About Gay Bucknall

About Gay Bucknall Counselling and Psychotherapy

Gay Bucknall Counselling and Psychotherapy is a private psychotherapy practice located in the Northern Beaches that specialises in the provision of high quality and strictly confidential services in counselling and psychotherapy for individuals, couples and families. Gay is experienced in addressing a wide range of relational and psychological concerns including trauma, adolescent health, relationship issues, self-esteem, depression, grief, life adjustment concerns and anxiety arising out of everyday life. Her base modality is Gestalt Therapy but she also has training in Family Constellation therapy and Brainspotting.

 Gay holds a Masters qualification in Gestalt Therapy. She believes Gestalt therapy’s holistic theoretical foundation and relational and experiential methodology is particularly relevant and useful for her clients. Gestalt therapy’s here and now emphasis, its ability to attend to the phenomenology of the body, its utilization of experiential, graded experiments and its supportive relational dialogical philosophy ideally positions it as the treatment of choice for clients theoretically, tactically and advantageously.

 Gay is warmly relational, inclusive, transparent, affirming and empathetic in the therapeutic situation. She has developed skills of supportive reflection enabling her to develop greater awareness of what is interesting and significant in the moment in therapeutic process.

 

Gay strives to:

Build safety as the primary concern throughout therapy including:
1) strategies to support clients to regain and stay within tolerable boundaries; and,
2) developing strategies for bringing clients back to the here and now of the situation and reminding clients they are safe in the present situation.
Engender the ethical perspective of being with and honouring the client’s experiencing while holding a sense of the infinite responsibility of care for their safety and well being including avoidance of both shaming and re traumatisation;

Gay strives to:

Avoid pushing clients too quickly, checking regularly that clients are managing the pacing of the work; and’
Avoid assuming the role of rescuer, which can disempower clients and perpetuate traumatic transference. Rather she supports clients to accept what is and to work toward discovering solutions that are meaningful and relevant for them.
Gay also continues doing her own therapeutic work, with the intention of continuing her growth process. She believes that if she consider therapy important for others it is equally germane for her own own growth and development.
Gay is a member of GANZ (Gestalt Australia & New Zealand), the peak body representing Gestalt Practitioners in this region of the world, and she abides by the GANZ code of ethics and is happy to be accountable to this external body.
Gay’s interests include a deep love of family and family get-to-gethers, teaching art and art theory, visiting galleries and making artworks.

If you would like some support please call Gay Bucknall on 0419 041 642

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