For professionals
My Clinical Approach
A relational, attachment-informed, trauma-aware approach to perinatal mental health — grounded in a strengths perspective that recognises mothers as full psychological beings, not just caregivers.
Framework
Motherhood as Psychological Transformation
The transition to motherhood is not simply a life event — it is a profound psychological, relational, emotional, and identity shift. Many women enter motherhood carrying intense expectations to cope instinctively, stay endlessly available, and "naturally" know how to mother. Yet the complexity of maternal experience is often unseen.
My work is relational, attachment-informed, trauma-aware, and grounded in a strengths perspective that recognises mothers as full psychological beings — not just caregivers.
Understanding
What Shapes Maternal Distress
Maternal distress is shaped by a woman's history, relationships, nervous system, identity, social context, and cultural narratives. My approach draws on contemporary understandings of matrescence, attachment theory, infant mental health, trauma theory, and relational psychotherapy.
I am particularly interested in the emotional and identity shifts that arise during pregnancy, birth, early parenthood, and following perinatal trauma or psychiatric illness.
Approach
Beyond Symptom Reduction
Rather than focusing solely on symptoms, I support women to make sense of their experiences, deepen self-understanding, strengthen reflective functioning, and rebuild connection with themselves, their babies, and their relationships.
Areas of Focus
- Matrescence and identity change
- Perinatal anxiety and depression
- Unpacking birth stories and integrating difficult experiences
- Postpartum psychosis recovery
- Perfectionism, self-criticism, maternal guilt
- Attachment and the parent–infant relationship
- Emotional regulation and nervous system overwhelm
- Maternal rage, ambivalence, grief, and loss
- Relationship strain and emotional labour
- Rebuilding trust after acute mental health experiences
Therapeutic Modalities
- Attachment-based and relational psychotherapy
- Psychodynamic and reflective approaches
- Trauma-informed care
- Infant mental health frameworks
- Mentalisation-based thinking
- Strengths-based and family systems perspectives
- CBT, ACT, and compassion-focused approaches
- Psychoeducation and nervous system regulation
- Parent–infant and dyadic models
While modalities matter, the foundation of meaningful therapy is the experience of being emotionally held, understood, and accompanied through periods of vulnerability.
Refer a client or connect
I welcome referrals from GPs, psychiatrists, psychologists, midwives, maternal child health nurses, and other allied health professionals.