways. These conversations enrich my life and help me to grow as a therapist and as a person. It’s an honour to be trusted with someone’s story and I treat this trust with utmost respect and care.
What is
narrative therapy?
Narrative therapy is a type of counselling or psychotherapy which:
· Regards the person seeking counselling as someone actively responding to problems in ways that reflect what is most valued and precious to them, honouring people’s own knowledge, worldviews, cultural practices and heritage, and ways of seeing, knowing and relating
· Changes the conventions of the patient-therapist relationship from one where the therapist is the central maker of meaning and insight, to one where the individual is the maker of meaning, with the support of the therapist. Narrative therapy places the experience, values, hopes and plans of the person seeking therapy at the centre of all conversations.
· Seeks to notice the systemic and political influences on people’s lives, by inviting people to name the dominant ideas and power structures that might be affecting their lives – including forms of injustice that relate to someone’s gender, culture, sexuality, economic or other social status.
· Is not interested in labelling, blaming, pathologising or totalising people.
Why is it called
'narrative therapy'?
Narrative therapy sees people as the central characters - and writers - of their own story, with the opportunity to re-write (re-author) their lives according to their preferred narrative.
Often the way we make meaning is shaped by significant power imbalances. The meanings attributed to the events of our lives may not be ones that fit with our preferred ways of living, or that are sustaining of our wellbeing. We might see ourselves and others according to a single story, linking events together according to a theme that dominates our lives and relationships.
Narrative therapy invites us to see the multi-storied nature of life, by externalising problems (seeing ourselves as separate to problems), by appreciating the plurality and diversity of meaning, and to re-author our lives by making meaning of life’s events in ways that fit with our preferred ways of being, relating and seeing ourselves.
