Perinatal, Child & Family Hub; Carla Anderson Clinical Psychologist
Carla provides telehealth psychological support nationwide, and online training for health professionals. Reach out if you would like more information.
✨Nationwide telehealth support through the Perinatal period from preconception, pregnancy, birth, & postnatal.
⚠️general info only not therapy clinical advice
For training for healthcare professionals page: Anderson Clinical Psychologist & Trainer. Carla Anderson is a Clinical Psychologist with over 20 years of experience providing psychological and counselling services for families in the Perinatal period (preconception, pregnancy, birth and postnatal). Area's of support provided by Carla include;
• Perinatal Depression and Anxiety
(antenatal & postnatal)
• Birth Trauma
• Infertility difficulties
• Grief and loss (miscarriage, stillbirth, termination and
neonatal death)
• Non-directive pregnancy counselling
(pregnancy related concerns and termination
support)
• Support adjusting to parenthood
Other areas of focus include:
• Women’s Sexual and Intimacy difficulties
Carla is passionate about providing Training and Clinical Reflective Supervision to other health professionals (mental health clinicians, medical, midwives, allied health professionals) related to Perinatal and Infant Mental Health and related topics. Carla also recently completed her Certificate III in Floristry and gained her qualification as a florist and was introduced to therapeutic horticulture and the benefits of using flowers and psychology together. She created "Floriful" workshops combining mindfulness, self-care and floristry, as well as training in the use of floristry in therapeutic horticulture for health professionals.
28/10/2025
Each week I share flowers from my flower patch arranged in the vase that sits in my therapy room. These reflections explore what each bloom can teach us about healing, connection, and emotional growth.
The Lisianthus is one of my favourites. Planted back in April, it took six months to bloom. In floriography, it symbolises gratitude, appreciation, elegance, and life-long bonds.
Its soft pastel tones and rose-like petals reflect tenderness and connection, a quiet reminder of the relationships and moments that sustain us. The Lisianthus reflects the quiet strength found in lasting connection.
In therapy, healing often begins within safe and trusting relationships where we feel seen and understood.
Like the Lisianthus, these bonds grow through patience, care, and mutual appreciation.
💭 Reflection: Think of a relationship that has supported you through change or challenge.
What qualities helped that bond to deepen and endure over time?
27/10/2025
Registrations close tomorrow
If you have been curious about adding nature based therapy into your work, this is your last chance to join us.
Nurtured by Nature is a hands on professional development workshop for clinicians who want to explore how working with flowers and plants can support emotional regulation, engagement, and connection with clients.
Facilitated by Kristy Howard and Carla Anderson you will learn how to integrate therapeutic horticulture and floristry into your clinical practice in ways that feel safe, creative, and incredibly meaningful. These approaches help clients express and regulate when words feel too hard, and they also bring a calming presence to you as the clinician.
This small group workshop at House of Hope Gardens is designed to be both restorative and practical. You will leave with new confidence and tools you can use right away.
🌿 Monday 3 November
🌿 Sunshine Coast
🌿 $445 including GST
🌿 Registrations close tomorrow
Reserve your place now and discover how nature can become part of your therapeutic toolkit.
🎟️ Book here: www.trybooking.com/DFOHZ
27/10/2025
🌿 Sunshine Parenting Program (SPP) is coming to the Sunshine Coast! 🌿
We’re so excited to share that Peach Tree Sunshine Coast will be running the Sunshine Parenting Program starting Monday, 10 November 2025 ✨
This free, peer-led program is designed especially for mothers with babies under 12 months, offering gentle support through the emotional ups and downs of early motherhood. The SPP is a 6-week group workshop where you’ll come together in a friendly and understanding environment to share experiences, feel supported, and build your confidence as a parent.
Our SPP sessions are relaxed, welcoming, and facilitated by peer workers who bring lived experience with perinatal mental health challenges—so you’ll be supported by people who truly understand.
