Contact Us

+613 7068 5483

Welcome to
A Healing Place

Psychology Clinic in Clifton Hill for people aged 15 and over.
Book an Appointment

Sweeney O’Heare-Young
Clinical Psychologist and Director of A Healing Place – Psychology Clinic

Good on you for investigating ways to heal. It is certainly possible for you.

Introduction to Sweeney and A Healing Place - Psychology Clinic from Sweeney on Vimeo.

Therapeutic & Counseling
Approaches

What I can help you with

Clinical Psychologist with extensive training and experience

You can heal your mind and heart, your way can become clear.

 

Enduring psychological suffering is unnecessary. Pain alerts us to something; loss (sadness), a boundary being crossed (anger), that we have hurt or let someone down (guilt), that we are not happy with our choices and want to change (regret).

Pain hurts, but there is a purity to it, a naturalness, when we really let ourselves feel it. People don’t come to see a psychologist because of pain, they come because they are suffering.

The A Healing Place – Psychology Clinic consulting room.

Suffering is not something we do on purpose.

Suffering does not feel pure or natural, it feels like a contortion of the mind; depression and self loathing, anxiety, meaninglessness, subjective worthlessness, rumination, addiction, shame, PTSD, projecting onto others, eating disorders.

Suffering occurs because…

Parts of us try to cope with reality in a way that doesn’t work anymore. For example:

Our family never let us talk-back or express anger or disagreement, so we learned to turn anger inwards on ourselves and make it our fault, but this is now prohibiting us setting boundaries as an adult and we find we get depressed instead of angry

Or, we would meet disapproval when being spontaneous or reckless, so we learned to overthink, but now we are paralysed by rumination.
Or, we can suffer when we struggle to recover from something awful from our past, or when we have taken on a belief that distorts our perspective.

A powerful pathway out of suffering is to notice your coping mechanisms in action, understand their purpose, reconcile their cost to you, and decide to look underneath, to reconcile with the mixed feelings that you find.

Examination of the deeper causes of suffering

I enjoy complementing powerful behavioural interventions with an examination of the deeper issues at the heart of people’s suffering; i.e. to get the ball rolling quickly with simple changes that can often yield great benefits, and then to investigate with clients the deeper causes of their suffering so they can reduce it.

Learning to regulate anxiety

I feel privileged to help clients learn to regulate their anxiety, so that they can confront the difficulties and disappointments of their life and feel their pain, so they can set themselves free from their suffering.

To help them feel angry at people who hurt them, rather than blame themselves which makes them depressed and anxious
To help them feel guilt for something they did rather than shame themselves for who they believe it makes them
To help them accept uncertainty rather than endlessly ruminating over worst case scenarios
To help them confront horrible traumas rather than avoid the memories and hence leave them unprocessed, uninvestigated, and unhealed
To help them feel their sadness rather than numbing it and by collateral numbing themselves to life and joy and meaning

Let’s get to know and understand you better.

I’ll meet you with a warm and relaxed style as we get to know each other and together build a good understanding of where you are at, how you got there, and where you would like to be. Then we’ll see what we can do to get you on your way and help you to start feeling better as soon as possible.

‘What is the problem you are seeking help with?’ Is the first question I will ask you. Good on you for seeking help.

Book an Appointment