Dr Cristina
Registered Online Psychologist
B Psych (Hons); Grad Dip Int Comm; PhD; MAPS
She/Her/Hers.
Hart Centre Certified
All private health funds. Medicare rebates available for individual sessions only (with a valid Mental Health Care Plan)
“One good conversation can shift the direction of the change forever.”
Cristina has over ten years of experience in couples counselling and marriage preparation, using a variety of evidence-based techniques and therapeutic approaches. Her approach to support counselling is caring and empathic.
Over 20 years.
Assisting people to break barriers, helping them to perceive themselves from a different perspective and create new possibilities to improve themselves and their relationships, finding strengths they were unaware of before.
I can think of so many couples who were brave to face the challenging task of deeply listening to each other and also looking into themselves. I admire all of them.
I choose a couple that perhaps resonates to many people reading this profile. This couple are in their early 30s, neither had done individual therapy before, so it was unknown territory for both. They were dating for more than 5 years and were living together. They were both born in Australia, but came from different backgrounds in terms of expectations and communication styles. They saw me after months of struggling with communication, feelings of resentment and increased emotional distance. There was also a break of trust and they considered separating. They were questioning why this happened so early into their relationship, as they expected this would only happen after many years of being married or having children.
I usually say that lack of communication tends to be a lack of connection and empathy, and recovering trust should be team work; one cannot recover trust alone. Accepting help is by far the biggest step, as it can give the feeling of “we have failed” or “we are not capable”.
We explored how each one of them felt dis-connected and the barriers they faced. They learned how to really listen to each other, identifying their communication and attachment styles, and understanding that recovering trust takes work but is possible. Like many other couples, they re-invented their relationship, as the one they had was not functional anymore.
They are still together and stronger than before. They have grown so much both as individuals and as a couple, as they stepped outside of their comfort zones and did the work. This happened years ago, and sometimes, every two months or so, they do a “check-up” of their relationship with me, which helps them avoid falling back into unhelpful patterns and relationship pitfalls.
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