PROFESSIONAL Business directory

Michelle Janssen is a Gottman-trained couples counsellor and PACFA Clinical Member based in Paddington, Brisbane, where she runs Brisbane Couples Counselling from her practice at 108 Latrobe Terrace. With a Master of Counselling and Level 3 Gottman training, she has built a practice centred on one clear focus: helping couples find their way back to each other, regardless of what has pulled them apart.

Michelle works with couples navigating some of the hardest moments a relationship can face, from communication breakdown and recurring conflict to affair recovery, intimacy concerns, and the transition to parenthood. She draws on the Gottman Method, a research-grounded approach that looks at the quality of a couple's friendship, how they manage conflict, and how they build shared meaning together, and she brings particular depth to affair recovery work through specialised training in treating affairs and trauma as well as addiction in relationships. Her practice is LGBTQIA+ affirming and welcoming of all relationship structures, and she is recognised by a range of private health insurers including Medibank, Bupa, ahm, and HCF.

Michelle came to counselling at 30, after an undergraduate arts degree and a search for work that felt genuinely meaningful, and she found her direction when she began speaking publicly as a Beyond Blue Ambassador about her own experience with anxiety. Those conversations, with CEOs, tradies, students, and government workers, showed her what becomes possible when people are willing to share not just their highlight reels but what's really happening behind closed doors, and that insight shapes everything about how she works with couples today. She holds a firm belief that the health of a relationship ripples outward into every corner of a couple's life, which is why she also commits to monthly clinical supervision and her own therapy so she can be as present as possible for the people in her room.

Elaine Tan is a counsellor based in Mont Albert North, Melbourne, working with couples and individuals through Better Days Counselling, with sessions available both in person and online across the Melbourne area. She specialises in relationship counselling at all stages, with a particular focus on the transition to parenthood, alongside individual work for people navigating life transitions, identity, and personal growth. Her approach draws on CBT and the Gottman Method, and is grounded in the belief that understanding the patterns shaping how we think, feel, and relate is where meaningful change begins.

Elaine works with couples who feel disconnected, overwhelmed, or stuck in cycles they cannot seem to break on their own, and with individuals who have spent years holding themselves together and are ready to put some of that weight down. Her focus on the new parent journey is especially distinctive: she recognises that the arrival of a baby shifts everything between two people, and that the couple at the centre of a growing family often gets left behind when the support and attention flows only toward the child. For individuals, she explores the patterns and experiences that shape how a person relates to themselves and others, with space to move at whatever pace feels right.

Elaine came to this work through her own lived experience, having grown up navigating the tension between cultures, an unpredictable home environment, and the exhausting business of holding two versions of herself together at once. It was discovering psychology that gave her a framework to make sense of her own story, and her career since has taken her from the Department of Justice, where she worked alongside people on parole, to youth work, where she kept seeing the same patterns playing out earlier in the story. Becoming a parent herself sharpened her focus further, and she has built her practice around the conviction that when couples can communicate, regulate, and show up for each other, they give their children something that follows them for life.

Deborah Campbell runs Back on Track Counselling and Psychotherapy in Tewantin on the Sunshine Coast, where she practises as an ACA Level 4 and PACFA Registered Clinical Counsellor and Psychotherapist with 35 years behind her. She is known for trauma work that goes past keeping people safe in the room and moves toward genuine processing, healing, and post-traumatic growth. Her practice is person-centred and trauma-informed, and she welcomes clients of every age, background, culture, and identity.

Deb works with people who are ready to move from surviving to thriving, including those carrying trauma, those navigating anxiety or depression, and the many clients who come to her late-diagnosed and neurodivergent. She draws on EMDR, somatic therapy, DBT, CBT, and ACT, combining cognitive approaches with body and nervous-system work so the plan fits the person rather than forcing the person into a plan. For clients who find words hard, she also offers expressive therapies such as symbol and sand tray work that open up non-verbal ways to explore complex emotions, and her sessions can run up to 90 minutes so there is room to do the work and settle before heading back to family, study, or the workplace.

Deb began in 1990 as a youth crisis outreach counsellor in Newcastle, having moved there from her hometown of Sydney, and it was in that work she found her calling to support people through their hardest seasons. She has studied and worked her way up the East Coast ever since, completing her Master of Counselling in 2016 and adding hundreds of hours of advanced training as a Certified Clinical Trauma Professional, a Certified Clinical Anxiety Treatment Professional, and a Certified Autism Spectrum Disorder Clinical Specialist. What stays with you when you read her words is the reassurance that in 35 years she has never met a client who was too much or too extreme to work through things together, and that belief in everyone's capacity for healing is the thread running through her whole approach.