You’re not alone — this is your space to connect, grow, and find strength together. 🌸
23/10/2025
I’m so looking forward to being part of the Respectful Maternity Care Conference in March. There is a fabulous lineup of speakers. And I’m so grateful for the opportunity to share both of my passions- training for medical perinatal clinicians and floristry self-care 💐
Checkout the program at Maternity Consumer Network
22/10/2025
We are offering our second Boundaries and Belonging 4 week workshop. This time it is during school hours on a Monday morning 10am - 11:30am.
✨ Boundaries & Belonging – 4 Week Course for Women ✨
Are you ready to feel more confident in your boundaries and create stronger, healthier connections? 💕
Join us for a gentle, creative 4-week journey designed to support women in exploring:
📅 Dates: 10th, 17th, 24th November & 1st December
🕡 Time: 10am -11:30am
📍 Location: Glasshouse Mountains
💲 Cost: $140 (4 sessions)
👩👩👧👧 Small group – limited to 6 women
Bookings are essential.
📞 0407 930 091
📧 info@elizabetheatoncounselling.com.au
If this sounds like something for you, we would love to have you join us 💫
20/10/2025
Because therapy doesn’t always have to happen on a couch 🛋️
What if you could use a unique and different kind of evidence based therapeutic approach with your clients?
One that engages the senses, nurtures connection, and brings calm to both client and clinician.
Working with plants and flowers invites a different kind of therapy 🌱🌼. It slows the pace, engages the senses, and creates safety through gentle activity.
For clinicians, learning to use nature in this way can open new pathways for connection, particularly with clients who feel stuck, overwhelmed, or unsure how to express what they feel. The process of tending, arranging, or creating with natural materials allows meaning to emerge organically. It helps clients regulate, reflect, and find words at their own rhythm while the clinician supports this unfolding with presence and curiosity.
Nurtured by Nature is a professional development workshop designed to give clinicians confidence and skills to bring nature based approaches into their client work. You will learn how to use gardening and floral arranging therapeutically to support reflection, grounding, and connection. Developed by Kristy Howard In My Mothers Kitchen and Carla Anderson Carla Anderson Clinical Psychologist & Trainer. Only two weeks to go so register now!
🌿 For allied health professionals including but not limited to: psychologists, counsellors, occupational therapists, social workers, and allied health professionals.
🗓️Monday 3 November | Sunshine Coast
💲 $445 (includes GST)
💻Book your place: www.trybooking.com/DFOHZ
18/10/2025
FREE WEBINAR FOR WOMEN THAT HAVE UNDERGONE MASTECTOMY.
Just a few more days till I host my free online webinar on using Self-Compassion in the post mastectomy journey.
So many women struggle with their body image after mastectomy and it’s my goal to help you if that’s you! 🩷🩷
The recording will be sent to those that register after also.
✔️
18/10/2025
The Flannel Flower and the Art of Beginning Again
I have previously shared about the Flannel Flower- how much I love it and my journey trying to germinate it, along with the meaning it holds for me. Today, while preparing an email for my mailing list, I found myself reflecting on it again.
Soft and strong at the same time, the Flannel Flower is the national symbol of mental health awareness in Australia. It thrives in harsh coastal conditions, yet its seeds only germinate after exposure to fire and smoke. Growth needs challenge, patience, and persistence.
When I tried to grow them myself, I was unsuccessful many times. I lit fires in terracotta pots (do not try this at home, it does not work), searched everywhere for the right conditions, and eventually realised I needed to adapt. Once I stopped forcing it and began again differently, using tubestock instead of seed, they finally began to thrive and this week I got to celebrate my first bloom from my tubestock planted months ago.
That experience became a quiet metaphor for my professional life. After decades in perinatal and family mental health, and years of leading a busy group practice, I learned that endurance does not come from pushing harder. It comes from finding gentler ways to begin again, gentler ways to do things. To not keep pushing harder.
I closed my practice, shifted to telehealth, and began weaving creativity and self-care into my work. Adapting and changing has not, and still is not easy, but it has been renewing and hopeful for the next blooms.
The Flannel Flower reminds me of a line from Be Your Own Wildflower Affirmation Cards by Holly Ringland.
“What is lost is found.” Even in demanding seasons, we can rediscover calmness, curiosity, and compassion.
