Meet our current team
I'm Michelle 🙂
Professional training and experience:
Bachelor of Social Work (Honours) and Graduate Diploma of Relationship Counselling. Experience as a social worker, counsellor, and a clinical supervisor.
I identify as an anti-oppressive practice social worker, counsellor, reflective & relational supervisor, and facilitator for change. I’ve worked mainly in NGOs providing counselling and supervision/training, and in tertiary education teaching social work and counselling subjects.
Personal perspective, understanding and lived experience: I’m a second generation Chinese-Australian settler, Queer, neurodivergent, and mostly able-bodied fat cisgender woman that lives with chronic pain/health conditions.
I bring wisdom and empathy from my lived experiences of unwell mental health, use medication for my mental health, poverty and homelessness, family violence, racial violence, structural oppression, and being failed by services.
I recognise my privilege and reflect on being sighted and hearing, middle class, Australian citizenship, having tertiary education, stable private housing, food security, mostly able-bodied, and consistent access to the internet. I regularly see my own therapist and believe every therapist should.
Click the button below to find out more about me as a social worker, cat lover and person:
This is Lindsay 🙂
关于我 
你好呀，我是 Lindsay 
我是一名注册社会工作者，有临床工作和心理咨询经验，也曾为不同年龄、性取向和文化背景的人提供咨询支持。我会说流利的普通话和粤语
。我也很希望运用自己的专业经验和个人经历，为酷儿及移民社群提供支持。身份、文化、家庭、关系，还有“我到底属于哪里”——这些事情有时候真的挺复杂的。
我觉得，咨询不应该是我坐在那里告诉你“你应该怎么做”。你才是最了解自己的人。我更希望和你一起慢慢理清发生了什么，看看什么对你来说重要，以及你想要的生活是什么样子。我不能替你走这段路，但我可以陪你一起走。 
我会结合认知行为疗法、接纳与承诺疗法、动机式访谈 以及其他适合你的方法和技巧，但不会把你硬套进某一种治疗模式。每个人都不一样，所以我们可以一起探索、一起调整，找到真正适合你的方式。
你不需要准备好，也不需要知道自己到底该说什么。
带着现在的你来就好。我们从这里开始。
Heya, my name is Lindsay. I’m a social worker passionate about creating a space where you can show up exactly as you are.
I have clinical and counselling experience working with people from diverse backgrounds, including culturally and linguistically diverse communities. I speak fluent Mandarin and Cantonese , and I’m a proud member of the queer and migrant community 
. My own lived experience has also shaped the way I understand people, relationships, culture and the systems we live in.
My approach is warm, curious and person-centred. I believe you are the expert in your own life — I’m not here to tell you how to live it! Instead, I see counselling as walking alongside you , making sense of what’s happening, exploring what matters to you, and working towards the changes you want to make.
I provide individual and relationship counselling 
, supporting concerns such as feeling overwhelmed, navigating life transitions, identity and relationship difficulties, parenting struggles, communication and conflict. 
I also take a systemic approach, recognising how relationships, family, culture and our broader environment can shape what we experience.
I draw on evidence-informed approaches including ACT and MI 
, while keeping sessions flexible and tailored to you. In relationship counselling, we can explore patterns, boundaries and communication, creating space for greater understanding and healthier ways of relating.
You don’t need to have everything figured out before reaching out. Come as you are. We’ll take it from there.
Introducing Deb 🙂
Professional training and experience: Deb has a Bacheler/Masters of Sociology, Bachelor of Social Work, Bachelor of Applied & Organisational Leadership, Grad Cert in Higher Education (Adult Learning), a 3 year Post Graduate Diploma in Psychotherapy, and is currently studying her Bachelor of Law (LLB).
Deb’s first counselling job was in 1992 as a Domestic Violence Counsellor in Broken Hill, and she’s continued to work in counselling, social work, and program coordination/project management for NGOs, government/child protection, universities, local area health
districts, in both regional and metro areas including in senior management and advisory roles.
Deb’s trained as a psychodynamic psychotherapist; narrative therapist; person-centred counsellor and therapist. She uses creative methodologies in her work and is passionate about sand tray and play therapies. Deb bring a trauma lens to her work and value anti-oppressive and culturally responsive practice.
