Yes. If you have a current Mental Health Treatment Plan from your GP, you may be eligible to receive a Medicare rebate for up to 10 individual psychology sessions per calendar year. These rebates help reduce the out-of-pocket cost for each session. You’ll need to provide a copy of your referral letter and MHTP prior to your first appointment.

Complex trauma describes an experience: repeated or prolonged harm, often within relationships, that shapes how a person comes to see themselves, others, and the world. Complex PTSD (CPTSD) is a formal diagnosis, recognised in the ICD-11, that describes one particular pattern of difficulties that can follow that kind of experience. In other words, complex trauma is what happened; complex PTSD is one way the impact can present. Many people have lived through complex trauma without meeting the criteria for CPTSD, and therapy can be valuable in either case.

Complex PTSD includes the core symptoms of PTSD along with three further areas of difficulty that reflect the relational and prolonged nature of the trauma.

The core PTSD symptoms are re-experiencing the trauma in the present, such as intrusive memories, flashbacks, or nightmares; avoiding people, places, conversations, or internal reminders of what happened; and a persistent sense of threat, which can show up as hypervigilance, feeling constantly on edge, or being easily startled.

Alongside these, complex PTSD involves what the ICD-11 calls disturbances in self-organisation. The first is difficulty regulating emotions, which may look like intense emotional reactions (which may not always be evident to others), feeling overwhelmed by small stressors, or, at the other end, feeling numb, shut down, or disconnected. The second is a persistently negative view of oneself, often experienced as deep shame, guilt, or a sense of being worthless, defeated, or fundamentally different from other people. The third is ongoing difficulty in relationships, such as struggling to trust, feeling distant from others even when you want closeness, or avoiding relationships altogether.

In everyday life, these symptoms often look less like a disorder and more like a personality that formed under pressure: perfectionism, people-pleasing, difficulty resting, a harsh inner critic, or a quiet conviction that something is wrong with you. Many people live with these patterns for years without connecting them to their history. Some can appear high functioning in many parts of their life. If parts of this description feel familiar, it does not mean you have complex PTSD, but it may be worth exploring with a psychologist who understands trauma.

No. A diagnosis of CPTSD requires a specific combination of difficulties. Under the ICD-11, this includes the three core features of PTSD: re-experiencing the trauma in the present (such as intrusive memories, flashbacks, or nightmares), avoidance of reminders, and a persistent sense of current threat (such as hypervigilance or being easily startled). Alongside these, CPTSD also involves three additional areas known as disturbances in self-organisation: ongoing difficulties with managing emotions, persistent beliefs about oneself as diminished, defeated, or worthless (often accompanied by shame or guilt), and lasting difficulties in sustaining relationships or feeling close to others.

Some people experience only some of these, or experience the impact of complex trauma in other ways, such as through depression, anxiety, chronic self-criticism, or difficulties with trust. A diagnosis can be useful for understanding and accessing support, but it is not a requirement for therapy, and the absence of one does not mean the impact of your experiences is any less real.

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) is an evidence-based therapy that helps the brain process traumatic memories that have remained "stuck" — stored with the same emotional intensity, body sensations, and beliefs they carried at the time. In EMDR, you briefly bring a memory to mind while engaging in bilateral stimulation, most often guided eye movements. This appears to support the brain's natural processing, so that the memory can be stored as something that happened in the past rather than something that still feels present.

For complex trauma, EMDR is adapted rather than applied straight off the shelf. The work begins with an extended preparation phase, building stability, resources, and trust before any memory processing starts. Processing itself is carefully paced and may target not only specific events but the themes that run beneath them, such as shame, powerlessness, or the belief that you were to blame. EMDR does not erase memories or change the facts of what happened. What changes is how the memory is held: it becomes something you can recall without being pulled back into it.

EMDR is one option, not an expectation. There is no pressure to engage in EMDR as part of therapy, and many clients are treated for trauma and complex trauma through talk therapy and schema therapy, which is my main modality. Whether and when EMDR becomes part of your treatment is a decision we make together, based on what suits you and what the work needs.

For complex trauma, EMDR is adapted rather than applied straight off the shelf. The work begins with an extended preparation phase, building stability, resources, and trust before any memory processing starts. Processing itself is carefully paced and may target not only specific events but the themes that run beneath them, such as shame, powerlessness, or the belief that you were to blame. EMDR does not erase memories or change the facts of what happened. What changes is how the memory is held: it becomes something you can recall without being pulled back into it.

Yes, many people feel that it is. EMDR is a psychological therapy, not a spiritual practice. It involves no meditation tradition, no altered states, and no spiritual framework of any kind. The eye movements are simply a way of engaging the brain's information-processing systems while you recall a memory, and you remain fully aware, and in control throughout.

Nothing in EMDR asks you to adopt beliefs, open yourself to anything, or set your faith aside. Many Christian clients describe the opposite experience: as traumatic memories lose their intensity, lies they had absorbed about themselves lose their grip, and their faith is easier to inhabit, not harder.

That said, there is no pressure to engage in EMDR as part of therapy. Many clients are treated for trauma and complex trauma through talk therapy and schema therapy, which is my main modality. If EMDR is not something you feel comfortable with, for any reason, that is completely respected, and it will not limit the care available to you. If you have questions or concerns, whether your own or ones raised by people in your community, you are welcome to bring them to a first appointment.

Schema therapy is an evidence-based approach developed for difficulties that are longstanding, deeply rooted, and often shaped by early experience — which is precisely the territory of complex trauma. It works from a simple premise: when core emotional needs go unmet, or when harm occurs in the relationships we depend on, we develop enduring patterns of feeling, believing, and relating. These patterns, called schemas, made sense as adaptations at the time. Later in life they can show up as a harsh inner critic, chronic self-sacrifice, difficulty trusting, perfectionism, emotional detachment, or a persistent sense of being defective or unlovable, often long after the original circumstances have passed.

Rather than treating symptoms in isolation, schema therapy works with these underlying patterns directly. It helps you understand where they came from, recognise them as they operate in your present life and relationships, and gradually loosen their hold. The work is relational at its core: change happens not only through insight but through the experience of the therapy relationship itself, where old patterns can be noticed, understood, and responded to differently. Experiential methods, such as imagery work, are also used to reach the emotional roots of schemas rather than only their surface logic.

This depth is what makes schema therapy well suited to complex trauma. It addresses not just what happened, but who you came to believe you were because of it. For many clients, that is where the most lasting change occurs.