Counselling Sydney
Counselling for individual adults with Chauncey Sjostedt, a PACFA Certified Practising Member. Sessions run 50 minutes, in person near the Sydney CBD and in Glebe, or by secure video anywhere in Australia. You do not need a referral and there is no waiting list.
One person at a time. I see individual adults only. Couples work, family sessions and joint appointments are not things I provide, so it is worth knowing that before you write.
What is the difference between counselling and psychotherapy?
Counselling usually deals with a specific present difficulty over a shorter period. Psychotherapy usually goes further back and further down, looking at the patterns underneath. I am qualified in both, and in a real practice the line between them is blurry.
People often arrive worried they have asked for the wrong one. You have not. The words matter far less than what you actually want out of the work, and that is something we establish in the first session rather than something you need to decide in advance.
Here is the honest version of the distinction, with the caveat that plenty of good work sits somewhere between the two columns.
| Counselling | Psychotherapy | |
|---|---|---|
| Usual focus | Something specific happening now | The pattern underneath the specific thing |
| Usual length | Weeks to months | Months to years |
| Typical starting point | A situation you can name | A sense that something keeps recurring |
| Pace | More focused, often quicker | Slower, more exploratory |
| How I work in it | Gestalt, applied to the situation in front of us | Gestalt, applied to how you are put together |
The short answer
If you have a problem you can describe and you want somewhere useful to take it, ask for counselling. If you keep arriving at the same place and want to understand why, ask for psychotherapy. Either way you book the same 50 minute session with me and we sort out the rest together.
Is counselling with me the right fit?
Worth checking before you spend money on a first appointment. My practice is narrow on purpose, and being clear about the edges of it saves everyone time.
Likely a good fit
- You are 18 or over
- You want to be seen one to one
- You are willing to look at your part in things
- You want something more than advice
- You have no diagnosis and do not want one
Probably not a good fit
- You want to attend with a partner
- You are looking for family sessions
- You need help this week, urgently
- You need a report, letter or assessment
- You need a Medicare rebate to afford it
None of that is a judgment on what you need. It is a description of what I am set up to provide. Tell me what you are looking for when you write, and if I am not the person for it I will say so and suggest where to look instead.
What does counselling with me actually involve?
No intake interview, no assessment battery, no worksheets. What happens is closer to a careful conversation in which somebody is paying very close attention.
Fifty minutes, led by you
We start wherever you are that day. I do not arrive with a plan for you, and there is nothing you are supposed to have prepared. Longer appointments can be arranged if you ask when booking.
Weekly, then usually less
Most people start weekly because momentum helps at the beginning, then move to fortnightly once things settle. We review that as we go and change it when it stops fitting.
For as long as it is useful
Some people come for six or eight sessions and finish. Others stay much longer. There is no package, no minimum commitment and no awkwardness about stopping when you are ready.
Because my training is in Gestalt, the attention goes to what is happening as you speak as well as to the content of what you say. That might mean noticing that your voice drops on a particular name, or asking what you are aware of in your chest while you describe a situation you have described many times before. It sounds small. It tends to be where the movement is.
You can read more about how I trained and why I work this way on the about page.
What can counselling help with?
Almost anything you are finding hard to carry on your own. These are the areas that come up most often, each of which has its own page as the site grows.
You do not have to pick one, and quite a lot of people cannot. A tangle is a perfectly reasonable thing to bring. The full descriptions live on the counselling services page.
What counselling will not do
Worth saying out loud, because a fair bit of what gets written about therapy quietly promises more than any therapist can deliver.
It will not remove grief, make an unreasonable family reasonable, or turn a genuinely hard situation into an easy one. I cannot tell you what to do about your job, your relationship or your mother, and I will resist you if you try to get me to. Advice from a stranger paid by the hour is worth roughly what advice from anyone else is worth.
What tends to change is your relationship to what you are carrying, how much room there is around it, and how alone you are while you carry it. Most people find that matters more than they expected it to, but it is a slower and less dramatic thing than the word breakthrough suggests.
How much does counselling in Sydney cost?
I do not publish a rate here, because I would rather quote you the current one directly than leave a stale number on a website. Email me and you will have it the same week.
What I can tell you without you asking: there is no Medicare rebate on my sessions and I cannot accept a Mental Health Care Plan, because I am registered through PACFA and not through AHPRA as a psychologist would be. Some private health funds do pay something towards therapy at my level of membership, so it is worth a phone call to your fund quoting #29367. Itemised receipts come as standard.
You can pay by card or direct deposit, either before the appointment or on the day. I ask for two days notice on cancellations so the hour can go to somebody else.
