Experience the Art of Healing

Expert Counselling for emotional and mental wellbeing, combining decades of experience with a heart-centred approach.

Connect With Your Capacity to Heal

Will You Allow Yourself to Receive It?

This space is for you . . . safe, sacred and supportive. Cristina brings decades of experience and steadfast commitment to your healing journey – walking with you as you tune into your heart, your fears and your truth.

Let her guide you as you release your pain, find better answers and liberate yourself into a life more empowered.

Let go of old beliefs that tell you to stay silent. Reach for the hand extended to you . . . because true healing begins the moment you allow yourself to receive it.

Who we are

Meet Cristina

About Me

I, too, followed my Heart to be here for you . . . After 23 years as a clinical psychologist, I followed my truth that healing is not defined by titles, it’s defined by connection. Letting go of the title allowed me to step into my heart-based work as a Counsellor for emotional and mental wellbeing, where I can meet you with authenticity and Heart.

My approach is deeply person-centered. I believe healing begins when you truly feel seen, heard, and understood . . . because connection is at the Heart of the healing. Over two decades, I’ve supported hundreds of people through life’s most profound challenges, guided by this principle.

Having lived in six countries, I understand the emotional and cultural challenges of navigating new worlds. That’s why I also dedicate part of my practice to supporting expats and immigrants in finding balance and belonging.

Beyond counselling, I offer clinical supervision to other practitioners, honouring the sacred responsibility of this work and the professionals whose life’s calling it is to guide others.

Whether you’re seeking support, healing, or professional growth, know this: You Are Welcome Here.

Qualifications

I have three degrees in Psychology that I achieved over 7.5 years from the prestigious Rhodes University in South Africa, having graduated as a Clinical Psychologist in 2002.

The range of professional assessment & treatment skills that I obtained there not only included CBT but also the deeper, more complex therapeutic approach of psychodynamic psychotherapy. I was also trained in family therapy, play therapy & neuropsychological assessment.

I’ve completed two academic theses – at the Honours and Masters’ levels. One of these focused on traumatic brain injury and the other on intervention for childhood sexual abuse, demonstrating that my passion for trauma recovery spans over two decades.

My post-graduate studies have continued for over 20 years. I’ve subsequently trained in DBT (the full program), Mindfulness & somatic approaches, Solution Focused Therapy, Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), other attachment-focused approaches, EMDR Therapy and EMDR Ego State Therapy.

I’ve completed numerous Masterclasses and other trainings in EMDR Therapy & EMDR Ego State Therapy with world-renowned therapists. I have subsequently delivered workshops, myself, to other therapists on EMDR Ego State Therapy, both in person and online.

My work with other therapists is further backed by my Post-Graduate Certificate in Supervision.

Experience

I have worked as a Clinical Psychologist in South Africa, New Zealand and Australia, within both the private and public healthcare sectors in all three countries, totalling over two decades. This has enriched my knowledge and experience of how attuned, compassionate care can be successfully provided to people in various contexts when the therapist consistently uses a person-centred, Heart-based approach, no matter where the person is located.

My professional experience in supporting people with their mental and emotional health traverses nearly the entire lifespan. I’ve worked in infant mental health; child and adolescent mental health; and adult mental health.

I have extensive and high-level training and experience in the field of trauma and PTSD. Subsequently, I became an Accredited Practitioner by the EMDR Association of Australia.

While my primary modality is EMDR Therapy, a powerful method that integrates mind, body, Being and memory, I also draw from CBT, DBT, Mindfulness, Solution-Focused Therapy, and attachment-based approaches. This blend allows me to tailor every session to your unique needs.

I have lived in six countries and I’ve worked in my professional capacity in four of them, and now globally online. This makes me extremely well-versed in the role of culture in the varied ways that our pain and suffering can be expressed, and the many nuances required by me, the counsellor, to ensure that you, the person in front of me, truly feels heard, understood and supported as the Sacred Person that you are.

Services

What We Offer

Expat / Immigrant Support Sessions

Experienced support to help you navigate the cultural, emotional, and assimilation challenges of life in a new country.

