Meet Marie-Pierre

I have a Masters’ degree in Social Work (UNSW), a Graduate Diploma in Couple and Family Therapy (UNSW), a Bachelor of Social Work degree (Hons 1, UNSW), as well as qualifications in the following:

• Accredited Mental Health Social Worker (Provider No: 4095823F)
• Certified Sensorimotor Psychotherapist
• Advanced Gestalt counselling certificate
• Certificate in Group work facilitation
• Diploma in Clinical Hypnotherapy
• Master Practitioner in NLP (Neuro- Linguistic Programming)
• Certificate in Supervision

I am passionate about helping others with their life challenges as well as working through my own. I have worked in the public sector as a social worker and counsellor working with people dealing with serious mental health issues and trauma, veterans and their families, acute admissions psychiatric patients and victims of adult and childhood sexual assault.

I am thoroughly committed to professional training and personal development and I have explored a range of approaches to therapy. I use these in my work as a solo practitioner. These approaches include Interpersonal Therapy, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, Gestalt Therapy, Hypnosis, Group Therapy, Process Oriented Psychology, Somatic Psychotherapy, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, EMDR, TRE and Brain Spotting. In addition to having a Masters’ Degree in Social Work specialising in Couple and Family Therapy, I have also pursued training in working with couples from a number of different perspectives in order to work with a broad range of relationship issues. I have trained with and incorporate ideas about relationships from the work of John Gottman, Stan Tatkin, Ellyn Bader, and David Wallin.

I incorporate ‘energy therapies’ which have their base in using Traditional Chinese Medicine principles as part of helping people regulate emotions and troublesome thoughts. These include ‘tapping’ such as Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), TAT (Tapas Acupressure Technique) , BSFF (Be Set Free Fast) and SET (Simple Energy Techniques), and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). I have a long standing interest in meditation and natural therapies.

As a first generation French/Australian migrant, I have a particular interest in working with cross-cultural issues and I am a fluent French speaker. As a first generation migrant, I am very aware of the particular challenges that go with settling into a culture that is vastly different to one’s own native country. I am aware of the challenges, opportunities and losses that come with the experience of migration, and know them to be identity and life defining. In my own experience and observation, I see that the journey every family and individual took to come to this country will have a lasting effect, of which we are not always consciously aware. I understand the effect of cultural relocation to be even greater if one has been forced to come to another country for political or economic refugee reasons.

I am a member of the Australian Association of Social Workers and I am bound by its code of ethics. I am also under the direct oversight of the Health Care Complaints Commission as are all health related practitioners and am bound to abide by its code of conduct.