CLAUDIA GROSS
PSYCHOTHERAPIST
AUCKLAND
Individual Psychotherapy | Supervision | Couple Counselling | Balint Group Work
Individual Psychotherapy | Supervision | Couple Counselling | Balint Group Work
Psychotherapy is a safe place amidst the struggles and difficulties of life. A place where you can catch up with yourself, take your time, and listen to yourself.
Are life’s problems getting too much?
Are you …
Speaking with another person about your experiences and the feelings that come up can make a lot of difference. Especially speaking with someone who is a skilled listener and helps you think about what you can’t think about. A therapist is someone who is alongside to help explore, face, and manage what is difficult to approach and bear.
“I’m a great believer in dialogue. We heal ourselves through talking…”
— Stephen Daisley, author of Coming Rain.
Psychotherapy for Adults
I help individuals to understand themselves, including their symptoms and suffering, and to find out how to lead a more authentic and fulfilling life. Therapy is like having someone in your corner who helps you face your troubles and opens up new perspectives. Changes emerge from our work together are based on your wishes and needs.
I offer a confidential and secure professional relationship in which difficult experiences and emotions can be approached, faced, managed and further explored. The relationship develops in regular, reliable and private meetings so that emotions and feelings, thoughts, memories, dreams can come into awareness and thought about. My approach fosters self-awareness, self-discovery and understanding which encourages personal growth.
Brief psychodynamic therapy is focused on a specific emotional problem, conflict or symptom, how to manage it and make some sense of it. Some relief from what is immediately troubling can happen quite quickly. Yet lasting solutions to many problems and lasting change are harder to come by. They are always personal and require care, patient attention and a more sustained delving into the complexity of who you are and what has shaped you.
In open-ended therapy we work together on understanding long-standing patterns of your life and your way of experiencing. We focus especially on what is out of awareness, what is known somehow but hard to grasp, yet part of what is going on for you. Over time you begin to make new experiences and deep seated change develops.
Specific problems and issues I can help with: depression, anxiety, grief and unresolved losses, difficulty adjusting to significant or abrupt life changes, immigration and exile, early emotional trauma and neglect, difficulty forming satisfactory relationships, psychosomatic symptoms and persistent pain, loss of meaning in life, work place issues.
Supervision
I offer individual supervision for people in the professional services, education and health, and to other psychotherapists. Anyone whose work centrally involves contact with clients, patients, customers or students benefits from supervision. It provides a space to reflect on yourself in relation to the organisation and environment that frame your work. It strengthens you as a practitioner, and enhances the safety and professionalism of the work you do. My background is in tertiary education, professional research and I also welcome academics and scientists for supportive supervision.
Balint Group Work
I am a practitioner of the Balint Group method of case work, developed for GPs, psychotherapists and other health practitioners. The Balint Group offers a non-judgmental and creative way of reflecting on challenging or difficult work. Please contact me for further details. See also the Balint Society website: www.balintaustralianewzealand.org.
Couple Counselling
In couple counselling I provide a safe space in which each partner is able to talk about what can't be expressed in the relationship. It's a space to listen to and hear one another, to gain more understanding of what is going on between you. The focus is on enhancing communication, especially of emotions, and on understanding the effects of patterns of behaviour that lead to negative or destructive feelings. I communicate clearly and honestly what I notice, think and feel as we work together on finding solutions. It is a collaborative endeavour. Both partners need to commit to be open and receptive with each other and to work on the relationship.
I am an experienced psychotherapist trained mainly in psychodynamic and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. I work with people as whole persons—with their history, hopes, relationships, beliefs and conscious as well as unconscious processes. Your individual life history and past relationships are important because we can then begin to understand together your present life situation and your hopes for the future.
I also draw on training in Dialectical Behaviour therapy, Motivational Interviewing and Mindfulness, especially in helping people manage their symptoms so that the deeper and more lasting work can be done.
Through my own history and background I have extensive experience working with people from different cultures and diverse backgrounds. Psychotherapy is my second profession after being a professional social anthropologist for many years. I worked and made a life in different European countries (England, Scotland, Switzerland, and Germany) as well as in Papua New Guinea and India, before permanently settling in New Zealand nearly 20 years ago.
I welcome adult clients from all walks of life and all ages. A special interest is psychotherapy with immigrants to New Zealand who are trying to make this country their home, (people in exile, recent migrants or long-term immigrants), and with first generation New Zealanders. With my professional research background I also specialise in working with professionals, academics, scientists and other creative people.
My main language is English, but I also speak a Swiss dialect, German, Melanesian Tok Pisin, and I have a good ear for French.
Memberships and Qualifications
My practice is at the CBD end of Mt Eden, at 237 Mt Eden Rd. There is free and time-limited parking available in a nearby reserve. The Mt Eden train station is a 5 minute walk away. Bus stops for several routes are just a few steps away.
Please contact me by phone or email to discuss a first meeting.
Hours are Monday to Friday. Some availability in the early evening.