My vision has been to offer, both in-person and online, quality, effective and integrated mind-body psychotherapies influenced by both traditional and contemporary thinkers.  Contemporary therapists know that making sense of our life history changes our relationships with others and ourselves. Research has also shown that the best indicator of a child's emotional health is in how their parent made sense of their story.

For over twenty years I’ve been devoted to the fields of mind-body medicine and therapy. I’ve loved all the iterations of building, and creating, safe therapeutic containers for people interested in exploring what motivates them and the role the body and spirit can play in healing, transformation and awakening. The move to online therapy was surprisingly seemless during the initial stages of COVID. It’s a real delight, though, to be returning to in-person therapy. There seems like there a readiness for this.

My approach is a kaleidoscope of ongoing professional development, experiential learning, and spiritual inquiry - it invites a new kind of embodied presence and being in the world. My sense is if we can become individually and collectively led by the parts of ourselves that are naturally compassionate, curious and caring, we can create kinder, more fulfilling, ways of being with each other and our world.

" .... we come to resonate with one another. The whole we create together is truly larger than our individual identities. We feel this resonance as a palpable sense of connection and aliveness. This is what happens when our minds meet..."
Dr Daniel J Siegel, MD

My first formal psychological study was in the field of trauma whilst writing a master's thesis in 2004. I was naturally curious about what happens to the psyche when negative experiences repeatedly occur outside ones control. When a human being is totally helpless. I found, consistent with research at the time, that childhood trauma negatively impacts how we view others and ourselves later in life. The journey then took me to working with families suffering, deep, multigenerational trauma. Change happened in very small windows.

Over the past two decades I have trained in psychodynamic psychotherapy, infant and child development, buddhist meditation & yoga; jungian mind, body and soul, and more recently, sensorimotor psychotherapy, internal family systems (IFS), EMDR and purpose guiding with Purpose Guide Institute – bringing into focus maps for processing traumatic memory and unburdening core wounds. With trauma resolution, it seems to unlock natural internal states of wisdom, compassion and purpose.

Pain and suffering is often therapy’s beginning; reflecting the protective, unconscious strategies we’ve employed to survive experiences like: child abuse and neglect, chronic illness, growing up in families affected by alcoholism or violence, parental mental illness, being bullied at school or work, the affects of active addition, the sudden death of a close friend or loved one, change because our partner leaves us, or our work has lost direction or we're transitioning to a new stage of life.

Many clients enter therapy literally burnt out in mind and body from decades of living in overwhelm. The other extreme might be feeling a chronic sense of flatness and/or disconnection. Or we may oscillate between the two. Many report life having lost meaning and purpose. Therapy offers an opportunity to learn how our autonomic nervous system habitually responds when triggered or under stress. With this knowledge, comes a window for greater self-regulation - the foundation for processing core emotions and beliefs that keep us stuck. There seems to arise a natural grace and ease out of the work - seemingly untouched by wounds of the past. 

Experience in the Now is being absolutely in my body in primal sensation in conscious awareness listening from the inside. This is my work – this is my living.

My work as a psychotherapist is constantly evolving. The original ground was the psychodynamic tradition and its interest in the unconscious. This, overtime, naturally led to an interest in psycho-spiritual integration.

Because every person’s adaptation to their life experience is unique to them I like to, together, create a therapeutic map that fits with already known strengths and other parts that might be available for change, or open to the simple recognition of an effortless stillness that is always here. I draw from a range of body-centered trauma processing techniques that help undo survival strategies that hold a sense of a seperate self in place – sensorimotor psychotherapy, internal family systems and EMDR.

I like how Mark Epstein, a New York therapist and long-term meditator, recently put it, “Buddhist contemplation is a kind of therapy, after all; it’s whole orientation is toward relieving people of needless self-inflicted psychological suffering. And psychotherapy, like meditation, is, at base, an inquiry into the nature of self. The more you examine your experience, the more mysterious, and, elusive the self becomes”.

