Victoria Roubin Therapy

14/08/2023

One of my favourite modalities to work with both personally and with clients is symbol work.

It’s said a picture paints a thousand words and similarly, the selection, holding and contemplation of a symbol – and then its placement in relation to other symbols – has the ability to reveal the deepest aspects of our inner landscapes. By choosing symbols we are intuitively drawn to (or repelled by), we bypass the known and familiar and drop into the hidden realm of that which is emergent within us. In so doing, we ‘privilege our unconscious’ to have its say. And to share its wisdom.

This secret under-world is typically unlanguaged but as it reveals itself through these powerful little conveyers of meaning there is a deep resounding resonance that recognises our Truth; undeniable yet often unrealised. In this metaphoric narrative we can see our situation afresh, explore options, consider possibilities and ultimately problem solve in beautifully creative ways that can be translated into our day-to-day life.

Like many of the modalities I offer as an expressive therapist, symbol work is a sneaky powerful way of gaining insight and getting to the heart of the issue. Quite literally. And quite quickly. But how gently and respectfully it does so.

If you’ve never experienced symbol work or sandtray as a therapeutic option and are experiencing a sense of stuckness, emotional pain, inner conflict or just a general life-malaise I highly recommend this profound means of exploration.

Would love to hear your thoughts and experiences… 🙏

19/07/2023

https://youtu.be/sidOV94enHQ
This is one of the best descriptions of what it is like to suffer mental illness that I’ve seen. It nails just how debilitating anxiety and depression can get when left to its own devices. It’s non pathologising, trauma informed and helpful in its suggestions. Well worth a 5 minute watch if you or anyone you know is a sufferer. ❤️

Mental illness affects almost every aspect of our cognition, from threat-perception to decision-making. We must learn to be sceptical about the legitimacy of...

12/07/2023

Am I the only person who struggles to answer the question, ‘How are you?’
There’s a lady I bump into on my walking track who greets me this way whenever we pass one another. I suspect it’s her preferred greeting more than a genuine enquiry. I smile, say hi and possibly comment on the loveliness of the afternoon in an attempt to sidestep her question because for me, it’s complex and ultimately dependent on which part of me is the one answering.

Typically, on any given day, I have several parts within that present various responses to life as its unfolding.
There’s usually one that feels overwhelmed about something or other but thankfully alongside that one are other parts that compensate and are well capable of adulting their way through whatever’s required. I have parts that carry the weight of the world and its problems who would answer one way, and then others that feel nicely energised by some little creative project I’m engaged with who would answer altogether differently.

Like most, I have sad parts, content parts, childlike parts, grateful parts, complaining parts, irritable parts, inspired parts, burdened parts, anxious parts, amused parts and everything in between. I imagine you’re much the same.

The important question, ‘how are you?’, is precisely what is attended to in a therapy room. Because how we are is a jolly good place to start in addressing what might need to change. A safe therapeutic space welcomes all parts – body, mind, and heart – to weigh in. And enquiry of this nature opens up a nuanced interweaving of intrapsychic perspectives that often reveals the facets of our self that have been routinely downplayed, ignored or suppressed. And yet it’s those exiled parts of ourselves that require our compassionate attention more than ever. I’m grateful for the beautiful, non-pathologising frameworks that facilitate such essential exploration and if you’re keen to read more I highly recommend a book by Richard Schwartz called “No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model’. It’s a game changer I think.

29/06/2023

Last night I attended an on-line PD training on the subject of Climate Anxiety (aka Climate Distress or Climate Emotions). It’s a real thing that’s now been named and describes how the state of our world and the dire repercussions of our treatment of it is significantly impacting our mental health both collectively and individually. Increasingly this presents itself in a therapy room.

Surveys done around people’s response to climate change and all that entails include denial, anger, fear, shame, overwhelm, guilt, grief & betrayal as opposed to energised determination, motivation and hope. Sadly, the vast majority of people identify somewhere in the former responses which indicates a deep collective ‘Solastalgia’ or existential distress caused by environmental change. Indeed it’s a global phenomenon that needs immediate addressal.

Clearly the results of Climate Anxiety are far further reaching than we’ve realised and present themselves in ways I had never considered.

I was deeply impacted by this training and encouraged to sit with the questions:
How do you actually feel personally in response to what is happening in our world?
How does it impact your lifestyle, choices and your mental health?
What do you do to assist yourself in best managing these concerns with regard to your mental & emotional wellbeing?
And finally, what is your personal relationship with nature and with animals? How does this help or hinder your emotional response to Climate Distress?

Alarmingly, one survey revealed only 7% of therapists make space for this kind of essential enquiry. This definitely needs to change and I for one am most curious how people navigate their Solistalgia.

25/06/2023

In 2017, I completed a year-long training in a unique and extraordinarily powerful therapeutic approach called the Clay Field. From my own personal encounters in the Field and from facilitating clients in the Field since then, I can honestly say the experience is profound and life-changing. I’m sold on the efficacy of this approach to access and offer resolution to deeply embedded, unconscious material in a safe, contained way.

