Yvette Strawbridge, PACFA

Yvette Strawbridge is a counsellor and psychotherapist with 32 years working in Australia. She uses a client-centred approach and places the person and their experience at the centre of therapy. Yvette brings a calm, practical manner to sessions and aims to help people talk through relationship and family concerns, trauma, intimacy issues and self-esteem difficulties.

She combines talking therapies with creative ways to express difficult feelings. This can include sand tray work, art therapy and psychodrama to help people access memories and emotions that are hard to put into words. Yvette also uses a biopsychosocial perspective, so she looks at how body, mind and social life interact when meeting someone’s needs.

Yvette has experience supporting people through life stages such as ageing, cancer and end-of-life care. She also works with people facing divorce, blended family challenges, communication breakdowns and isolation or loneliness. Her practice includes helping with family of origin issues, forgiveness, grief and the impact of infidelity.

She is an accredited Family Dispute Resolution Practitioner and mediator and has worked with children and adolescents after parental separation, including child inclusive mediation. Yvette holds PACFA accreditation, which is recorded as PACFA.

Yvette aims to help people find practical ways to manage day-to-day stresses and improve connections with others. To start, she asks people to describe their immediate concerns and what they hope will change from therapy.

Client-centred approaches and online support

Client-centred therapy focuses on the person in front of the counsellor. It aims to create a respectful, non-judgemental space where people can talk about relationships, trauma, self-esteem and intimate concerns. The counsellor listens closely and helps people find their own solutions rather than directing them.

Yvette also uses expressive therapies such as art, sand tray and psychodrama to help access feelings that are hard to say. These methods can support work on family conflict, grief, identity and communication by offering different ways to show what’s happening inside.

Finding the right approach is part of therapy. The counsellor will work collaboratively to decide which methods fit the client’s needs, goals and preferences. That collaboration continues as therapy progresses, with adjustments made when something isn’t working.

Session formats are not specified in the biography, so confirm current options before booking. Online work can make it easier to fit sessions into a busy life, reduce travel time and allow shorter check-ins around work or caring responsibilities. It can also make some creative methods adaptable for remote work, depending on arrangements agreed at the first session.