Victoria Shaw

BA Psych (Hons), Dip. Psychotherapy, Psychotherapist

Victoria qualified as a Crisis and Suicide Counselor with Lifeline Melbourne, as a psychologist with Webster University in The Netherlands, as a Life Coach with CSA Europe, and as a psychotherapist with Kairos Centre in Melbourne. Victoria has been working in the area of mental and emotional well-being since 2000, both in Australia and Europe, and has always maintained at least a small private practice. She spent six years as a behavioural psychologist in private practice specialising in Autistic Spectrum Disorder and running an undergraduate internship program at a university in Leiden, before moving into addiction rehabilitation at the Wild Horses Centre in Amsterdam. Upon returning to Melbourne from Europe, Victoria spent two years working with teenage delinquency in Frankston, followed by two years as a perinatal psychologist with the Pregnancy, Birth and Baby Helpline.

Since moving to Bairnsdale in 2012, Victoria has been in private practice, based at McMillan Chiropractic Centre, Bairnsdale.

Her areas of specialisation include:

Trauma, PTSD, anxiety/depression, work/life stress
Chronic pain management
Quit Smoking Program
Weight Loss Program
Children and teenagers
Relationship counseling

Philosophy
I have spent years becoming qualified in every modality counseling, psychology, life coaching, psychotherapy – I am still and will always be studying new ways of supporting people, because every person who enters my therapy space is unique, and I can best support them in the way they need as an individual if I have a lot of different tools to choose from.
In my therapy room, the client leads each session, decides what to work on, how far they are comfortable going with it, and how to go about it. This is especially important when dealing with trauma. I believe that many people who come to me regarding anxiety/depression, those who have chronic weight/smoking problems, are living with trauma.

What is trauma?

Trauma, in my definition, is any occasion where a person feels they have no choice – work stress, harassment/bullying, car accident, witnessing an accident, relationship breakup, becoming a first-time mother, unexpected illness/injury/operation/accident, unexpected death/suicide of a loved one, as well as the more obvious traumas, such as natural disaster, sexual/physical abuse, victims of crime.
Trauma is essentially an experience where the body clenches in the fight-flight response and is unable to discharge that tightly wound energy due to the nature of the situation. This results in physical, emotional and mental distress, which may be experienced as physical ailments (skin disorders, muscular/back/head pain or gastro-intestinal dis-ease), depression/anxiety or PTSD. In treating this distress, I find it important to access both the mind and body, as the ‘trauma’ is held in both and should therefore be treated in both. That is why I enjoy working as part of an Allied Health team at McMillan, where my clients have easy access to highly qualified physically-based therapists, and we can provide a comprehensive service.

The modalities used by Victoria include:

Classical talk therapy and behavioural management techniques
Belief restructuring (neuro-linguistic techniques)
Mindfulness, mind body relaxation tools
Various energy psychology approaches (Bilateral Stimulation Processing, Thought Matrix Meridian Therapy, Chakra Counseling, Personal Myth writing, Ritual work)
Art therapy
Hypnosis/trance

Available for sessions in Bairnsdale:
Day times – Monday, Tuesday and Thursday
Evenings – All evenings

60 minute session $80
90 minute session $120

For more information: www.innerstrength.name