Brave Therapy

23/06/2026

Self-compassion is a powerful practice that can transform how we relate to ourselves. Here are six simple yet profound ways to bring more kindness and care into your life:

1️⃣ Supportive Touch: A gentle hand on your heart or a comforting self-hug can soothe and ground you in moments of distress.

2️⃣ Treat Yourself Like a Friend: Speak to yourself with the same kindness and understanding you’d offer a dear friend.

3️⃣ Ask Yourself, 'What do I need?': Pause for a moment and check in. Do you need rest, reassurance, movement, or connection?

4️⃣ Write a Self-Compassionate Letter: Put pen to paper and offer yourself words of comfort and encouragement, just as you would to someone you love.

5️⃣ Remember You Aren’t Alone: It’s important to acknowledge that we all face challenges—this imperfection is what makes us human.

6️⃣ Use a Warm Inner Coice: Try to adopt a gentle tone with yourself, especially when things go wrong. Practice patience and understanding toward yourself.

🌸 Have you tried any of these self-compassion practices? Share your favorite one below!

23/06/2026

When does your brain reach adulthood? Neuroscience is revealing the many ways your brain continues to mature decades after society first deems you an adult.

13/06/2026

12/06/2026

In my work, I’ve come to think of us, therapists as the instrument, and like any instrument in regular use, we drift out of tune without noticing. We can’t feel the drift from the inside. That’s part of what supervision is for. It isn’t only for early-career clinicians, or for when something has gone wrong. It’s where we recalibrate: where another set of eyes helps us see the countertransference, the assumptions, the moments we’d rather move past quickly.

I’m running a small group supervision program for PACFA registrants , PACFA, endorsed, meeting monthly, and kept deliberately low-cost so that ongoing reflective practice stays within reach.

12/06/2026

The first step is making scrolling a little harder by creating an obstacle, giving your rational brain time to catch up with your impulsive thumb

12/06/2026

Low-cost Supervision Groups are starting soon: https://bravetherapy.com/low-cost-supervision-group/

21/05/2026

In my work with clients, I see how trauma settles in the body — not only as tension, but in patterns that persist long after the original threat has gone.

A recent review in Frontiers in Psychiatry has helped me think about this more clearly. The authors describe how chronic stress changes the fascia — the connective tissue running through every part of us. Over time, it stiffens. The layers stop gliding the way they should. The signals it sends to the brain become less clear.

This is one of the reasons that talk therapy, on its own, can take some clients only so far. Trauma is not held only in the mind. It is held in the tissues, the nervous system, and the connective web that links them.

If you work clinically with trauma, this is unlikely to surprise you. What the paper offers is a clearer account of something many of us have been observing for years.

I’ve written more about what it means for our work here:
https://bravetherapy.com/fascia-and-trauma-why-the-body-belongs-in-the-mental-health-conversation/

18/05/2026

Thank You for Being Part of the Starting Strong Conference

The PACFA Starting Strong Conference brought together over 1100 participants for a highly engaging day of practical insights and guidance on building a career in practice.

Read all about it here: https://www.pacfa.org.au/portal/News-and-Advocacy/news/2026/April/strating-strong.aspx

16/05/2026

Worth listening to:

Are mental health diagnoses more cultural than biological? We discuss all this and more on this podcast episode.