Your Therapist - Lea
To help my clients find their own healing journey, my approach could best be described as eclectic, utilising a combination of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, DBT (Dialectic Behavioural Therapy), Mindfulness (which I prefer to call Quiet Contemplation), Transactional Analysis and Equine Assisted Psychotherapy (Phenomenological enquiry).
​
After my husband's catastrophic injury at the hands of a medical practitioner, which left him an incomplete paraplegic, I experienced anxiety, depression and symptoms of PTSD.
My physical health suffered, as did my mental health - I was an immigrant on my own - with three young children, facing significant financial losses (our business and assets) and dealing with the incapacity of my once vibrant, fit, healthy husband.
​
I grieved the massive losses we were experiencing as a family.
My children's hopes and dreams lay in ruins, I was facing financial ruin, and my husband's life hung in the balance. The stresses were enormous. My husband was, at that stage, confined to a wheelchair and struggling with impaired cognition due to the concoction of pain meds he needed to get through each day.
This was single parenting with a twist.
I was alone in a foreign country, without any family support, trying to hold the family and finances together! I was exhausted!
Dealing with my own grief - along with prayer, I sought counselling. However, the grief models used did not assist me actually heal or move on from my grief. Sure, I knew all about the five stages of grief, but they offered me no real way out of the desolate place I found myself in. I needed more!
I was determined to move past my pain in a healthy way and to come to a point of acceptance and peace with my circumstance. This led me to develop the "A PLAN." A unique (and simple) grief model which helps us clear our "spaghetti brain", banishes the cloudy thinking and gives us the strategies and strength to swim the syrupy waters of sadness and grief. In fact, the A PLAN can be used for pretty much ANYTHING we are struggling with in life. It's a very powerful little tool and I believe it will change your life for the better and give you coping skills you never thought you'd have.
​
This lived experience of pain and suffering helps me empathise with my clients in a safe, non-judgemental way.
It's given me valuable insights and tools which I am able to impart to my clients as personalised, practical strategies to help them find healing and restoration. Through empowerment, safety, trust, acceptance and hope, I believe I create a safe space for emotional expression whilst building my clients self-awareness and confidence for change.
​
I offer two streams of therapy. Clinical (not involving horses) through Soul Sense (Australia) and Equine Assisted Therapy through Horse Connection. Both practices are located on 50 acres of peaceful, beautiful farm land in the South West of Western Australia just north of Busselton.