Individual Counselling and EMDR Therapy

Personalised sessions using effective approaches, including EMDR, to restore emotional balance & recover from trauma.

Group Meditation and Mindfulness Workshops

Live, guided practices in a supportive group setting to reduce stress, enhance inner calm and build resilience.

Psycho-education Courses

Practical, interactive courses for emotional resilience, improved communication and reclaiming your power.

Parts Work / Working With Parts of Self

Deep change that goes beyond talk therapy to alleviate deep-seated patterns of relating, internal conflicts & dissociation.

Clinical / Counselling Supervision

A safe, reflective space for professionals to deepen their practice with supportive guidance from an experienced practitioner.

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."

Winston Churchill

Heart Help

Areas Where We Can Assist

Anxiety, Depression & Stress

Find relief from anxiety, depression, and overwhelming life stress through skilled, compassionate support.

Trauma & PTSD Recovery

Recover from Trauma, PTSD, Complex PTSD and dissociation with specialised approaches like EMDR & EMDR Ego State Therapy.

Grief, Loss & Life Transitions

Navigate grief, loss, and major life changes with gentle, personalised guidance.

Communication and Relationship Challenges

Break free from unhealthy patterns and build stronger, more assertive connections with others.

Expat, Immigrant & Cultural Adjustment

Feel connected and supported as you adjust to a new culture, a different country, and a reshaped sense of belonging.

Support for Parents & Professionals

Get expert support in parenting challenges, or professional growth through clinical / counselling supervision.

Heart is the Great Art of Life . . . the Choice is Yours to Nurture it . . .

Let’s nurture it together

Why Choose Us

Therapeutic care grounded in compassion, experience, and connection

Art of the Heart Counselling - a space where you can feel heard, safe, connected and supported, knowing that you are in the hands of someone with decades of experience in guiding people who were once in a similar place to where you are now . . .

Experience Above Par

With over 20 years of international experience having practised as a clinical psychologist, you can trust Cristina’s profound therapeutic knowledge and expertise to guide and support you.

Compassionate Care

Counselling is about connection and that starts with care. Cristina listens with her soul so you can truly feel heard - your story, your challenges and your needs - and receive respectful, insightful care.

Interventions That Work

The compliment to the care are the tools. Cristina draws on her high-level training and extensive experience in EMDR Therapy, EMDR Ego State Therapy, CBT, DBT, solution-focused therapy and Mindfulness approaches to support you.

Online or In-Person Sessions

This is counselling that moves with you. The choice of in-person or online sessions allows you the convenience to have easy access to your sessions, wherever you are.

Specialised Skills

Trauma does not have to be a lifelong sentence. You can benefit from cutting-edge change tools like EMDR Therapy & EMDR Ego State Therapy, in which Cristina is highly experienced, to gradually feel relief from trauma.

Culturally Experienced

Culture plays a big role in how we express our challenges and our needs. Cristina’s international experience means you have a counsellor who is culturally sensitive, attuned and respectful of you.

Common Questions

FAQs

What is mental health counselling?

Mental health counselling means speaking to someone for support and assistance with challenges, problems or concerns that are impacting how you feel, think or behave. Simply put, “mental health” consists of your emotions, feelings, thoughts, beliefs and behaviour, plus your corresponding physiological responses. These are all connected and form part of your mental health. “Mental health” is something that we all have – every one of us – just like we have physical health. It can be impacted by challenges or problems in your personal life, your relationships, your work, your family, community and environment, by your physical health, and by adverse experiences that you’ve had in the past. Also, your mental health can be affected by your thoughts about your future. Counselling is when you speak about your challenges, problems or concerns in a safe, confidential space with a counsellor who has knowledge and experience in mental health as well as in strategies and approaches to that may help you.

How may mental health counselling help you?

One of the great benefits of mental health counselling is that anyone can choose it. You don’t have to have a psychological or psychiatric diagnosis to have mental health counselling. You can think of it as ‘wellbeing-maintenance.’ Just like you go for a run or a walk, or you do some other form of exercise to maintain your physical health, mental health counselling may help you to maintain your mental and emotional wellbeing. Imagine a pot cooking on a stove with the lid on – in order not to have the pot boil over, every now and again you must lift the lid to let out steam . . . Imagine the relief? It’s also a good place to identify potential solutions and strategies to help yourself, both with your emotions, feelings and thoughts, and with how to address or overcome the challenges that are impacting you.

