This article was updated on 28 October 2021, after being first published on 22 December 2013. Bulimia is a common yet highly distressing disorder impacting up to 2.9% of women in Australia. It involves phases of eating huge quantities of food in an uncontrollable manner followed by behaviours to avoid weight gain including vomiting, using […]
Couples Counselling – An Essential Circuit Breaker For Working From Home and Relationship Stress
With the pandemic lingering around for longer than we thought, we’ve all tried our best to adapt to the new normal. We now work from the same beds that we sleep on, order meals at home, and meet our friends on video calls. But whilst we’ve managed to maintain communication with others, many of us […]
Counselling, psychotherapy and hypnotherapy vacancy in our new Highett location and online
UPDATED 26 October 2022 We are looking for a qualified and experienced reliable therapist capable of engaging a variety of patients in the therapy process, to provide high quality counselling, psychotherapy and hypnotherapy starting with 2 days (including Saturdays). Subcontractor agreement. If you qualify and are keen to commit to regular shifts, build and hold […]
COVID-19 and managing difficult emotions
Life in the time of COVID-19 is akin to something most of us have never encountered before. On hold for now are day trips, overseas holidays, long afternoon lunches in the sun with groups of friends and family and for many people their previous work role has either disappeared or changed in a significant way. […]
Loneliness and COVID-19: How online counselling may be part of the puzzle
The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed life as we know it across many regions of the world in just a few short months. I could not have fathomed how quickly my life and that of everyone impacted by COVID-19 could be upended. We are all adjusting to new terminology such as “social distancing”, “essential and non-essential […]
Anxiety Stories: Andrew. F. Interview
Anxiety disorders can affect people from any walk of life but often many struggle to recognise that they are experiencing anxiety and it can be common for people to want to keep the issue private. This means that many can find it tough to admit there is a problem, often relating it to general “stress” […]
Hypnotherapy – does it really work
When we get asked “does hypnotherapy work?” (as we do innumerable times) a torrent of assumptions underpin the question. Typically we appreciate the wishful element in such a question but, in general, we recommend a healthy sense of scepticism. Recently, Bayside Psychotherapy received a visit by an intelligent, young Google employee for a survey. He […]
Psychoanalytic Obstacles to Meditation
Mindfulness meditation has gained enormous popularity in the last decade and is now being offered as a ‘self help’ or therapy method. It has also been incorporated into mainstream psychological treatments, namely CBT, despite mindfulness and CBT coming from completely different ideological frameworks (interestingly, it sometimes appears proponents of mindfulness are unwittingly promoting CBT, but […]
Germ phobias, ebola and human relationships
What is germ phobia? Sometimes articulated as Mysophobia (Germophobia), a germ phobia characterises a disproportionate emotional arousal in response to a thought associated with contamination through contact with germs (whether real or imagined). Germophobia is often thought to arise in some instances of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) however it’s possible to also have germophobia and […]
Trichotillomania Study: Reneta Slikboer
A little known condition called trichotillomania (otherwise known as compulsive hair pulling) was once thought of as rare. This is no longer the case with estimates ranging from 0.6% to 3.4 % (Christenson, Pyle, & Mitchell, 1991). This means that approximately 285,000 individuals in the state of Victoria have firsthand experience of hair pulling. This […]
