Online Individual Therapy in Melbourne.

The work

The work I do is relational and focused on pattern. I don't run intake checklists. I don't assign homework. I pay attention to what happens in the session. The moments when something shifts or goes flat. The pattern that keeps showing up underneath the problem. Most people already know their own story. They still keep landing in the same place. What's missing is someone watching in real time, someone who can name what you cannot see from inside it. More on how I work, and how I work with couples.

The case for working with me from Melbourne

I am a US-trained psychodynamic therapist, online, private: no Medicare item numbers, no GP gateway, no cap at ten, nothing entering an Australian record. My fee is comparable to what Melbourne private practice costs after the rebate runs out, which for weekly work is most of the year. The time zones are friendlier than they look: morning sessions in Melbourne land before your workday, and I can schedule across time zones. When a local clinical psychologist, a prescriber, or the Medicare route is the better tool, the free fifteen-minute call is where I will tell you so.

What people bring to online therapy

The people I work with in English come for a wide range of reasons: anxiety, depression, stress and burnout, anger management, grief and loss, relationship difficulties, loneliness, self-esteem issues, procrastination, sleep problems, attachment patterns, self-sabotage, perfectionism, identity questions, and existential concerns. Online counseling makes this work possible from wherever you are, whether you need an English-speaking therapist, a virtual counselor, or simply someone who can work in your language at a depth that matters.

How it works

Sessions are online via secure video call. I work with individuals and couples (60 minutes). Before your first session, we have a free 15-minute call to see if this feels like the right fit for you.

Melbourne's inner weather

Melbourne is the most self-searching city in Australia, and it earned the habit. The lockdown years left a real residue here. Marriages that absorbed two years of closeness. Careers that quietly lost their plot. A general tiredness the city's coffee-and-culture identity papers over. The internationals I see from Melbourne share a particular shape. The British and Irish who came for the lifestyle. The Americans in tech and consulting. The returnee Australians who are foreigners in their own city now. The move was right. The life is good. And the distance is doing slow structural work underneath. Fourteen thousand kilometers from every old friend turns a couple into each other's entire support system. Small frictions become load-bearing ones. The inner north works through this over natural wine. Bayside works through it over school runs. Both end up in rooms like mine.

Medicare therapy in Melbourne: the deal and its edges

Australia's Better Access scheme is real money: with a Mental Health Treatment Plan from your GP, Medicare rebates up to ten individual sessions a calendar year, currently 145.25 dollars back per session with a clinical psychologist and 98.95 with a registered psychologist, telehealth included. The edges show quickly. Inner-Melbourne practices commonly charge 255 to 280 dollars, so the gap runs 110 to 160 per session even inside the plan. The cap is ten, reset each January, reviewed at six. Bulk-billing psychologists are scarce, waitlists at the well-regarded practices are long, and the plan itself puts a mental health item number into your Medicare history, which some professionals mind. The wider Australian picture is on my Australia page.

For ongoing weekly work, the arithmetic converges: past session ten you are paying full private rates anyway, at which point the relevant questions become fit, depth, and schedule rather than rebate.

Questions people ask from Melbourne