"My first impulse is to find something to love, something heroic, something recognisbable as the gift and the burden of the human condition, the pain and grace that;s there to find in everyone you meet.."
Ron Kurtz, Founder of Hakomi Therapy

A MODEL OF TRAUMA

When faced with perceived or imagined danger the brain automatically turns on an adrenaline stress system  – our thinking brain shuts down and we go into survival mode. Sometimes we can put this experience behind us. Other times, if the experiences have been repetitive, we can be left with intense symptoms that tell our story without words and without the understanding that we are remembering events and feelings from long ago. The activation of survival response can also become a habit, for example withdrawing or hiding may have originally been adaptive but later in life it may contribute to excessive isolation and sadness.

SENSORIMOTOR PSYCHOTHERAPY

Developed by Pat Odgen PhD, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy offers the possibility to mindfully study, together, the way our bodies organise experience around health and wellness, our emotional/attachment wounds and symptoms of traumatisation. Experiential in nature, the process begins, with mindful awareness, to notice and report immediate bodily sensations/experiences in relation to a theme or memory.

IFS

The IFS model of therapy is rooted in systems thinking and the multiplicity of the mind. It believes that all individuals have what they called a Self (core, soul or internal leader), which doesn’t need to be culivated or developed; we are born with it. It also acknowledges we have parts or aspects of our personality that we are born with too, which have positive intentions and are not a sign of pathology. With trauma, parts are often forced to take on extreme protective roles or to carry the painful experiences. The IFS guided process can help release parts from their extreme roles and repair the chasm created between parts and the Self as a result of trauma or wounding. Parts are then able to restore trust in self-leadership and fluidly integrate back into the whole system.

BODY, BREATH PRACTICE

Buddhist and yoga traditions have known for more than 2600 years that awareness of breath and body sensation helps calm our nervous system and bring us back into our bodies (present time). Particular mindfulness-somatic practices help our bodies/mind remember it's natural state of ease and wellness.  Containment exercises can work well when we’ve lost connection with our core and feel overwhelmed. That sense inside if our cup is too full or spilling over. Feeling into our feet and the earth can help when we lose our connection to ground. Feeling into, and lengthening, our spine can help to feel more solid and present. 

Supervision

Somatic and trauma informed clinical supervision and case consultation is available for health and welfare practitioners including social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, counsellors, psychotherapists, yoga teachers and body-oriented psychotherapists.

 Facilitated group supervision is also available online.  

Ethos & intention of group supervision is (a) to offer somatic resources to practitioners working, or interested in working, with trauma (b) to offer feedback on case study presentations (c) to offer learning opportunities by experiencing, or re-experiencing, a somatic IFS/SMP process from the inside – in the roles of supported learning therapist, ‘client’ or being a mindful witness to the process (d) to integrate learnings from demonstrations (e) to participate in creating a sense of community for healers working in the field of trauma.

In the spirit of learning, we invite qualities of opennes, practice & curiousity to the practice demonstrations!

"No ray of sunlight is ever lost, but the green which it wakes into existence needs time to sprout, and it is not always granted the power to live to see the harvest. All work that is worth anything is done in faith"
Albert Schweitzer

Caroline Browne MAPS

Stable Health Clinic

22 Alma Rd

St Kilda VIC 3183

m 0498 007 925

In-person & online appointments available

BRAND MARK

(Designed by RoscherCreative)

The well-known Rorschach Inkblot Test inspired the Caroline Browne brand mark. The pattern the inkbot makes is mandala like in shape, which taps into Caroline's use of Eastern philosophies and methods in her approach to therapy. The inkblot is the coming together of two faces, two profiles. This speaks both of the collaboration of client and therapist and also the layered nature of the human psyche. The colours, from the magenta bottom to red heart centre, stretch up to the enlightened gold. The shape is uplifting and suggests progress and evolution.

It is an inkblot test.

So what do you see?