I’m Susan, a registered psychologist who has been working across the Territory with adults, children and families since 2015. I have worked in different mental health roles using a variety of modalities including trauma informed care, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, CBT, mindfulness and Imagery Rescripting. I have been working with parents and carers using approaches from Circle of Security and Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy.
I am also a mother. My beautiful boy was born in 2021 and it was through my own transition to motherhood that I first fully understood the challenge of finding my own way in early parenting. So much of the mainstream advice seemed to be about disconnecting from your baby, not responding the way they needed and following rules that I could not align with my values and knowledge of child development.
Despite extensive experience guiding parents of older children I felt lost about what to do when my 2 month old baby would cry and fuss and not want to sleep all night. When I reached out for support I was told to just put my baby down drowsy-but-awake, but I can tell you that my child did not agree with that one bit. We quickly, but with a sense of ‘doing the wrong thing’ went back to feeding to sleep. It wasn’t until I found Possums when my baby was 3 months old that I finally felt heard and supported to not doubt myself in my parenting choices in those early days.
Since that time I’ve had a growing passion to be able to support other parents to follow their values and find their joy in parenting.
As a psychologist it has always been important to me that I am providing the most up to date evidence based support for new parents. That’s why I undertook further study to become a Neuroprotective Developmental Care Practitioner, more commonly known as the Possums Approach. Possums offers the latest evidence based approaches to breastfeeding, cry-fuss behaviours, sleep, and maternal mood based on 15 years of research. The term ‘neuroprotective’ refers to our goal of protecting the rapidly growing infant brain particularly in the first 12 months by supporting maternal mental health and working within a concept of cued care (responding to your baby’s needs) which lays the neural connections for a relationship built on safety and trust. Possums is a non-prescriptive approach and there are no rules. It works with your infants biology and is supportive of any strategies that works for you and your baby, including feeding to sleep or co-sleeping.
I am also a trained Circle of Security facilitator. This is an approach to support gentle parenting focussed on attachment theory and quality of relationships rather than behaviour management. I draw on these theories to help parents make sense of their child’s inner world, needs, and how to support them.