Depression rarely announces itself. More often it’s a slow narrowing. You stop replying to messages, you stop cooking properly, and at some point you notice you’ve been on autopilot for months.

Anxiety is louder but just as easy to normalise. You’ve always been a worrier, you’ve always been the organised one, you’ve always slept badly. It stops looking like a problem and starts looking like your personality.

You don’t need a diagnosis to come and talk about either and you don’t need a referral. 

What I work with

Depression and persistent low mood. Loss of interest, exhaustion that sleep doesn’t fix, difficulty concentrating, the sense of being flattened.

Low-grade depression that’s been there for years. The kind people don’t seek help for because it feels like a temperament rather than a condition.

Generalised anxiety. Constant low-level dread, catastrophising, a mind that won’t stop running scenarios at 3am.

Panic attacks. Including the anxiety about having another one, which often becomes the bigger problem.

Social anxiety. Dreading events for weeks, replaying conversations afterwards, avoiding things you’d genuinely like to do.

Health anxiety. Checking, googling, reassurance-seeking, the relief that lasts a day.

Perfectionism and high-functioning anxiety. People who look extremely capable from outside and are privately running on fumes.

Burnout. Particularly the version that arrives after a long stretch of coping well.

Situational depression and anxiety. A relationship ending, a job loss, a diagnosis, a move, a bereavement. Knowing exactly why you feel like this doesn’t make it easier to get out of.

Premenstrual mood that lifts after your period. This may be something else entirely (PMDD).

Anxiety or depression in pregnancy or after birth. 

Bipolar disorder. Alongside psychiatric care, not instead of it. See below.

They usually arrive together

Most people who come in for one have a decent amount of the other, and it’s rarely worth separating them.

The two tend to feed each other. Anxiety is exhausting, and months of it flattens you. Depression makes everything harder, which gives you more to be anxious about. People often can’t say which came first, and it usually doesn’t matter, the useful question is what’s keeping the whole thing running now.

Is this a problem, or just a hard year?

The questions clinicians use are about pattern rather than severity.

How long has it been? A fortnight of feeling terrible after something terrible happened is a normal response. Several months of the same is a different picture.

Has anything changed? Sleep, appetite, concentration, energy, and whether you still get anything out of things you used to enjoy. Change from your own baseline matters more than how you compare to anyone else.

Is it affecting how you function? Still getting to work, still seeing people, still managing the basics. That’s different from having stopped, or from only managing it by avoiding an increasing number of things.

If you’re reading this and quietly recognising yourself, that’s usually enough reason to talk to someone. There’s no threshold of unwell you have to be before you’re allowed an appointment.

Should I see my GP as well?

Sometimes yes, and I’ll say so in the first session if I think so.

A GP can rule out the physical causes that produce identical symptoms. Thyroid problems, iron deficiency and vitamin D deficiency are common enough to be worth excluding before concluding it’s purely psychological. 

For moderate or severe depression in particular, the medical side and the talking side work better together than either alone.

What if I’m already on medication?

It doesn’t make therapy redundant.

Medication tends to lift the floor: it can make the mornings possible and give you enough capacity to engage with anything else. What it generally doesn’t do is change the patterns, relationships or history that shaped the problem. That’s the part we’d work on.

I don’t have opinions about your medication and it isn’t my place to. If you want to change or stop it, that’s a conversation with your prescriber.

What about bipolar?

I work with people who have bipolar disorder, but only alongside psychiatric care and never as a substitute for it.

Bipolar is a medical condition where medication and psychiatric oversight do the heavy lifting. Counselling has a real role around that: the impact on relationships, the grief about what it has cost, and the work of living with a long-term condition. If you’re not currently under a psychiatrist, that’s an appointment to make alongside our appointment.

If you’ve been told you have bipolar and you’re not sure the label fits, particularly if your mood swings track your menstrual cycle, it’s worth coming in to talk about Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD). The two get confused reasonably often.

What the work actually involves

Not advice, and not a list of things you already know you should be doing. If gratitude journalling and a morning walk were going to fix it, they would have by now.

With depression, we’d look at what’s holding it in place. It’s usually being maintained by something. A relationship you can’t be honest in, work you’ve outgrown, a loss you haven’t put down, a way of speaking to yourself you’d never use on anyone else. Those things are workable. The feeling itself often isn’t, directly.

With anxiety, a lot of the work is about avoidance. Anxiety shrinks your life quietly: you stop doing the thing, the relief confirms that the thing was dangerous, and the boundary creeps inward. Reversing that is uncomfortable and it’s also most of the treatment. We’d go at a pace you can actually sustain, but I’ll be honest that feeling better generally comes after doing the difficult thing rather than before it.

I’m fairly active as a therapist. I’ll ask questions, say what I’m noticing, and push a bit where it’s useful. If you want someone who sits in silence, I’m not it.

How long does it take?

Depends how long it’s been there and what’s underneath it.

Something recent and situational often shifts meaningfully in eight to twelve sessions. Something that’s been part of the furniture for as long as you can remember takes longer, and I’d rather say so than sell you a quick version that doesn’t exist.

We’ll review it as we go. If it isn’t helping, I want to know.

Practical details

Sessions are 50 minutes and cost $180, in person in Sydney CBD or by telehealth anywhere in Australia.

No GP referral needed, no diagnosis required, and no waitlist. You can usually be seen within a week.

If things are worse than this page assumes

If you’re having thoughts of suicide or of harming yourself, please don’t wait for an appointment with me.

Lifeline — 13 11 14, 24 hours, or text 0477 13 11 14

Beyond Blue — 1300 22 4636, 24 hours

Suicide Call Back Service — 1300 659 467

Emergency — 000, or go to your nearest emergency department

Your GP can also see you urgently if you say it’s urgent. Say it’s urgent.

None of this means counselling isn’t for you. It means the immediate safety piece comes first, and I’m glad to work alongside whatever support is in place.