Peta Thompson is a registered trauma counsellor and the founder of Saltbush Counselling, an online practice based in Australia that works exclusively with women who have spent a long time holding everything together while putting everyone else first. Peta offers individual counselling via telehealth, available to women right across Australia, and her work is focused on helping women who feel disconnected from themselves, stuck in repeating cycles, or shaped by the expectations and needs of others rather than their own.

The women Peta works with often come to her carrying the cumulative weight of childhood experiences, relationships that left them doubting themselves, or significant life transitions like parenthood or ageing. Her approach is person-centred and draws on a range of evidence-based modalities including CBT, DBT, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Narrative Therapy, and Solution-Focused Therapy, all integrated in a way that is tailored to each individual rather than applied as a one-size formula. Peta holds membership with the Australian Counselling Association, and she begins every new therapeutic relationship with a free 15-minute call so women can find their feet before committing to anything.

What shapes Peta's practice most is her own story. She knows what it is to live without a clear sense of self, following the right path and still feeling like none of it fits, and she reached a point where she chose to understand the cycles she had been repeating and find her way back to herself. That decision became the foundation of Saltbush Counselling and the reason she works the way she does, not just as a clinician but as someone who has lived the experience and knows what becomes possible on the other side of it.

Sarah Roberts is a counsellor and grief specialist based in Brisbane, Australia, and the founder of The Empty Cradle, a practice she has been running since 2017 with a sole focus on women who are childless not by choice. She offers online counselling to women across Australia and New Zealand, working with those who wanted to become mothers and are now navigating the grief, identity shifts, and relational complexity that involuntary childlessness brings. With over 30 years of counselling experience and more than a decade working exclusively in this specialisation, Sarah brings both professional depth and lived understanding to every conversation.

The women Sarah works with often arrive carrying something that has been difficult to name, let alone speak about. Her counselling draws on grief therapy, humanistic and person-centred approaches, narrative and existential therapy, and her own framework, Core Self Reclamation Therapy, which supports women to untangle the cultural messages about womanhood that can become amplified by childlessness and to rebuild a steadier, more grounded relationship with themselves. Sessions are offered online via secure video, with an initial 90-minute conversation and ongoing sessions of 60 to 75 minutes, designed to move at a pace that feels right for each woman.

What sets Sarah apart is that she is living the experience she works with. She began sharing her own story publicly in 2014, at a time when voices for the involuntarily childless were rare, and her ongoing dialogue with women in this community continues to shape her practice. She has been featured across Australian media including ABC Australia, Channel 7, Channel 10, and Mamamia, and the Fertility Society of Australia, reflecting the significance of the work she is doing to bring visibility and care to an experience that is too often carried in silence.

Stephanie Green is a registered psychologist based on the NSW Central Coast, working with adults who feel overwhelmed, stuck, or hard on themselves, and who are often trying to make sense of ADHD, neurodivergence, or the long-term effects of difficult earlier experiences. She offers telehealth sessions available Australia-wide, as well as in-person support across the Central Coast including Tuggerah and Erina, and she holds 17 years of experience in practice alongside full membership with the Australian Association of Psychologists Incorporated and registration with the Psychology Board of Australia.

Stephanie works with adults navigating diagnosed or suspected ADHD and AuDHD, including those who have spent years pushing hard while still feeling behind, shutting down under pressure, or cycling through patterns they haven't been able to explain. Her approach draws on trauma-informed therapy, EMDR, and ADHD-specific support, and she offers three distinct ways to work together: individual counselling focused on emotional regulation and getting unstuck, comprehensive ADHD assessments with written reports and guidance on next steps, and an ADHD Skills Group for those wanting a practical, task-based space to build momentum alongside others. Referrals are welcome via GP Mental Health Care Plans, private health, WorkCover, and CTP insurance.

What grounds Stephanie's practice is her own lived experience of ADHD, which shapes both the way she understands her clients and the way she works with them: practical, non-judgemental, and focused on what actually helps rather than what should theoretically work. Before training as a psychologist she worked in Human Resources, sitting with people through hard situations and finding that in-the-moment support was never quite enough to create lasting change, and that recognition was what eventually led her to the deeper clinical work she does now.

