Lisa Loots Social Worker

Lisa has been a Mental Health Accredited Social Worker for 12 years and has extensive experience working in the mental health space for more than 25 years. She worked in a variety of settings as a Social Worker, both overseas and in Australia. She has worked in Mental Health NGO settings, Community Mental Health, the hospital, and private practice. Lisa has been supervising Mental Health Social Workers in various Mental Health settings, as well as providing supervision and field instruction to students at various levels of their academic journey in social work, as well as interdisciplinary mentoring and consultation. Lisa is a Practitioner who draws on many therapeutic approaches, including Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), Schema Therapy, and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). Lisa uses mainly DBT, but she is also of the opinion that an Eclectic Approach is useful to ensure a good fit between elements of the approaches and the individual person instead of relying on only one model. This enables her to use a variety of strategies and techniques, e.g., psychoeducation and mindfulness strategies. She believes strongly in the Recovery Model and aims to empower people to grow and develop knowledge and skills, personal values, and a life worth living. She is also passionate about group interventions, especially those aimed at skill development. Lisa works with a wide spectrum of mental health disorders (e.g., Depression, Anxiety, Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), Emotion Regulation Disorders, Suicidal Ideation and more). Lisa draws mainly on Dialectical Behaviour Therapy with a strong focus on recovery, aiming to develop knowledge and skills and specifically manage distress and powerful emotional reactions. Life often throws curveballs our way. Many are not really sure how to deal with these, and sometimes it feels like your life attracts curve balls. This is usually when a skills training approach can assist. Apart from individuals, Lisa also enjoys working with couples. Her preference is to work with couples where both are serious about overcoming the difficulties threatening their relationship, although there might be times when one partner might be seen on their own. Lisa also prefers to do couple counselling following the DBT model to empower both to grow and develop together. Understanding and accepting each other’s unique identity within the relationship limits conflict and facilitates effective interpersonal communication, improves relationship satisfaction, and creates a sense of belonging and connection. Lisa is an empathic, authentic, and intuitive person, and a counselling session with her will feel natural, conversational, and purposeful. She is a warm, kind, and caring person and clinician. She aims to create an opportunity for meaningful change in the lives of those she works with and to do it by creating a space in sessions that feels safe, accepting, validating, and nurturing.