How does mental health counselling work?

Mental health counselling allows you to speak about your challenges, problems or concerns in a safe, confidential space with a counsellor who has knowledge and experience in mental health as well as in strategies and approaches that may help you. The counsellor asks you questions to help clarify what’s happening for you, to prioritise the order of the challenges and then to apply strategies, solutions and/or approaches that may be useful in improving how you feel, adjusting your mental approach, and dealing with external stressors or problems. Mental health counselling is not a passive exercise – neither for you nor for the counsellor – both the counsellor and you are actively involved in the process.

What if you think that you have a challenge that can’t be solved?

Then you’re absolutely right! Your mental approach to the counselling will have a big impact on the outcome. It was Henry Ford who said, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right.” It may serve you better to maintain an attitude of openness and curiosity, knowing that while the counsellor will never solve a problem for you, they will work with you to create a space where both of your knowledge, resourcefulness and experience can coincide and create possibilities for solutions that may not have come to you had you thought about it only on your own.

What is EMDR Therapy?

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy is a comprehensive mental health intervention that has been found to ease the emotional and mental distress related to disturbing life experiences, traumatic events and/or current situations. EMDR therapy is an evidence-based intervention that was established in 1989 by Dr Francine Shapiro. It has been extensively researched, with over thirty positive controlled outcome studies demonstrating its efficacy. It is recognised as an effective intervention for trauma and other disturbing experiences by several organisations, including the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, the American Psychiatric Association, the World Health Organization, the US Department of Defense, and the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council. For further reading, you can click here: https://www.emdr.com/what-is-emdr/ and it will take you to the website of the EMDR Institute, which was founded by Dr Francine Shapiro.

How may EMDR Therapy help you?

EMDR Therapy can help you to alleviate the emotional and mental distress related to disturbing life experiences, traumatic events and/or current situations. It is also useful in enhancing self-esteem, overcoming feelings of powerlessness and in assisting with many other challenges for which people seek support, e.g., depression, generalised anxiety disorder, social phobia, attachment disorder, anger dyscontrol, specific fears, distress related to infertility, body image disturbance, and existential angst. Preliminary studies have shown that EMDR therapy may be helpful with dissociative disorders, performance anxiety, body dysmorphic disorder and pain disorder. The efficacy and effectiveness of EMDR therapy has demonstrated that it is not true that intense emotional and mental pain requires very long-term intervention. EMDR therapy has shown us that it has the potential to assist with challenges much quicker than originally believed. Over 100 000 clinicians worldwide now use EMDR therapy and millions of people have benefited from this approach.

How does EMDR Therapy work?

Just like the human body can repair a broken bone or a physical wound, so the brain is designed to process and heal mental and emotional wounds. However, when the brain’s natural processing of mental and emotional information is blocked by the impact of a very disturbing / distressing event, the emotional wound can worsen, and you may feel much worse. EMDR therapy assists to remove such blocks, so that your brain’s innate capacity for healing can resume.

EMDR therapy entails eight phases, and the eye movements (or other bilateral stimulation) are used during one part of those eight phases. There is the initial assessment phase followed by the stabilisation phase. Then, once the counsellor has assessed which memory to target first, you focus on the selected target memory while simultaneously focusing on the counsellor’s hand (or on a dot on a computer screen) as it moves from left to right across your field of vision. This replicates the movements that your eyes do during Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, causing internal associations and the reprocessing of the disturbing memory and associated feelings. Successful intervention with EMDR therapy assists you to transform the emotional meaning of disturbing events, leaving you feeling more empowered. For a more in-depth explanation of how EMDR therapy works, you can click here: https://www.emdr.com/frequent-questions/ .

Is it possible to overcome the memories or triggers that are causing you pain, anxiety, sadness or other difficult feelings?

