MINDSCAPE THERAPY CANBERRA PSYCHOLOGY
Canberra DBT & Trauma Clinic
Professional Psychotherapy
Helping You Be Your Best Self
Meet our Mindscape Therapy Canberra Psychology Team
Meet our team, delivering professional evidence-based mental health care to Canberrans from all walks of life. We have a blend of Canberra psychologist and social workers who deliver a variety of therapy methods, tailored to get the best results for your individual circumstance. As a clinic focus, all our practitioners have experience in delivering Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) and trauma therapy.
We all work together to ensure that each and every person who comes through our doors gets the best care available, from start to finish.
Mindscape Therapy Canberra | Treatment Options for our Woden Mental Health Clinic:
Mindscape Therapy is a local Woden mental health clinic with a focus on DBT and psychotherapy methods. We specialise in resolving complex trauma through EMDR and DBT therapy methods, as well as working with teenagers and young adults to resolve challenging mental health barriers. We offer both individual and group evidence-based mental health treatment options and work with you to not only understand the healing process, but tailor our therapies to your specific needs. We are also one of the few providers in Canberra for EMDR therapy methods, specifically designed to address complex or chronic mental trauma.
With over a decade of clinical experience and training, we are focused on helping improve both your mental and physical well-being. With a range of therapies available, we can match the right treatment to your specific needs.
Our Treatment Options FAQ:
What is CBT?
CBT stands for cognitive behaviour therapy. It is a practical, hands-on type of talk therapy that focuses on the connection between your thoughts, feelings and behaviours. The main idea is that negative or unhelpful thinking patterns often make problems worse. In CBT you learn to recognise those thoughts, test if they are realistic, and replace them with more balanced ones. This leads to feeling calmer and making better choices in daily life. It usually involves some homework between sessions, like keeping track of thoughts or trying new behaviours.
CBT is one of the most researched therapies and works really well for anxiety, depression, stress, phobias, panic attacks, sleep issues and even some chronic pain or health worries.
What is DBT?
DBT stands for dialectical behaviour therapy. It was first created to help people who experience very intense emotions and find life extremely overwhelming. DBT builds on many CBT ideas but adds important extra skills for when emotions feel out of control.
You learn four main areas: mindfulness (staying present without judgement), distress tolerance (getting through crises without making things worse), emotion regulation (understanding and managing strong feelings), and interpersonal effectiveness (communicating needs and keeping healthy relationships). DBT often includes both one-on-one sessions and group skills training, plus phone coaching for tough moments.
It is especially helpful for people dealing with borderline personality traits, self-harm urges, chronic suicidal thoughts, intense mood swings or difficulties in relationships.
What is EMDR?
EMDR stands for eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing. It is a powerful therapy designed to help the brain process stuck traumatic memories so they lose their emotional charge.
During EMDR sessions you recall a disturbing memory while your therapist guides you through sets of side-to-side eye movements, taps or sounds. This helps your brain reprocess the memory in a healthier way, almost like what happens naturally during REM sleep. You still remember what happened but it no longer feels as upsetting or overwhelming.
EMDR is widely used and very effective for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), single-event traumas like accidents or assaults, childhood abuse, grief, phobias linked to past events, and even performance anxiety or negative beliefs about yourself that started from difficult experiences.
What is Schema Therapy?
Schema therapy helps with deep, long-standing patterns (called schemas) that usually begin in childhood or adolescence. These patterns are like core beliefs about yourself, other people and the world – for example, “I’m unlovable”, “People will always abandon me” or “I have to be perfect to be okay”. They often lead to repeating the same relationship problems, low self-worth, or self-sabotaging behaviours over many years.
Schema therapy combines elements from CBT, attachment theory, emotion-focused work and even some psychodynamic ideas. It helps you understand where these schemas came from, heal the emotional wounds behind them, and build healthier ways of thinking, feeling and relating.
It is particularly useful for personality difficulties, chronic depression, repeated relationship breakdowns, perfectionism, or feeling empty and disconnected even when life looks fine on the outside.
What is Somatic Therapy?
Somatic therapy focuses on the body rather than just talking about thoughts and feelings. Trauma, stress and strong emotions often get stored in the body as tension, tight muscles, shallow breathing, or a constant sense of being on edge.
Somatic approaches help you tune into those physical sensations in a safe, gentle way. You learn to notice what’s happening in your body, release held tension, and build a greater sense of safety and calm from the inside. Techniques might include grounding exercises, gentle movement, breath work, tracking body sensations, or touch (with clear consent).
It pairs very well with talk therapies and is especially helpful when people feel “stuck” in their heads, have unexplained physical symptoms linked to stress, experience dissociation, or find that regular counselling alone doesn’t fully shift the nervous system’s response to past events.
What Is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy?
Which therapy is right for me?
It really depends on what you’re dealing with and what feels most helpful to you. CBT is great if you want clear tools to change thoughts and behaviours fairly quickly. DBT shines when emotions feel overwhelming and you need skills to manage crises and relationships. EMDR is often the best choice when specific traumatic memories keep intruding or causing distress. Schema therapy suits people who notice the same painful patterns repeating across their life and want to address the deeper roots. Somatic therapy is ideal if you feel trauma or stress living in your body or if talking alone hasn’t been enough to create lasting calm.
Many people benefit from a mix of these approaches that addresses their context intelligently.
All our therapists conduct an initial session to learn about your experiences and needs to develop an appropriate plan that uses the methods which best suit your needs, challenges and context.
Can these therapies be combined?
How Can Psychotherapy or DBT Help You?
Our Canberra DBT clinic was specifically set up with the mission of providing mental health care for those suffering from psychological challenges.
As a local Woden mental health clinic, we provide in-person therapies to Canberrans centered around psychotherapy, which has been shown to be effective at providing relief from a wide range of mental health conditions. Our psychotherapy techniques and comfortable premises provide a safe, non-judgmental space for you to work through their issues and areas of distress.
Our methods can help you tolerate and understand painful and difficult emotions, challenge unhelpful and maladaptive thinking patterns, understand how historical events influence present behaviours/coping strategies and help process or resolve traumatic events.