Mindfulness practise helps us to disengage from being consumed and compelled by the question: What am I supposed to do now? Mindfulness practise involves simply identifying our body / felt response in the very moment of feeling confronted by a perceived threat. A perceived threat moment can be the blank-bored eyes of a seemingly disinterested child if you are a teacher or parent. It can be the rejecting stare of a lover or employer in flight. Mindfulness practise involves awareness of one’s body felt response in that perceived-threat moment without recourse to usefulness. It is just awareness for its own sake. Therefore, there is no judgement about relevance of the awareness consciously linking the awareness back to the question: what do I do now? Mindfulness creates a space for your unconscious sense of safety and common sense to inform action in that nothingness or no-agenda space.

About Us

Do you feel as though:

The spark gone out of your relationship?
You have lost your way in your relationship?
The butterflies in your stomach at the sounds of your partner’s voice flown away only to be replaced with knots of anxiety?
Your partner is no longer on your side?

Would you like to:

Rekindle your connection?
Rediscover the qualities in your partner that you first fell in love with?
Find your way back to love, happiness and harmony?

Working with individuals and couples, John Bacash Melbourne Psychologist is here to show you the path to reconnection.

Whether you are ready to rekindle the passion, rediscover what first attracted you to one another, and realign with your partner through relationship counselling; or you are seeking counselling to aid in the uncoupling process; John will guide you to a psychologically satisfying resolution.

With over 20 years’ experience as a relationship counsellor in Melbourne, John brings a wealth of knowledge, skill and compassion to couples counselling. And it’s not just about book learning. As John says:

“My clients often want to know if I have had similar life experiences to theirs. Be assured, I have experienced the full catastrophe and come back with a smile!”

John takes the time to listen – really listen – to you, your concerns and areas of conflict, and then works with you to generate imaginative ways to think differently about your relationship, your connection to your partner and how to renegotiate your identity and role in the relationship.

Together you will tailor a unique treatment program to guide you towards the outcome you need. John draws on over 23,000 hours counselling experience, together with his considerable understanding of Psychoanalytic, Analytic, and Client-centred approaches to create the best therapeutic counselling plan for you.

Unlike many Melbourne psychologists, John takes a multi-disciplinary approach, drawing on the works of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Carl Rogers plus a rich education in philosophy.

Working with John - What happens in individual psychotherapy and couples counselling?
Your therapeutic journey begins with a full history of the relationship, the problems and challenges you are facing, and what each individual brings to the union. This detailed relationship history provides the foundation for Jungian based analysis of your compatibility and conflict management styles.

Having gained a deeper understanding of your compatibility and conflict management styles, John helps you explore how you communicate and negotiate your needs within the relationship, ever mindful of your individual communication modes and preferences. Using techniques including mind/body focusing and free association, you will further develop self-awareness and a sense of congruence within yourself.

John’s evidence-based approach empowers each person in the relationship to communicate and negotiate their needs in an emotionally safe environment. Many of John’s clients find that this deeper understanding of their own needs, wants and communication styles enhance their relationships across all aspects of their life, at work, at school, at home and in the community.

Having attained this depth of self-awareness and understanding, John encourages you to ask yourself The Question: what are you going to do about your problem? Rather than focusing on getting “The Answer” or “Silver Bullet”, assigning blame and shifting responsibility to others, you will contemplate what conditions would make resolution possible.

As your counselling sessions continue, John will guide you towards a sense of relevance about an answer or possible solution to The Question – a way to untie those knots of tension. Freud says the sign of a health psyche is not about believing you have the answer but the openness to test out options; healing comes from restoring your sense of what works for you.

The path may not be easy. As you delve into the solution finding phase of therapy more questions may present themselves until you begin to feel overwhelmed and you are tempted to grab onto a quick fix. Every step of the journey John will be there with you, supporting you, guiding you, helping you up when you trip and fall.

Questions are evoked by the difficult situations in which we find ourselves. Sometimes we collapse into anxiety because we don’t know what to do but find ourselves prematurely settling for an inadequate option. With John as your guide, you will learn to push through the anxiety, to unravel the knots, and propel yourself and your relationship to a psychologically satisfying and lasting way of being together.

Call John ph:0411 615 202 for a free initial consultation/to book your introductory session

Working with John – who pays?
As a 20-year member of the Australian Psychological Society, with specialist endorsement from The Psychologists’ Registration Board of Australia as a Counselling Psychologist, John Bacash offers No-Gap Medicare consultations or Bulk Billing for low income earners in individual psychotherapy.