While the theoretical underpinnings of this modality are dense and grounded in decades of research, none of this need be explained to the one entering the experience. For the most part it’s a non-verbal, bottom-up approach to self-discovery and change. In other words, it’s not cognitive and no story need be told. Your hands will do the work necessary and will lead the way. That said, upon completion, there is usually some discussion around ‘what just happened’ which offers your brain the opportunity to reflect upon and integrate the experience just lived.

As a therapeutic approach, the Clay Field is particularly suited to those suffering from trauma, abuse related issues, grief and loss issues, insecure early attachment patterns and, more generally, those wanting to recover connection to their deepest Self and inner Truth.

If you’re keen to read more please visit: http://www.vrtherapy.com.au/the-clay-field

23/06/2023

One of my all time favourite things to do is watching surfers bob about in the ocean. Sometimes I play with the idea of bobbing about in there myself but for reasons of sharks and sea monsters I prefer to sit under a tree from the safety of the earth and just watch. For me, it’s hypnotic and within moments I find myself slowed down, breathing more deeply, feeling the earth beneath me and becoming acutely present to both the moment and to my own body. I guess it’s a form of mindfulness like that. Watching bees has the same effect. So does forest bathing. Or swimming in the ocean where my toes can touch the bottom.

Seeking more of this in life is what prompted me to move to the Sunshine Coast. It was a thought I flirted with for years before taking the plunge because taking time out to do these things was met with strong resistance from those parts of myself most loyal to childhood scripts, long outdated - that deemed such a use of time as wasteful, unproductive and self-indulgent. My parents, both workaholics with a fiercely ‘strong protestant work ethic’, were raised in England in the years of the Great Depression and WW2. Survival was the name of the game for them and that they did. Until they passed.

I get sad when I think about their lives. They never challenged the scripts they inherited even when times improved. But what’s even sadder is when the next generation do the same, follow suit and hold tightly to outdated, unhelpful scripts that shape a life that doesn’t feel like our own preferred life. It takes courage to do this work and to challenge these loyal parts hell-bent on protecting us from whatever it is they’re afraid of.

Visiting and examining childhood scripts comes up so often in therapy sessions. I don’t imagine there’s a human on the planet who it doesn’t impact. I guess it’s why I’m a psycho-dynamic therapist who acknowledges just how much the back-there-and-then can shape the here-and-now...

Until it doesn’t need to anymore.

22/06/2023

In days gone by, touch work in a psychotherapy session was considered taboo, deemed unnecessary and unethical. Yet with the ground-breaking discoveries made in recent years around neurobiology, polyvagal theory and interpersonal psychotherapy there’s increasing support for just how vital touch can be in attending to the embodied stories that clients bring into the room.

When it comes to trauma – be it a single event, ongoing complex PTSD or early developmental trauma (or attachment trauma as its often called), traditional talk therapy or other such ‘top-down’ approaches are typically ineffective in addressing the underlying response patterns held in the body. As it’s been said, ‘the issues are in the tissues’ and for this reason a ‘bottom-up’, body-based (or somatic) approach is called for.

For clients wishing to address these embodied stories and the underlying neurobiological causes for their chronic anxiety/depression, I draw on two body-based approaches: Somatic Experiencing and NeuroAffective Touch. Here psychotherapy & somatic work (via integrative touch) meet. The two happen simultaneously. Whilst offering specific kinds of touch at various layers in the body's fascia, musculature or skeletal systems, our deeply embodied, carefully constructed protective patterns are respectfully visited and ultimately interrupted in such a way that the trauma story unfurls and new neural pathways can be mapped. In this way, early and often preverbal patterning can be rewired, the body's armouring released and long held narratives can be restoried.

It’s a beautiful, gentle process and the results speak for themselves.

If you’re keen to read more please visit: http://www.vrtherapy.com.au/somatic-therapies

20/06/2023

Just a few thoughts today about Art Psychotherapy. I remember being on prac many years ago and turning up to the rehab center to hear the head-of-staff sing out, “The arts and crafts lady is here”. I just smiled but for the record art therapy is not this.

While engaging in arts & crafts, or indeed any creative expression, is wonderful and most cathartic and can foster feelings of well-being and even facilitate healing, Art Psychotherapy is so much more. It’s a mental health intervention that draws on various art materials to facilitate deeper exploration and expression of one’s inner most, and often wordless, landscapes.

Art therapy can be a completely non-verbal process or it can be used alongside verbal processing but either way the process of putting the lines, shapes and colours on the page or in some other visual representation is a means to ‘privileging the unconscious’ and thus puts the experiencer in touch with that which is not yet known.

In this way fresh perspectives can be witnessed, new ideas born and insights gained. What’s more, it can get to the heart of the issue in question far more quickly than talking about it. There is something so disarming about having the material externalised on the page or in some kind of 3D form. Somehow, to see it outside of one’s self makes it feel much safer to consider things in a new way without getting the sense of overwhelm that can come from rehashing the story over and over. If you’ve never tried art therapy I can’t recommend this beautiful modality highly enough. And the good news is, you don’t have to be talented at drawing or skilled with art materials in any way. It’s magic like that.