When EMDR Therapy is utilised correctly, this is generally possible. There are many randomized controlled trials that have researched the efficacy of EMDR therapy and have demonstrated its effectiveness. Please click here for further information: https://www.emdr.com/frequent-questions/

What are Expats?

Expats (short for ‘expatriates’) are people who live outside their native country. Because people can relocate for a myriad reasons, expats can include people who have chosen to emigrate or those who have been displaced / forced to move due to factors outside their control, e.g., fear of persecution in their native country.

What can Expat Support Counselling help you with?

Regardless of the reason for leaving one’s native country, adjusting to a new country can be difficult. It can put you face-to-face with many emotions and experiences. Although these can be positive, many can challenge you in ways you’d never imagined.

Most expats struggle with feelings of strangeness, isolation and grief at some point in the process of adjusting to their new country. Speaking a different language, especially if you’re not fluent in it, can make even the simplest of tasks feel difficult . . . suddenly the world around you can feel like it doesn’t include you and like you’re simply watching from the outside . . . the sense of isolation can deepen and some expats can start to feel depressed, anxious or stricken with grief. Even navigating simple things like a bus schedule in a different language can feel daunting, let alone more advanced tasks like finding employment, working in a different language, and making friends.

Moreover, some people experience racial prejudice in their new country, or even a sense of never really feeling understood or accepted by the people and culture around them.

Cristina has lived in six countries across four continents and two islands, over a period of 48 years. This, as well as her experience as a psychologist that spanned 25 years, makes her very well-positioned to personally understand and connect with you and your experiences as an expat. She has the skills, experience and empathy to support you emotionally and mentally as you navigate the rewarding and challenging experience of creating your new home in a new country and a new community, while still caring for yourself.

How many sessions will you need?

There is no fixed number of sessions that you will need. You can choose to attend one session to get a feel for what it’s like and to understand more about how it can help you. Alternatively, you’re welcome to book a Free 15-minute Discovery Session. Then you can decide whether the Expat Support Counselling sessions feel useful for you and make sense to you, and whether you want to book one or more sessions going forward.

What if you speak a different language from Cristina?

Cristina currently provides Expat Support Counselling sessions in English and Italian. If you speak a language different to this, Cristina is happy to work with you to find if there is a solution, e.g., to use a live interpreter, or translation software.

What is Counselling Supervision?

Counselling Supervision is the provision of a safe, non-judgmental space where guidance, knowledge, experience and feedback is shared with other counsellors / mental health practitioners to support and assist them in carrying out their work and in developing their skills as practitioners. This may entail the provision of professional knowledge; understanding and working with the various challenges that people bring to sessions; theoretical models to conceptualise cases; and various modes of intervention. Engaging in reflective practice is a core component of the counselling supervision. Due to Cristina’s extensive training and experience in working with trauma and EMDR Therapy, she can also generally supervise cases involving EMDR Therapy cases and EMDR Ego State Therapy cases.

Which professions can Cristina supervise?

Because Cristina worked as a clinical psychologist for 23 years before deciding to work as a counsellor, her extensive training, expertise and experience in mental health and specifically in trauma, EMDR Therapy and EMDR Ego State Therapy, she can supervise most professionals who work within these areas in a clinical service provision role. These are generally psychologists, psychiatrists, counsellors, social workers, occupational therapists and psychiatric nurses. If your profession / role is not listed here but you work within the field of mental health or work with EMDR Therapy in another setting, you are welcome to book a Free 15-minute Discovery Session with Cristina to find out if she can assist you with supervision.

Which supervision framework does Cristina use when supervising others?

While Cristina has been trained in various supervision models, she prefers to utilise an approach that enhances the practitioner’s knowledge and skills in a way that is reflective, non-judgemental and didactic if needed. You can access her supervision for actual client cases as well as for professional issues. Cristina generally provides individual supervision sessions although group supervision sessions can be arranged upon request.

Can I see Cristina for Counselling Supervision even if I’m not a registered mental health practitioner?

Yes, you are welcome to see Cristina for Counselling Supervision even if you are not a registered mental health practitioner.

Art of the Heart
Counselling