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PRICING

  • The cost for a 55-minute individual session is $235 (Medicare rebate available)

  • Longer 85-minute processing sessions for EMDR or IFS are priced at $350 

  • Concession fees are available for eligible clients. The cost for these sessions is $215

  • Supervision sessions (55-minutes) are priced at $220 plus GST 

If you receive a Mental Health Care Plan from your GP, you are entitled to a Medicare rebate of $136.35 per session for 10 sessions per calendar year meaning you pay a gap of $98.65. The full session fee is payable at the time of your appointment and Medicare will reimburse your nominated bank account within 48 hours.
Alternatively, some private health care funds will also cover a portion of the fee, however this will depend on your individual fund and plan.
**If you have or suspect you might have an eating disorder, you may be eligible for 40 Medicare rebated session per calendar year**

Image by Daniil Kuželev

Eye-Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing

Eye-Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing (EMDR) is a form of therapy that posits that symptoms of distress are often caused by unresolved difficult experiences from the past. These experiences can be extreme single events (e.g., a car accident, an assault; PTSD) or the cumulative result of difficult childhood, adolescent and early adulthood experiences (i.e., complex PTSD).

The core theory of EMDR is that the human mind has the natural capacity to heal from wounding experiences. As with the body, the mind naturally heals when a wound has been cleared of impediments and in EMDR this is achieved via special techniques that allow for the processing and clearing of painful memories. Specifically, EMDR uses a structured 8 step process to access difficult memories,  which are stuck in an unprocessed state in the brain. Through unique experiential exercises the brain is able to work through the memory in a comprehensive way, extracting the core meaning from the experience and allowing the memory to move from short to long term storage in the brain.

What may take many years to heal in traditional forms of therapy can be resolved in a much shorter time frame using these techniques. There is a large body of evidence supporting EMDR, leading important organisations like the American Psychiatric Association, the World Health Organisation and the US Department of Defence to identify EMDR as a treatment that works for complex psychological difficulties.

EMDR

Schema Therapy (ST) is an integrative form of therapy that brings together psychoanalytic theory, attachment theory, cognitive behavioural and mindfulness therapies, Gestalt Therapy and other experiential forms of therapy. ST focuses on the impact of unmet early life core needs (e.g., for love, atunement and validation) on our sense of self-worth, how we relate socially and how we experience the world (e.g., as unsafe). ST has strong evidence in treating the impacts of early life difficulties, which are often the underlying driving cause of many common mental health difficulties, like depression, anxiety, chronic worry and substance use.

The core idea of ST is that our identify is made up of a number of different parts of self. Some parts of us hold our painful, vulnerable feelings, others can be critical, harsh and demanding, while others have functioned to try to protect us. In ST, many of our life difficulties are thought to be the result of our protective parts attempting to protect our deeper vulnerable parts, but in doing so, they block us from experiencing a fulfilling and rich life.

ST focuses on developing and strengthening our "healthy adult" self, which is naturally self-compassionate, wise and caring, while giving us more access to our "happy child" part that is naturally playful, creative, energetic and spontaneous. Importantly, ST uses experiential techniques to safely access our different parts in order to befriend the underlying vulnerable parts and heal the wounds we all carry.

Schema Therapy

ST
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Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a form of therapy that focuses on learning varied mindfulness skills and identifying one’s most important values in order to live a richer, fuller life. The skills component of ACT includes learning a range of mindfulness skills in order to better respond to patterns of difficult thoughts and feelings. Mindfulness is a bit of a cultural buzz word at the moment, but it essentially means acting skilfully by turning attention to the present moment of our lives with openness, curiosity and non-judgment. This is a useful approach to our lives as it allows us to step back from patterns of difficult thinking and feeling and not react in our usual rapid, habitual ways, which often contribute to our difficulties in life.

ACT has a strong emphasis on identifying our most important values as a means to find direction and meaning in life and to connect to our inner motivation and energy to engage our lives fully. Both the mindfulness skills and values work are woven together to help get unstuck from entrenched patterns, while moving towards those elements of life that are most meaningful.