19/06/2023

Have you ever walked a labyrinth? It’s an ancient practice & something I like to do from time to time as a form of spiritual reflection. Although it means different things to different people and while there is no right or wrong way to approach it, for me it’s like a mini spiritual pilgrimage that takes on rich metaphorical meaning every single time.

As I enter, slowly making my way to the center, I consider what in my life is no longer serving me, the old and outdated that needs releasing. Symbolically, I turn my palms downward and become aware of the big, wide ground underfoot able to absorb any worries or concerns I currently carry in life. What do I need to let go of?

Upon arrival in the center, I sit with my palms now upturned to simply receive. To make space for the new and whatever The Devine is wanting to show me. The center to me represents the sacred heart space where truth can be heard. I wait. I breath. I be. And then having received, I arise to take the journey back out. To return from the mystery of the underworld back to day-to-day life. And every time I take a labyrinth walk I am different for it.

To me too, it speaks of the first and second halves of life. Two different stages holding 2 very different invitations that Jung described as, the first half devoted to ‘forming a healthy ego’ and the second half to going inward and letting go of it. Ain’t the journey we’re all on. Both individually and collectively.

If you haven’t tried a labyrinth walk, I highly recommend it as a profound form of life-contemplation. Just google where one is in your area. They’re around tucked here and there for those searching souls. And upon completion you might like to journal or create a piece of art in response to your experience. It’s a special experience.

17/06/2023

As a trauma survivor I’ve had to be proactive and most intentional in maintaining my mental health over the years.

For me, life changed at age 16 when I experienced my first panic attack. Perhaps it was my own journey with longstanding and at times debilitating depression/anxiety and making sense of the childhood I had that led me to become a therapist myself.

I have firsthand experience of what it is to feel unsafe not only in the world but in your own body. I know what it feels like to experience moods and states of mind that are so unbearable you have no idea how to survive the next 10 minutes let alone an entire day or to shape a life worth getting up to. But these things I have learned. And as a result, while depression/anxiety may have shaped my life it certainly hasn’t defined it.

Learning about the nervous system and practices of self-regulation has been a game changer for me. And that’s why I feel passionate about sharing it with others.
To reach out and find help, to feel supported & to identify strong inner resources I didn’t know I had was the result of my own therapeutic journey of recovery. Over the years I’ve worked with several beautiful psychotherapists at various times for various stages of my own healing process and I will continue to do so. In short I believe in therapy. It can make a world of difference.

No doubt we’ve made terrific progress with regard to raising mental health awareness and the necessity for good trauma informed interventions. As a culture we are normalizing mental health concerns & this is progress but I would like to see more. I would like to see any stigma attached to seeing a counsellor/psychotherapist or psychologist a choice of courage and proactivity in taking charge of one’s personal situational or mental health needs. Good for them!

16/06/2023

Several weeks ago I made a tree change from the Brisbane Burbs up to the beautiful hills of Eumundi in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland. Although the process of selling up and moving after 50+ years in one city has been emotionally gruelling (to say the least), doing so has seen a dream fulfilled. It was scary leaving behind my friends, son, a thriving private therapy practice, my community, conveniences, familiarity and to some extent a sense of safety. But there was something more important going on. A call to new adventure. And a call to nature. If not now when, I asked myself?

For years my head and heart argued back & forth. Head presented all the logical reasons why such a move was unnecessary & nonsensical. Heads can often be like that I find. But Heart knew. And Heart so often has a different take on things in life. Different priorities. Different values. Clearly Heart won despite the fearful objections for here I am settling in to this new neck of the woods where the sounds of the motorway, the rifle range and the flight path have been exchanged for silence and birdsong.

While I still see all my Brissy Clients on-line or in-person (if they fancy a trip up the highway) I'm looking forward to building my private practice up here. I offer counselling by way of talk therapy, art psychotherapy, Somatic Experiencing and NeuroAffective Touch. Check out my website for more details.

15/06/2023

When was the last time you got out your art stuff and just played? And perhaps more importantly, what is it that stands in the way?

This is something I've been thinking about lately with regard to my own art-making play as I just don't seem to 'make the time' as they say... or perhaps allow myself the time would be more accurate. I'm always busy doing other things deemed more important by some other bossy part of myself. That said, every day I facilitate clients in their artful explorations of whatever invites deeper enquiry and every single time I witness their dropping into a deeper, unworded place of innate wisdom where fresh perspective & creative insight is gained. It is my intention to prioritise this for myself again and set aside a bit of time. Ok I’ve put it out there now. Watch this space.

If you've never tried art psychotherapy as a means to self understanding, personal enquiry & growth, assistance with mental health issues, for processing grief, trauma, relationship difficulties, pain management, auto immune issues and everything in between, I highly recommend giving it a go. And contrary to popular understanding art therapy is NOT colouring-in books. (although admittedly they can be a bit of fun and relaxation too for sure and possibly assist in mindfulness). Indeed colouring-in books, being one of Amazon's all time best sellers, would testify to its popularity. All good, but let's not call it art therapy which is a vital and highly effective intervention for more depthed therapeutic purposes.

Such a beautiful, gentle, profound modality. ❤️