My name is Paula Huggins. I offer psychotherapeutic counselling support using person-centered, trauma-informed expressive arts therapy and somatic modalities for adolescents (from Grade 6/Year 7/age 11+ onwards), teens and adults across the developmental spectrum with a variety of challenges:
- Life transitions – arriving, leaving, birthing, dying, marrying, divorcing – the wheel never stops turning. Sometimes we feel stuck, unable to make sense of what life is throwing at us or to discern our next steps. My support is empathetic, connected, supportive and encouraging.
- Sometimes we feel fearful, overwhelmed, despondent. I support you or your children to journey on the road less-travelled: the one that allows you to plug back into your inner strength, your creativity and innate wisdom. I hold the belief that my clients always know what to do for their own higher good when given the opportunity to step back and explore from different angles.
- Parenting – is a skill that we pick up along the way. I offer coaching and support for parents who are already doing the best they can but want to find better ways managing their parenting role and their busy lives and still raise confident, compassionate, considerate children.
- Anxiety is endemic in our culture and manifests in many ways. I offer practical strategies and encouraging support. Using a combination of body-based and cognitive approaches, I empower my clients to use external tools as well as their own innate knowledge of what works best for them, tapping into their internal resources.
- Self-harming, disordered-eating patterns, recovering from alcohol abuse or addictive behaviours? I use expressive therapies to work with those seeking to unearth the underlying patterns, the habitual thinking, the negative sabotaging beliefs that drive self-destructive behaviours.
- Finding it difficult to sustain friendships or communicate effectively with others? I use the NVC framework developed by Dr Marshall Rosenberg to provide a gentle introduction to building the communication skills we need to have positive relationships based on mutual and empathetic understanding of ourselves and others.
- Coping with the illness or death of loved ones – or your own illness? As a breast cancer survivor (17 years and no longer counting!), I have faced my own mortality and lived to tell the tale. I’m honoured when asked to support others’ on their journey.
To contact me or to book an appointment please fill out the form and send it through.