Matthew Power, FOT, BCouns, BA, GradDipEd, MACA
Matthew Power is a leading trauma counsellor. He has for many years achieved outstanding results using modern trauma counselling approaches, with an emphasis on mindfulness and emotional safety.
Matthew has extensive professional experience in several counselling agencies, including nine years working for Relationships Australia supporting victims of crime and clients of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Matthew was part of a Royal Commission team that visited Palm Island to establish the work of the Commission there.
As a specialist trauma counsellor, Matthew is particularly experienced in helping survivors with complex trauma related to childhood abuse, including those with addictions and serious mental health diagnoses. In his work with the Blue Knot Foundation, Matthew trains other professionals in the needs of those with complex trauma, including the "3 Phase" model of trauma healing that is now international best practice.
Trauma counselling with Matthew starts with safety and stability. This means NOT chasing after trauma memories. Real healing begins when we strengthen our ability to soothe intense emotions, gain the power to keep our mind in the present rather than the past, and grow in appreciation for our own strengths and virtues. Matthew has many ways to help you feel better and better in these ways.
Sometimes, but not with everyone, it is useful to safely and carefully visit memories of what happened to us. By laying a firm foundation in practicing the ability to self-soothe and stay present, Matthew can guide you to have experiences that heal your relationship with memories, rather than being retraumatised by them. The key to this kind of work is observing how our memories are held in “felt senses” in our bodies. Using this bodily awareness we can learn to be “with” intense memories rather than “in” them, and this breaks their power over us. Matthew is an expert in this kind of work.
As the goal of Matthew's counselling is to empower the client, it is always the client who decides how to proceed.
As counselling progresses, Matthew can help you find new ways of being in the world, such as learning to be calmly assertive (rather than passive or aggressive), developing trusting relationships, and reducing the need for drink or drugs because there's now less emotional pain to soothe. You can start moving toward life goals that might have seemed impossible before.
No matter how intense, how distressing and how life disabling things might feel right now, it IS possible to find real healing. It's just a matter of starting, and small step by small step, with the right support, skilfully choosing to move toward a safer, happier, better future. Matthew would like to help you with that.
For more information about Matthew's counselling work, including client testimonials, go to: www.heartmindfocusing.net