Supporting people who are going through hardships in their lives has been a passion of Kelsi’s ever since she met with her first client in 2013. Kelsi is a psychologist who views her job as an absolute privilege, because of the ways in which the people consulting her have so generously included her in their lives and allowed her to walk alongside them as they’ve navigated the highs and the lows. Kelsi is a practitioner who believes that the clients consulting her hold an immense amount of knowledge about how to get through the difficulties in their lives, as they are the people who have had to learn how to endure these difficulties. However, as problems are often so skilled at recruiting people into seeing themselves as the ‘problem’ rather than as the ‘person trying to respond to and endure the effects of a problem’ – people often present to therapy with a negatively skewed view of themselves. Thus, as a psychologist, Kelsi views her role as one that invites people to work collaboratively with her to paint a detailed picture of the problem(s) impacting on their lives and to then richly describe the multitude of ways that people have responded to, resisted, and persisted despite the effects of the problem(s) in their lives. In turn, this often helps people to stand in a different territory of identity than the one that is often overtaken by the problem-saturated story about who they are.

In her work, Kelsi mainly draws on Narrative Therapy, an approach that views people as the experts in their own lives, that respects the hard-won knowledges and skills that people bring to therapy, that views therapeutic conversations as collaborative and relational endeavors, and that seeks to create an environment where these knowledges and skills can be more richly described. Kelsi is also trained in a multitude of other therapeutic approaches, some of which include: Systemic Family Therapy, Response-Based Therapy, Feminist-informed Therapy, Solution-Focused Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Mindfulness-Based Practice, and much more.

Kelsi has an undergraduate degree in Psychology, a Master’s degree in Counselling Psychology, a Master’s degree in Narrative Therapy and Community Work, and a PhD (through the University of Melbourne) focused on Narrative Therapy in the realms of abuse and trauma. She is registered with the Psychology Board of Australia, Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) and is a member of the Australian Psychological Society (APS).

Kelsi has experience working with people who have lived through a multitude of problems, some of which include: experiences of abuse, trauma, sexual assault, family and domestic violence, suicidal thoughts, self-harm, depression, anxiety, grief, loss, experiences of panic, obsessions and compulsions, disordered eating, and relational difficulties. Kelsi has gained this experience through working with a team specialising in sexual abuse and family violence, through working at a Women’s Centre, and through working at a Mental Health Day Hospital Unit in Canada.

Kelsi believes that despite the powerfully looming dark cloud that problems so often cast on people’s hopes and dreams, there are always alternative ways of thinking and being that can help people to move towards their preferred sense of self and towards their preferred way of being in life.

Kelsi currently consults at BlueSky Psychology on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Fridays.

BlueSky Psychology Level 10, 108 King William Street, Adelaide South Australia 5000. Phone 08 8212 3944