🌼 Reflection prompt: The flannel flower only blooms after fire.
What has helped you grow through difficult seasons in your professional life? What strength or insight has emerged from challenge?
As a life long migraine sufferer, I’ve found a lot of these posts helpful. Sharing in case it helps others too.
17/10/2025
𝗩𝗼𝗹𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝗿𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁
We’re looking for caring volunteers to help wash and wrap our beautiful baby wraps that go into our Baby Memory Boxes.
Your help brings comfort to families during one of the toughest times in their lives 💜
What’s involved:
🕊 Contact us at info@preciouswings.org to organise a collection time
🕊 Pick up wraps at organised collection time from Precious Wings Headquarters – 15/121 Newmarket Road, Windsor
🕊 Take them home to wash, roll, and tie with ribbon
🕊 Once all wraps are complete, email again to organise a return time to drop them back to our Headquarters
Every wrap you prepare helps us provide love and support to grieving families.
If you’d like to volunteer, please email us on info@preciouswings.org so we can organise a collection time and communicate any further details – thank you for giving your time and heart to this special cause 💗
Thank you
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Contact The Practice
Send a message to Perinatal, Child & Family Hub; Carla Anderson Clinical Psychologist:
Carla Anderson is a Clinical Psychologist with over 17 years of experience providing psychological and counselling services. Carla is also a mother of three teenage daughters and three step children.
Carla’s passion with the perinatal period began in 2000 through a volunteer peer support and group coordinator role with the Qld Postnatal Disorders Association, whilst completing her psychology degree and becoming a mother herself. From here, Carla’s passion grew, taking on other volunteer positions as a telephone grief counsellor for Bonnie Babes Foundation and Angel Babies Foundation for a number of years, where she worked as a grief telephone counsellor and then as a national trainer, training professionals around the country in support and counselling skills for families who have experienced miscarriage, stillbirth or neonatal death of a baby.
Carla worked in various government and non-government agencies as a psychologist with a child focus at Child & Youth Mental Health, Domestic Violence Service Child Counsellor, and the Child Development Service. As well as volunteering for Lifeline as a telephone counsellor, and working as a Sexual Assault Support worker. Carla went on to manage the Domestic Violence refuge and crisis houses.
In 2005, Carla went into private practice to focus on helping families within the perinatal period and children and youth, and has continued in private practice since throughout Queensland.
Throughout this time Carla was also involved in nationally funded projects including; the Lighthouse Project for Children in Domestic Violence, and the Gladstone Communities for Children Project, establishing Postnatal Depression Support Groups within the community.
In 2014 Carla returned to study to complete her Masters in Clinical Psychology, completing it in 2017. Carla focused her research on the perinatal period through the completion of her thesis; Establishing whether pregnancy anxiety is a distinct syndrome. The research examined whether fears related to pregnancy and childbirth are distinct from anxiety disorders.
Carla is passionate about supporting women and their families in all areas related to the perinatal period such as infertility and IVF issues, pregnancy related concerns, antenatal/postnatal depression, grief and loss, birth trauma and adoption. As well as supporting families with the transition to parenthood and the day to day juggling of family life.
Carla is also passionate about supporting children and youth and their families in all areas such as depression and anxiety, behaviour difficulties, trauma, autism and ADHD. She is also able to undertake psychometric assessments and cognitive assessments such as the WISC-V.
Carla also provides general psychological support for Adults (Depression and Anxiety), Trauma (adult and child); Domestic Violence and Sexual Abuse, and Women’s Sexual and Intimacy difficulties.
In her sessions Carla uses a variety of evidence-based therapies including CBT, ACT, Mindfulness, and Compassion Focused Therapies, to enhance self-understanding among clients. She works individually, as well as with the family and infant/child. She has also completed training specifically related to Perinatal disorders, Circle of Security and Attachment Based approaches.
Carla provides a professional and caring space to process whatever difficulty clients are experiencing at the time, personalized to suit the individual’s needs.
Carla is registered for Medicare’s Focused Psychological Strategies and the Non-directive Pregnancy Counselling items.