Deb provides individual, couple, family and group therapies with children, young people and adults. She also provide assessments, counselling, case-planning and reports. This includes NDIS, victims compensation, immigration, workers compensation and other medico-legal matters. Based in Sydney, Deb is available to work in regional and remote areas or using tele-health.
Personal perspective, understanding and lived experience: It is nice to meet you, my name is Deb.
I am a senior leader, social worker, psychotherapist, policy analyst, and work-based educator. I am also a neurodivergent queer non-bio mum, law student, and active advocate in Queer and Aboriginal communities.
Sometimes I have been asked what is the most interesting thing I have ever learned in a workplace environment. Far and above, the answer is ‘how to lift a sheep’.
My first role in human services was a sole practice, domestic and family violence counselling position in the NSW Outback. After weeks of trying to encourage remote communities to come along to a domestic violence community education session, without luck- I decided to try a new approach.
I teamed up with a physiotherapist and together we advertised a session on ‘back care for farmers’. Suddenly the seats were full, and we had an audience that traditional recruitment methods weren’t bringing. Communities got their domestic and family violence session; victims and survivors found out about our services – and I learned how to lift a sheep.
This experience has stayed with me, because it reminds me to collaborate, innovate, and work with communities to find and provide what they need.
It is also evidence that clinical issues occur within broad, social and political contexts. Sometimes we begin with that context and work inward- other times, we start with what’s in front of us in the counselling room, following threads into structural issues.
Finally, it reminds me of the incredible work being done in remote and regional Australia. Here’s to all the isolated and sole practitioners out there, lifting sheep.
Hi from Rachael 🙂
Professional training and experience: Rachael has a Bachelor of Social Work (Honours), and Masters of Narrative Therapy and Community Work.
Rachael has worked at Leichhardt Women’s Health Centre, Community Restorative Centre (CRC), Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP NSW), Guthrie House, and Phoebe House.
Some of her biggest heroes are Adrienne Maree Brown, Saou Ichikawa, Bell Hooks, Mimi Zhu, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Vikkie Reynolds, Mariame Kaba and Ruby Hamad who all authored life changing reads for her. In this world and time, reckoning with the many privileges she inhabits is a project far from complete and she doesn’t believe could ever be finished.
Personal perspective, understanding and lived experience: I am an auntie, sister, daughter, social worker, community worker, believer in prison abolition, curator of stylish outfits, group facilitator, narrative therapist, pisces, bookworm, yoga teacher, counsellor and all-round imperfect human package.
I come to this work as someone who gets life from connecting deeply with others. I am most motivated by the Transformative Justice and Abolition practice and question of; how do we end violence?
As a result, my career has largely seen me work in anti-violence spaces where I have been a counsellor, family worker or some combination of the in responding to violence. I work with Sex Workers and am lucky to be surrounded by an abundance of Queer friends who play a big role in informing my practice. I have spent time working with newborn Mum’s who are at the cold face of family policing and who’s resistance to such has been some of the most impactful acts of humanness I’ve seen. I find myself constantly questioning how I can be an effective ally to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander folx. Being accountable to the privileges I hold as a cis white female in a colonizer’s world is an ongoing practice.
I have had experience and continue to work in spaces where people consult me on things like:
- Lived and living experiences of being a Sex Worker, related and unrelated to the industry,
- What it’s like to have a family member or loved one in a custodial setting,
- What it’s like to be in or leave a custodial setting
- Grappling with tense relationships after and during abusive situations/ romantic relationships,
- Revising a current or former relationship to substances,
- Surviving sexual violence,
- Navigating experiences of mental health that might be popularly known as things like, grief, anxiety, depression, stress, suicidal thoughts and more. Although, I’d be more keen to hear what these experiences actually feel like in your life minus the DSM-5 language.
As a counsellor practicing narrative therapy, I’m interested in uncovering and understanding with you what the ‘problem story’ is that you’re meeting in life. Where there is a problem, there is also a resistance to. So, I’d be just as interested in finding the story of resistance to the effects of that problem. The ‘strong’ story (Auntie Barb Wingard). Think of me as an ally, a co-researcher and a consultant to what it is that you feel necessary or inspired to bring to a therapeutic space.
Contact & booking form
Please fill out the short form to the side. Please include:
- What service are you inquiring about? Online or in-person?
- A summary about what you would like to work on with any relevant history
- How did you find me/who referred you to me?
- Anything else you want to me to know?