About me

.

When I stopped drinking in 2017, it wasn’t because I wanted to. It was because it just wasn’t working anymore.

At 44 I’d had had a lifetime of using booze to quell my anxiety, to manage stress, to fuel my social life and to stop me facing myself and my buried pain and trauma from a dysfunctional and chaotic past.

I’d had many, many largely unsuccessful attempts to moderate or stop during this time.

Through all this I’d been:

a single parent to small children in a country where I barely knew a soul and had no support network
a high-flier in corporate life, juggling long hours and huge levels of stress in a work hard/play hard environment
in unhealthy relationships that were controlling and toxic, and left me experiencing night terrors and flashbacks for years.

The common thread throughout all of this was booze.

It was what I used to cope and switch off. It was ‘fun’!

It was the salve to everything, or so I thought.

My debilitating anxiety, my chronically low self-esteem, my complete lack of boundaries, my avoidance of dealing with the reality of my life.

But, after decades, it just wasn’t working anymore.

My deftly crafted fun-loving party girl persona wasn’t even fooling me.

I couldn’t supress my deep sadness and self loathing anymore.

That’s when I had to admit, finally, that I had lost control of my drinking, that I was deeply suffering and that I needed help.

I took to doing the work once and for all, threw everything at it, and I haven’t had a drink since.

And it changed my life completely.

All the things I had been looking for years, I found when I stopped drinking. I honestly had no idea of how much I would gain.

Aside from the more obvious things like weight loss, better health, mental health and finances there were much deeper and life-changing benefits:

I started to like myself and believe in myself.

I was able to start living my values, honouring myself and having my own damn back instead of constantly self-sabotaging.
I was able to start feeling glimpses of joy in day-to-day life, in the simple things. A contentment that had eluded me.
The blinkers started falling away and I was able to see things in my life much more clearly - and where shifts needed to be made - so I could improve my life.
I started smashing my comfort zone, realising it was no longer serving me, and releasing the things that had been holding me back.

And that’s why I am passionately driven to support people who are high functioning problem drinkers like I was to put down the wine glass and come home to yourself.

Because it eluded me for so many years, and it pains me for you to waste all that precious life stuck in this cycle.

You deserve better.

**This sh*t isn’t easy, my friend.** But it’s so worth it.

ways to work with me

WORK WITH ME

My qualifications, training & experience

Bachelor of Social Science (Psychology)
Graduate Diploma (Counselling)
ADHD Coach Training (ADDCA USA)
Certified Grey Area Drinking Coach - personally trained by Jolene Park (GAD expert/functional practitioner)
Lifeline suicide prevention training (ASIST)
SMART Recovery Facilitator training
Trauma-informed care for Alcohol and Other Drug Practice
Relapse Prevention & Management, Expanding Coping Skills - Insight
Non-violent communication (NVC, developed by Marshall Rosenberg PhD)
——————————————————————————————-
Current study:
Clinical Trauma Professional (CCTP) Certification
Science of Wellbeing, Yale University
——————————————————————————————-
Other relevant info:
Registered counsellor with Australian Counselling Association
Member of Australian ADHD Professionals Association
SMART Recovery Australia Board Member
I founded Untoxicated in 2018 - a volunteer-run grassroots charity to put the social into sober - personally supporting hundreds of people to change their relationship with alcohol (now closed).
A lifetime of personal and intergenerational lived experience relating to mental health, addiction, eating disorders, complex PTSD, co-dependency, panic and phobias - and a late diagnosis of ADHD at 48
Decades of professional and personal development including therapy, counselling, coaching, self-study around trauma, family systems, attachment theory, Taoism, EFT, polyvagal theory and somatic healing, nervous system regulation, shadow archetypes, inner child work, meditation, yoga.