Psychotherapy Melbourne
I offer therapy and psychoanalysis in Melbourne, and online Australia-wide. I am a registered psychologist with further training in clinical psychoanalysis.
“At certain moments, life can fracture unexpectedly, through loss, relationship break up, illness, or uncertainty. In therapy I create space where these crises can be spoken, explored, and gradually worked through.”
— Bita Riazati
Psychotherapy in Melbourne: How we work
My name is Bita Riazati, a psychotherapist and psychologist based in Melbourne, and I have many years of advanced training and experience, with practice rooms in Hawthorn/ Kew, and Belgrave. People come to sessions with me to talk about what may have been troubling them for a long time, and about topics, which can be difficult to put into words. These issues can be existential concerns, sexuality, painful feelings, inhibition, recurrent issues, relationship difficulties, personality issues, workplace problems, or parenting and children. I am experienced in working across a range of issues and presentations, and I've had extensive training to treat people and their various psychological conditions.
My work enables what may not be immediately obvious, to come into expression in sessions, creating the possibility for something different to be heard as we talk about your situation. This may be a desire to make a change in your life, or to discuss traumatic or other difficulties presenting in life, issues with anger, motivation, perfectionism, lethargy, are topics people bring to sessions. This work is collaborative. I work with you to find names for difficult experiences, and separate from painful attachments, past and presenting experiences by speaking about them.
Some individuals experience difficulties that are intertwined with love or hate, grief and painful thoughts that have effects in their everyday lives; sometimes involving love or challenges in relating to friends, partners, or family. The father of psychotherapy, Freud, said that love underpins all of our human interactions. Indeed, scientific evidence from contemporary psychodynamic studies, have shown that one's early relationships and childhood experiences have a significant role in one's psychological problems, and one's difficulties — whether romantic, to do with family, children, or career-related. For example, one may find themselves repeatedly in relationships that don't work, the unconscious mind has a role in this. It may be traits one has inherited from their upbringing, culture, family, parents or care givers. Talking together about it allows us to explore, and to see what and how early childhood experiences, memories, early relationship with parents and what they said, may be interpreted by you now, tangled with one's being. Over time and through speaking we untangle these.
People may also speak about things they hold passionately in sessions, which sometimes become harmful, too much or even unbearable for them. Importantly, the way our parents and families loved us during childhood says something about how we react and relate to uncertainty, and failures in life. These issues extend beyond personal bonds and control how we choose our jobs, interests, and even how we feel inside our bodies; these meanings and your uniqueness unfolds in therapy over time.
The difference between human beings and animals is that we have language to communicate. Human beings seek satisfaction through creating bonds with others and by speaking. However, conversations with friends and family can make us feel overwhelmed or misunderstood at times. Our conversations in therapy are different from those you might have with friends.
In our sessions, I am here to listen, and this listening is different from the listening of friends and family members. I am trained to listen without bringing my own ideas, judgements or interpretations. In addition to clinical training, I have also undergone my own analysis. In the initial sessions, we aim at talking, exploring and seeing something particular about what may be underneath what may be troubling you. There is relief, which comes from learning something new, there can be release from, a loosening of ties that are causing inhibition (what may be holding you back). The difficulties are what we talk through from one session to the next. We'll commence with a first session to discuss how we can work together. bookings
Sessions
Weekdays - day and evening appointments
Referral
Registered with Medicare, TAC, WorkCover and private insurance.
Fees
Please contact me for fees.
Bookings
Please call me on 0433781919 or use the booking form below to request an appointment.
Memberships
- Registered Psychologist (specialising in psychotherapy)
- Psychological Assessments and Reports
- Board-Approved Supervisor for early-career psychologists and provisional psychologists
- Member of Australian Psychological Society (MAPS, APS)
- Member of Colorado Analytic Forum (IF-EPFCL)
Therapy for People Suffering with Disorders, Difficulties and Conditions
This psychotherapy method transcends reductionist ways, it means we discuss and approach your difficulty in a singular way, rather than reducing your suffering to labels. The difference is made when we talk, and this particular speech fosters movement in therapy through the very act of speaking. Sometimes I may highlight, ask questions, to see together what may be troubling you. This rare but necessary process of working with the difficult things including dreams, metaphors, and the narratives you've made to describe yourself is just the beginning of opening a path to see something together about possible change.
As an experienced psychotherapist and psychologist in Melbourne, people often reach out to me when other therapies haven’t provided the relief they seek, feeling that their difficulty and suffering require a different approach. Psychoanalysis is an effective therapeutic method to treat a range of conditions, concerns and disorders.
I treat people and my training enables therapy for a wide range of difficulties, and disorders for which people may or may not have diagnosis:
- Relationship issues
- Anxiety & panic attacks
- Depression, including treatment resistant depression
- Addictions and alcohol
- Grief, loss & sadness
- Shame, trauma & guilt
- OCDs, Obsessions, Compulsions
- Children's issues
- Refugee and migrant issues
- Bipolar disorder and mood disorders
Approach
- Our Therapy Session
- Who This Work is Suited To
- How We Make This Work
- We Begin
Our Therapy Sessions
In therapy sessions, and conversations take place in sessions, we seek to open the richness of this body of speech, representing it in a way that invites engagement through desire (dialogue) rather than judgment. This approach transcends reductionist methods, mere labels, and facilitating movement in the therapeutic experience and change in therapy.Who This Work is Suited To
Those I work with in treatment, often want control over important things that have long occupied their thoughts and lives. Things that repeat without knowing why, and why they do what they do, for example ending up in the relationships that are a source of hurt, over and over. This is urgent, sometimes complex, difficult to talk about, and even painful, grief experiences that happen in one's life. These although distressing, often remain impossible to speak about for us. I have the know how from my training, to make us work on the impossibilities in our sessions.How We Make This Work
My therapy method is from my many many years of training, and you may talk about the effects of the loved ones and what they said to you, which now are woven into your being: who you admire or despise, love or idealise? envy or aspire to be? Through speaking freely (free association) distinct threads begin to surface. As we follow these threads, they reveal the core things that make who you have become, the subtle pull and push. And by giving this time inside our booked session, we begin to loosen and untangle these threads to find this freedom until the next session where we talk some more.. and there is a little space opening ...We Begin
This mode of work which is a conversation, a special kind of conversation, is a shared commitment between two. I have the training to create a foundation for this, with regular sessions to hold our regular speaking, to enable the continuity of this opening which before was closed by anxiety, lots of anxiety, depression and pain. It's normal that patients begin with one or two sessions weekly, gradually moving to three and four as this unfolds. Initially we begin with one session, as these initial sessions set our rhythm for new thoughts to come. Once we book this time, it becomes the dedicated place in which our therapy time unfolds week to week.Psychoanalysis Melbourne & Psychotherapy Blog
A Straightforward Blog on Psychoanalysis in Melbourne, Anxiety, Identity and Relationships.
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