Women's Wellbeing Counselling

Professional counselling, and psychotherapy can assist in easing distressing and overwhelming feelings such as anger, grief, loss, shame, anxiety, stress and depression.

Gentle guidance will support and encourage the choices and decisions you make, ensuring that any changes are uniquely right for you. Coaching in new skills may help to handle difficult situations, such as conflict resolution, anger management and better relationship communication. Relaxation and mindfulness can also help support your progress. Would you like to:

• Work through the intense pain of loss, grief and trauma?


• Let go of old issues and move forward with renewed energy?


• Be the self that you want to be?


• Feel more confident and at ease with your life?


• Embrace new possibilities?


• Improve your relationships with significant others?


• Feel more relaxed and have a sense of peace?

Strategies we may explore:

• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy – to understand the way you think and behave


• Strengths Based Therapy – to discover your internal and external strengths


• Family Systems Theory – to provide an insight about your view of the world


• Gestalt Psychotherapy – to get in touch with what is happening right now


• Symbol Work – to discover both conscious and unconscious themes, realities and future possibilities


• Ego State Therapy – to identify all personal aspects which are influencing your thoughts and behaviour


• EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) – to help relieve anxieties and make positive changes


• Relaxation techniques – to give you a sense of peace

Counselling appointments

One hour appointments are by negotiation. Longer appointments can be arranged.

About Carol Thackray

Carol has worked in the human services sector for more than 30 years as a Counsellor, Case Manager, Service Manager and Teacher for both Government and non-government organisations.

Carol’s counselling experience has been gained by working as a Child and Family Counsellor in sectors such as child sexual abuse, domestic and family violence and paediatric palliative care. Carol has also worked as a generalist counsellor, having an interest in all women’s issues and in particular matters relating to grief, loss, trauma, domestic and family violence, sexual violence and childhood sexual abuse.

Philosophy

Every woman has the right:

• To live without fear or persecution
  


• To be treated with dignity and respect
  


• To be treated equally in safe environments
  


• To be empowered to make her own decisions
  


• To be encouraged to reach her full potential
  

Qualifications

• Graduate Diploma in Further Education and Training (USQ)
  


• Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Education (USQ)
  


• Bachelor of Counselling Degree (UNE)
  


• Diploma of Community Welfare Work
  


• Diploma of Community Services Management
  


• Diploma of Youth Work
  


• Certificate in Gestalt Therapy
  


• Certificate in Ego State Therapy
  


• Certificate IV in Training and Assessment (TAE)
  


• Certificate IV in Disability Work
  


• Certificate III in Child Protection
  

Professional memberships

• Member Australian Counselling Association – level 4
  


• Member Australian Counselling Association – Grief and Loss Counselling College
  


• Member Australian Welfare and Community Workers
  


• Registered with Australian Register of Counsellors and Psychotherapists
  

Just for you

I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me. (Anna Quindlen)

I would much rather have regrets about not doing what people said, than regretting not doing what my heart led me to and wondering what life had been like if I'd just been myself. (Brittany Renee)

You are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life ... Your entire life ... Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul. (Anna Quindlen)

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." You must do the thing you think you cannot do. (Eleanor Roosevelt)

Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn. (Harriet Beecher Stowe)

Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, “ I will try again tomorrow.” (Mary Anne Radmacher)

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. (Marie Curie)

I am Me. In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me. Everything that comes out of me is authentically mine, because I alone chose it -- I own everything about me: my body, my feelings, my mouth, my voice, all my actions, whether they be to others or myself. I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears. I own my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes. Because I own all of me, I can become intimately acquainted with me. By so doing, I can love me and be friendly with all my parts. I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other aspects that I do not know -- but as long as I am friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously and hopefully look for solutions to the puzzles and ways to find out more about me. However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is authentically me. If later some parts of how I looked, sounded, thought, and felt turn out to be unfitting, I can discard that which is unfitting, keep the rest, and invent something new for that which I discarded. I can see, hear, feel, think, say, and do. I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive, and to make sense and order out of the world of people and things outside of me. I own me, and therefore, I can engineer me. I am me, and I am Okay. (Virginia Satir)