You do not have to feel ready first
Waiting until you feel calm, confident or certain can sound sensible. Sometimes it becomes the rule that keeps life smaller than it needs to be.
Read articlePsychology insights
In these articles, Brent Munro looks at some of the patterns that bring people to therapy, what the research can genuinely tell us and how that may be useful in everyday life.
Latest articles
Waiting until you feel calm, confident or certain can sound sensible. Sometimes it becomes the rule that keeps life smaller than it needs to be.
Read article
Replaying a conversation can feel like careful problem-solving. Often it is an anxious review built from threat, self-focused attention and missing evidence.
Read article
A lack of progress is not proof that you are failing at therapy. It is useful clinical information and a reason to review what the work is targeting, how change is being judged and whether the plan still fits.
Read article
The first appointment is usually a structured conversation about what has brought you in, how it is affecting life, relevant history, safety, strengths and what you want to change.
Read article
Veteran therapy may address PTSD, but it may also involve moral injury, grief, identity after service, injury, relationships, sleep and coping that once kept someone operational.
Read article
If you've searched “psychologist wait times Perth,” you've probably already lived the answer: long. Weeks on a waitlist. Sometimes months.
Read article
Affirming care is more than personal acceptance. It means understanding minority stress, avoiding assumptions and treating identity as relevant without making it the explanation for everything.
Read article
Therapy does not require instant emotional fluency. It can begin with situations, actions, body signals and consequences, then build a more useful language over time.
Read article
Burnout is not a personal resilience failure. Therapy can help with the individual pattern, while workload, control, values conflict and organisational conditions still need attention.
Read article
They can be combined within a clear formulation. EMDR may target distressing memories while Schema Therapy addresses the broader meanings, coping modes and relationship patterns around them.
Read article
Insight can explain a pattern without interrupting it. Change usually needs new emotional learning, different behaviour and enough repetition for the alternative to become believable.
Read article
Clinical psychology is not simply a different label. It adds advanced postgraduate and supervised training in assessment, diagnosis, formulation and treatment, particularly for complex mental health presentations.
Read article
Yes. The work may involve one critical incident, years of cumulative exposure, moral injury, sleep disruption or the effect of staying operational for too long.
Read article
You do not have to hand over the whole story at the first appointment. Useful trauma therapy can begin with current effects, safety, goals and a plan for what comes next.
Read article
Schema Therapy grew from CBT but spends more time on developmental patterns, emotional needs, coping modes and what happens inside the therapy relationship.
Read article
The right psychologist is not defined by one therapy acronym. Look for sound registration, real trauma competence, a clear formulation and a relationship in which choice is taken seriously.
Read article
Sometimes the deepest wound at work is not exhaustion. It is being asked to act, remain silent or keep going in ways that cut across what you believe is right.
Read article
The first weeks after a sudden death can bring a funeral, paperwork, school and household responsibilities all at once. A simple family plan can make the load more manageable.
Read article
Leaving work is one thing. Convincing your mind that the working day has actually ended can be quite another.
Read article
A therapist can be personally accepting and still miss how minority stress has shaped the problem in front of them.
Read article
Many couples are not having ten different arguments. They are having one familiar argument wearing ten different outfits.
Read article
Children do not learn regulation only from instructions. They borrow it, repeatedly, from what happens between them and a reasonably steady adult.
Read article
Avoidance is not weakness. It is the nervous system trying to prevent another injury, although the protection can gradually become a prison.
Read article
Functional neurological symptoms are real, involuntary and potentially treatable. The diagnosis should explain what is happening, not dismiss it.
Read article
A clear scan can bring enormous relief without making the possibility of recurrence disappear. Living between those truths is difficult.
Read article
Sleep is one of the few important things we cannot achieve by trying harder. The effort to force it can become part of chronic insomnia.
Read article
Persistent pain can be entirely real even when the nervous system has become overprotective. That is a treatment opportunity, not a dismissal.
Read article
Reassurance is offered out of care and usually works for a moment. In OCD, that moment of relief can become part of the problem.
Read article
ADHD is often described as a problem of attention, although for many adults the harder part is how quickly emotions arrive and how long they take to settle.
Read article
High standards are not necessarily the problem. The difficulty begins when mistakes start to feel like evidence that you are not good enough.
Read article