If money is the thing standing between you and starting, say that in your first message. I would rather have an honest conversation about it than have somebody quietly decide not to write at all.
Where can you have counselling in Sydney?
Two rooms in the inner city, or your own kitchen table. Many people mix the two depending on the week.
Surry Hills
Suite 324, 410 Elizabeth StreetSurry Hills NSW 2010
9:00am to 2:00pm
On the CBD fringe, about ten minutes on foot from Central Station.
Glebe
Genki Centre, 1 Arundel StreetGlebe NSW 2037
2:00pm to 7:00pm
Handy from Newtown, Camperdown, Annandale and the university.
Online
Secure encrypted videoAnywhere in Australia
Same hours as the rooms
You need somewhere private, a steady connection and a camera.
Counselling near the Sydney CBD
The Surry Hills room sits just south of the city centre, which makes it reachable on a Saturday morning from the CBD itself, Darlinghurst, Redfern, Chippendale and Paddington without much of a journey. Central is the nearest station and buses run along Elizabeth Street. Weekend parking on the surrounding streets exists but fills, so leave a few minutes spare rather than arriving flustered.
If the inner west suits you better, the Wednesday room in Glebe is the easier one, and if neither is convenient the online option removes the question entirely. Nobody is expected to pick a location and stay with it. Plenty of people book whichever fits the week they are having.
How do you begin counselling?
Three steps, and the first one is the only difficult one.
Write to me
Use the contact form and say roughly what is going on. A couple of sentences is plenty. You can also ask for the free introductory call instead.
We book a time
I reply within 48 hours with times that are open, and send a short intake form to fill in before we meet.
We meet once
Then you decide, with no pressure either way. A first appointment is a look at each other, not a commitment to a course of anything.
Counselling questions I am asked most
How is counselling different from talking to a good friend?
Your friends are in your life, which means they have a stake in what you decide and a version of events of their own. I do not. The hour belongs entirely to you, nobody is taking a turn, and I am trained to notice things a friend would politely let pass. Good friendships are irreplaceable, but they are asked to do a job they were never designed for when they become somebody's only outlet.
How many counselling sessions will I need?
Genuinely varies. Some people bring one clearly defined thing and finish inside six to eight appointments. Others find that the first thing opens onto something larger and stay for a year or more. I will not quote you a number at the start because I would be guessing, but we review how it is going often enough that you are never left wondering.
Do you offer low cost, subsidised or bulk billed counselling?
No. I am a private practitioner with no funded places, no sliding scale advertised on this site, and no Medicare or bulk billing available. If you need free or low cost support, your GP can point you to local services, and community health centres and university clinics often run them. That is a real option and not a lesser one.
I want relationship counselling. Can you help?
Only in the individual sense. I cannot see you and your partner together, and I do not do couples work of any kind. What I can do is work with you on your own about how you relate: what you repeat, what you avoid, where your boundaries collapse and why. Plenty of people find that shifts the relationship even though only one of them ever sat in the room. If you specifically need both of you present, ask me and I will suggest a referral.
Can counselling happen online instead of in person?
Yes, and for a good number of the people I see it is the only way it happens. Online appointments run on secure encrypted video and are open to anyone in Australia, not just Sydney. Some people worry the screen will make it feel less real. In practice that tends to fade within a session or two.
What if I have never been to counselling before?
Then you are in the same position as a large share of the people who write to me. There is nothing to prepare and no correct way to begin. Turning up and saying you are not sure how this works is a completely ordinary opening, and I will take it from there.
Will you tell me what to do?
No, and I would be suspicious of anyone who did after fifty minutes with you. I do not know your life well enough to run it, and a decision you arrive at because I suggested it tends not to hold. What I will do is help you get clear on what you actually think and want, which is usually the part that has gone missing rather than the answer itself.
What if we meet and I decide you are not the right person?
Then say so, or simply do not book again. You owe me no explanation. Fit matters more in this work than almost anything else, and a therapist who is wrong for you is not a failure on either side. If it would help, I am happy to suggest someone who might suit you better based on what you brought.
Are you a registered counsellor?
Yes. I hold Certified Practising Membership of the Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia, number 29367, which is their highest membership level. Holding it means completing recognised training, staying in regular supervision, logging professional development every year, and working to their ethics code. It also gives you somewhere independent to go if you ever have a complaint. You can check the register yourself at pacfa.org.au.
Ask a question, or book a first appointment
Write a couple of sentences about what is going on. That is enough to start with, and I will come back to you within two days.