Daisy Grodzki is an Accredited Mental Health Social Worker and the founder of ROR Therapy (Rhythm of Regulation), a neurodivergent-affirming practice based in North Hobart, Tasmania, offering in-person sessions as well as online support. With over a decade of experience across the Netherlands and Australia, including backgrounds in youth justice, mental health services, and private practice, Daisy works with adults and couples navigating ADHD, Autism, AuDHD, late diagnosis, burnout, masking, emotional dysregulation, trauma, and relationship complexity, blending evidence-based modalities including ACT, CBT, DBT-informed skills, and EFT with somatic, embodiment-based, and nature-based therapy approaches.

What makes ROR Therapy distinctly its own is the way Daisy has designed the practice around the nervous system rather than the diagnostic label. Sessions can take place in a warm, cosy sit-and-talk room, a spacious movement and mindfulness space, or outdoors through walk-and-talk therapy in nature, because Daisy understands that neurodivergent brains regulate differently and that a one-size therapy room is not always the right fit. For couples, she draws on the Developmental Model, a non-blaming framework that helps partners understand each other's needs and communication styles, with particular attunement to how neurodivergence shapes relational dynamics. She also offers workplace wellbeing consultancy for organisations looking to build more neurodivergent-affirming environments.

Daisy's own story is woven through everything she offers. Born in the Netherlands, she spent her early years outdoors and covered in mud before training as a vet nurse, then returning to study social work, and it was during those university years that she first began recognising her own brain as different, long before she had the language for it. After graduating she travelled extensively, kitesurfed, ran a guesthouse in South Africa, and eventually found her way to Tasmania, where something in her exhaled, and where she now surfs before sessions, mountain bikes after them, and does this work in a way that is grounded, embodied, and unmistakably her own.

Soothe 2 Shine Counselling is a Gippsland-based counselling practice located in Traralgon, Victoria, founded and led by Gail Macfarlane, a qualified counsellor and case manager with over 25 years of experience working with individuals, couples, families, and children across a wide range of presenting concerns. The practice serves clients of all ages and offers a team-based approach that includes individual counselling alongside professional supervision for practitioners in helping roles, and it accepts referrals through NDIS, VOCAT, Telus Health, Converge International, and the Windermere Victims Assistance Program.

Gail's career has taken her through Child Protection with the Department of Health and Human Services, professional counselling with the Gippsland Centre Against Sexual Assault, and a Student Wellbeing Coordinator role at Traralgon College before establishing Soothe 2 Shine in private practice. The practice's speciality areas include trauma, abuse and sexual assault counselling, anxiety and depression, grief and loss, children's and youth counselling, and creative therapies, with play and art-based approaches offered for children and young people who don't yet have the language to describe what they're carrying. The team also includes counsellor Ben Tunks, making it a small but established practice with genuine depth across its service areas.

What gives Soothe 2 Shine its grounding is Gail's two-plus decades of frontline work in some of the most demanding areas of the helping professions, including child protection and sexual assault response, before stepping into private practice to offer that same depth of expertise in a more personal, therapeutic context. The practice is registered with the Australian Counselling Association and holds a genuine focus on serving the Gippsland community, offering a local, accessible option for people in regional Victoria who need experienced, trauma-informed support.

Sandrine Lonchampt is a counsellor and psychotherapist based in Sydney, NSW, offering online grief counselling and psychotherapy via secure telehealth to clients across Australia in both English and French. She holds a Master of Counselling and Psychotherapy, a Postgraduate Certificate in Counselling, and additional diplomas in mental health and counselling, and was awarded Best Clinical Skills NSW by the Australian College of Applied Psychology in 2026. She is a registered provisional counsellor with PACFA, practising under professional supervision, and no referral or Mental Health Care Plan is required to book with her.

Sandrine's practice, Colibri Counselling and Psychotherapy, is built around grief, loss, and life transitions, and she works with teenagers, adults, and older adults navigating bereavement, anticipatory grief, suicide loss, disenfranchised grief, trauma, serious illness, existential concerns, migration and displacement, separation, and emotional dysregulation. Her approach draws on existential and narrative therapy, creative and experiential practices, and a deeply relational way of working where the client always leads, with a free 25-minute consultation offered as a starting point for anyone uncertain about whether therapy is right for them or whether this space is the right fit.

What makes Sandrine's background genuinely distinctive is the breadth of life she brings to the room. She was born in the French Alps, has lived across Europe, Polynesia, New Zealand, and the United States before making Australia home in 2008, trained originally as an architect with a major in Sociology, then moved through Montessori teaching and the arts before eventually finding her way to counselling through witnessing people navigate loss and the search for meaning, including years running Artspark, a community art studio in Rozelle, NSW. That arc, from architecture to art to therapy, shaped a counsellor who understands that grief and identity are inseparable, and that sometimes what a person most needs is someone who can sit with the complexity without rushing toward a resolution.