Michelle Southgate

Michelle has over 20 years’ experience as a Clinical Social Worker and Therapist. She completed undergraduate qualifications in Psychology and Social Work and has a Master’s degree in Couple & Family Therapy. Michelle has extensive clinical experience supporting individuals and families facing a wide variety of life, parenting and health challenges.

Much of Michelle’s career has been spent working in Child and Adolescent Mental Health settings and in more recent years in the Perinatal and Infant Mental Health sector. She is a certified Circle of Security and Tuning in to Kids group facilitator and draws upon attachment-based interventions and emotion coaching parenting in her work with families.

Michelle also has a strong interest in supporting women through life transitions, including all aspects of maternal health. She is experienced working with infertility, pregnancy loss, perinatal anxiety and depression, parent-infant attachment and birth trauma.

Her aim is to collaborate with the client / or family, drawing out their strengths and inner resources and providing a containing space for safe exploration of their experiences.

Michelle offers both individual and family therapy sessions. 

Therapeutic approaches include

• Systemic Family Therapy
• Bowen Family Systems Theory
• Dialectical Behaviour Therapy
• Cognitive Behaviour Therapy
• Parent-Infant Psychotherapy
• Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR)
• Somatic therapy and other trauma informed approaches

She provides services under Medicare (Better Access and PSS) as an Accredited Mental Health Social Worker.