ACT

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) is an effective approach to psychotherapy for a range of mental and emotional health issues, including anxiety and depression. CBT aims to help us to identify and challenge unhelpful thoughts and to learn practical self-help strategies. These strategies are designed to bring about immediate positive changes in your quality of life. CBT can be useful for anyone who needs support to challenge unhelpful thoughts that are preventing them from reaching their goals or living the life they want to live. CBT aims to show us how our thinking affects your mood. It can teach us to think in a less negative way about ourselves and our life. It is based on the understanding that thinking negatively is a habit that, like any other habit, can be broken.

Image by Ajay Karpur

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy

CBT
Image by Priscilla Du Preez

Psychedelic Integration and "Bad Trip" Processing

There is strong evidence to suggest humans have been experimenting with psychedelic compounds for millennia and at minimum hundreds of years. Although private psychedelic use is technically illegal, it's use is widespread in legitimate research studies examining their healing potential in psychotherapeutic contexts. Australia will be the first country to decriminalise the use of MDMA with specific therapeutic populations and it is likely psilocybin will soon follow suit. In addition, individuals are making their own conscious choices to experiment with varied compounds irrespective of the current legality.

As such, it is important that there are spaces where individuals can feel safe to report their experiences free of judgment and find assistance when integrating the often powerful experiences that psychedelics can elicit. At FCP Adelaide, we utilise various therapeutic tools to assist clients in their integration work, including Internal Family Systems (IFS). Brad received training in psychedelic integration from St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne, who have been conducting a long term research study administering psilocybin in a palliative care cohort. As part of this process, he was fortunate to be trained by Dr Bill Richards from John Hopkins Psychedelic Research Unit.

ISTDP

Open Dialogue is both a way of structuring mental health services to be more responsive to people’s needs, and a philosophical approach to being with people in distress, being in dialogue with the person’s social network. Open Dialogue originated in Finland in the 1980s and has been spreading around the world, partly because the results have been impressive, including much lower rates of medication use and hospitalisation..

In practice, Open Dialogue is structured around ‘network meetings’ which bring together whoever might have a useful perspective on what is happening, usually with at least two Open Dialogue practitioners. In practice, this often means family members, but it can include whoever the person feels would be useful, for example a neighbour, case worker, teacher, or friend. The idea is that there are lots of different perspectives and it can be extremely helpful to talk together, to listen to all of these different perspectives. Most decisions are made in network meetings which allows the conversation to remain open.

Image by Charles Deluvio

Open Dialogue

Open Dialogue
Dancing Hands

Internal Family Systems

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a form of therapy that says the mind is not singular, that we are made up of multiple "parts" of self rather than there just being one single consistent self. When we examine our own lives we can see our varied parts in action easily. For example, for most of us, the self that we are when we are speaking with a trusted loved one is very different from the self we inhabit when we are speaking with a new group of people or an authority figure. Similarly, one moment we might be in a highly self critical part, another moment a part that sacrifices our needs for others, another a part that feels zoned out, detached or dissociated. This multiplicity of parts is considered a completely normal aspect of being human.

 

As we grow through infancy, into childhood, adolescence and young adulthood some of us experience mistreatment and our core needs are not met adequately by our care givers, peers and community. As such, our parts are often forced into extreme roles, which allow us to survive and to navigate our early life experiences. However, our parts are often stuck in these roles as we move through our lives and what were once parts playing essential roles in our early environment, now function to block us from growing and moving forward in key life areas.

IFS therapy reveals to us that beneath our multiplicity of parts lies a calm, compassionate, creative, curious and courageous Self. This fundamental Self is undamaged by our life experiences no matter how severe and can be readily accessed through therapy. When we can reconnect to our deepest Self we have great capacity for compassionately getting to know our many parts, and healing and growth arises naturally from this space.

Internal Family Systems
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