Sonia is a senior clinical psychologist endorsed by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency in recognition of post-graduate specialisation in the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of mental illness, abnormal behaviour, and psychiatric difficulties. In addition to having qualified as a higher-education teacher, Sonia holds a Masters’ degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Pretoria in South Africa, where she trained in systemic interactional and psychodynamic (object relations) psychotherapy.
She is a founding member of the Australian Clinical Psychology Association (ACPA) and a member of the Institute of Clinical Psychologists (ICP); and has played an active role on various local and national committees that further the practicing standards of clinical psychology in Australia. Sonia has been a part-time contract faculty member for Edith Cowan University’s School of Psychology and Social Science; and has served on various committees for the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD).
Sonia is passionate about better service delivery in WA for people with a history of complex trauma. She started the Perth Complex Trauma Mental Health Professionals Network (MHPN) in 2014, and later founded the not-for-profit health-promotions charity, Complex Trauma WA Inc. (COTWA). Both initiatives aim to enhance service delivery for survivors, by expanding service providers’ awareness of and clinical expertise in the specific treatment implications of working with complex trauma; and to support cooperative and trauma-informed multi-disciplinary networks in Western Australia.
Sonia supports the neuroscience of psychotherapy; and offers individual person-centred trauma-informed psychotherapy to adults based on the premises of attachment theory, body-oriented psychotherapy, and a psychodynamic model of mind. Psychodynamic psychotherapy is an evidence-based form of depth psychology that has been proven to have sustainable benefits over time. It relies on the interpersonal neurobiology of therapeutic relationships to help clients become aware of, attend to, and heal the underlying emotions that maintain their difficulties. Sonia has further post-graduate training in working with disorders of Self (including borderline, narcissistic, and schizoid personality styles), and consults with people presenting with relational difficulties, adjustment problems, mood disorders, personality disorders and dissociative disorders. Many of her clients are adult survivors of childhood abuse and neglect.
Sonia also offers trauma-specific individual and group consultation and supervision to professionally registered service providers who work with clients with a lived experience of complex trauma.
“I have tremendous empathy and respect for the many ingenious solutions that survivors have adopted, to try and deal with difficult life circumstances. One of my goals in working therapeutically is to not only alleviate the more obvious symptoms that clients present with, but also to help people to get some traction on having more of the kind of life they might like to have.”
Sonia accepts Mental Health Care Plan referrals and people who meet the National Disability Insurance Scheme’s (NDIS) access requirements; but this is not required. People interested in working with her are welcome to contact her directly via the contact details below.
Contact:
0437 883 465
sonia.clinpsych@gmail.com