Empathetic support for when you face challenges in relationships

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.

Yes. Research shows that online therapy can be just as effective as face-to-face sessions for a wide range of concerns, including depression, anxiety, trauma, and relationship issues. It also offers convenience, privacy, and access to support regardless of location. All sessions are conducted via a secure telehealth platform.

There is no fixed timeline. Often people notice early shifts in understanding and emotional regulation, while deeper healing occurs gradually. Therapy is collaborative and tailored to individual needs and readiness.

Schema therapy helps people understand the emotional patterns and protective responses that are triggered in relationships. Rather than focusing only on communication or behaviour, therapy explores why certain situations feel activating and supports greater choice in how to respond over time.

Schema therapy recognises that not all relationships are safe, reciprocal, or repairable. Therapy supports clarity around boundaries, decision-making, healthy autonomy, and emotional safety — including when distancing, limited contact, or disengagement is the healthiest option.

At the same time, schema therapy explores how protective patterns such as avoidance, compliance, or over-control can shape the way we relate to others. Many people find that when they begin to respond differently — with clearer boundaries, greater self-trust, and reduced nervous system activation — the nature of some relationships also shifts.

For some, this means being able to remain in relationships that once felt unmanageable; for others, it brings greater clarity about when stepping back is necessary. This work is highly individual and depends on the specific relational dynamics involved. Kylie approaches this collaboratively, supporting careful exploration of what will best support safety, autonomy, and wellbeing in each person’s unique situation.

Yes. Schema therapy can be helpful for people experiencing family estrangement from either position — whether you are the one who has chosen distance or limited contact, or you are navigating the pain of being estranged from a family member.

Estrangement often involves complex and overlapping emotions, including grief, confusion, guilt, anger, longing, relief, or a sense of rejection. These experiences can activate long-standing emotional patterns related to attachment, responsibility, shame, or fear of abandonment, regardless of which side of the estrangement a person is on.

Schema therapy provides a structured space to explore how family dynamics, roles, and unmet needs have shaped relational expectations and coping responses over time. This includes understanding patterns such as withdrawal, self-blame, compliance, over-functioning, or emotional reactivity, and how these may continue to influence wellbeing and relationships more broadly.

Importantly, therapy does not assume a particular outcome. For some people, healing involves maintaining distance or limited contact in order to preserve emotional safety. For others, it may involve making sense of loss, adjusting expectations, or exploring whether reconnection is possible in a healthier way. Schema therapy supports thoughtful, values-aligned decision-making, rather than decisions driven by pressure, guilt, or unresolved emotional pain.

Each situation is approached with care and nuance, recognising the power dynamics, histories, and vulnerabilities involved. The focus remains on strengthening emotional stability, self-understanding, and autonomy, while honouring the complexity and significance of family relationships.

Yes. Discovering a partner’s infidelity or dishonesty can be deeply destabilising, often triggering intense emotional responses such as shock, grief, anger, confusion, and loss of trust. Many people describe feeling as though the ground has shifted beneath them, with their sense of safety, reality, and self-trust suddenly called into question.

Schema therapy provides a structured and supportive space to make sense of these reactions. Rather than focusing only on the event itself, therapy explores how betrayal activates deeper emotional patterns related to attachment, trust, worth, and safety. This can help explain why reactions may feel overwhelming, cyclical, or difficult to contain.

Importantly, therapy does not assume a particular outcome for the relationship. The focus is not on pressuring reconciliation or separation, but on supporting emotional stabilisation, clarity, and self-trust. Schema therapy helps people understand their own needs, boundaries, and values, and to make decisions from a grounded place rather than from shock, fear, or urgency.

For some, therapy supports rebuilding a sense of internal safety and exploring whether trust can be repaired; for others, it helps process loss and prepare for separation with greater emotional steadiness. Each situation is approached individually, with careful attention to power dynamics, ongoing honesty, and emotional safety.

Yes. Individual therapy — and schema therapy in particular — can be helpful for people who want to understand the factors that contributed to their infidelity or dishonesty, without minimising the impact on their partner or avoiding responsibility.

Infidelity rarely occurs in isolation. While it is a choice, it is often influenced by deeper emotional patterns, unmet needs, coping strategies, and ways of relating that developed over time. Schema therapy helps explore these patterns with honesty and accountability, rather than blame or simplification.

This work may involve understanding:

• how needs for validation, closeness, autonomy, or reassurance were being managed

• whether avoidance, emotional detachment, entitlement, or secrecy functioned as coping strategies

• how conflict, vulnerability, or dependency is experienced in close relationships

• how earlier relational experiences shaped expectations of intimacy, safety, or worth

Schema therapy does not frame understanding as an excuse. Instead, insight is used to reduce the likelihood of repetition by increasing awareness, responsibility, and choice. Therapy focuses on strengthening the Healthy Adult — the part of the self that can tolerate discomfort, act in line with values, and respond with integrity rather than avoidance or impulsivity.

For some people, this work supports meaningful repair within the relationship; for others, it provides clarity about personal boundaries, patterns, and future relationships. In all cases, the focus is on accountability, emotional maturity, and lasting change.

Yes. Schema therapy can be helpful when relationship difficulties arise within spiritual or religious environments, particularly where authority, belief systems, or community expectations have shaped how safety, belonging, or obedience are experienced.

For some people, these environments are supportive and meaningful; for others, relationships within spiritual settings may involve blurred boundaries, misuse of authority, pressure to comply, fear of exclusion, or difficulty questioning leadership or doctrine. These dynamics can strongly influence how people relate — including patterns of self-doubt, compliance, silence, over-responsibility, or emotional suppression.

Schema therapy provides a structured way to explore how these relational dynamics have shaped emotional responses and coping strategies, without dismissing faith, pathologising belief, or rushing toward conclusions. Therapy focuses on understanding how needs for belonging, certainty, or approval may have been met — or compromised — within these settings, and how this continues to affect relationships, self-trust, and decision-making.

Importantly, therapy does not assume a particular outcome. For some, healing involves renegotiating boundaries within a faith community; for others, it may involve distancing, leaving, or redefining spiritual identity. Schema therapy supports clarity, autonomy, and emotional safety, helping people respond thoughtfully within complex spiritual and relational contexts.

For those seeking faith-affirming support related specifically to spiritual abuse or faith-based harm, additional resources are available through Refuge Psychology, which focuses more directly on this area.