Laura Alfred Psychologist

Laura’s qualifications are a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Psychology and a Masters Degree in Clinical Psychology. Prior to qualifying as a psychologist, Laura completed a Masters Degree in Sociology. Laura has 18 years experience as a Clinical Psychologist working with both adults and children in private practice, school and hospital settings. She provides therapy for both individuals and couples. Laura’s areas of expertise and experience are broad and include depression, anxiety, post-natal difficulties, work stress, loss, life stage difficulties, immigration, parenting and relationship issues. A particular area of interest and expertise for Laura is working with complex difficulties or lifelong patterns, such as re-ocurring themes in relationships, self-worth, careers or family. Laura helps her clients to understand and redefine these patterns in ways that make sense of and heal causal influences, such as childhood experiences, trauma, or life events, and that cultivate new ways of experiencing themselves and their life. She is also interested in helping clients to understand how socio-economic and cultural factors influence their mental health. With respect to relationships, Laura works to understand how individuals and couples enter into and maintain cycles of conflict, and how these can best be resolved. She assists couples to turn their conflicts into opportunities for greater closeness and healing, and to re-establish constructive patterns of interacting. Laura also enjoys helping young adults with their transition through an important and challenging lifestage. She helps with identity, sexuality and relationship issues as well as difficulties with education, the workplace, anxiety and depression. Another area of interest and expertise for Laura is parenting and parent-child relationships. Laura enjoys working with parents and their infants and children under five and can help with sleeping, feeding, toileting, behavioural and developmental issues. She has published articles on topics related to parenting of infants and perinatal issues. Laura has extensive experience helping the parents of children with learning disorders and other issues. She has achieved great success with the parents of children who are battling with school and social difficulties, divorce, anxiety and depression. In addition, Laura is skilled at helping parents cope with their child’s learning difficulties, attention problems, Aspergers syndrome and disabilities. Laura has also acted as an Employee Assistance provider, offering work-related counselling and therapy for issues such as work stress and anxiety and work-life balance. In addition to providing therapy, Laura has conducted Master’s level research on parenting and bereavement, and has received numerous academic awards and scholarships. She has published several articles in journals on topics related to children and parenting, and has presented to other Psychologists and mental health professionals at numerous conferences and workshops. Laura’s approach to therapy primarily psychodynamic, but she integrates this with other modalities to suit the needs of each individual client. She aims to help clients develop greater self- understanding, self -acceptance and a more mindful approach to their lives. Laura enjoys working with clients from diverse cultural backgrounds. She is a dedicated, warm and sensitive therapist, who sees the therapist-client relationship as a central part of the healing process. Laura is fully registered with the Psychology Board of Australia, and has specialist endorsement as a Clinical Psychologist. She is a member of the Australian Psychological Society and the Australian Psychological Society College of Clinical Psychologists.