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.

Individual Counselling Melbourne

I am a member of the Australian Psychological Society (APS), including the APS College of Counselling Psychology, since 2009. I have been practising as a psychologist for almost 30 years, specialising in crisis management. During this time, I have treated 4-6,000 people in crisis

I specialise in: Psychoanalytically - oriented deconstruction of the verbatim of a client’s narrative and mindfulness Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) practices, including daily meditation practice and focusing work to facilitate what Dr Marsha Linehan, the founder of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), calls Wise Mind. That is, creating a space to exercise faith in oneself and one’s future. In short, the model can be summarised as Mindfulness, Openness and Faith ( in oneself to act creatively in the moment).

I prefer to treat people in the short term up to 6 – 10 sessions via a Mental Health Care Plan (MHCP) but in saying that I have about 20 long-term clients that have been seeing me for 5-15 years. They come and go when they are in a crisis or not coping.
I take a lot of pride in the work I do. I genuinely care for the clients I work with and want them to make the right decisions during a crisis. I have been on my own personal journey through various psychotherapies, along with my studies in European philosophy and theology. I have developed strong convictions about the futility of some modern treatment approaches.

After 30 years of practising, I would say I am most in line with Dr Patricia Crittenden’s Dynamic Maturational Model. One of her basic assumptions is that there is no such thing as a secure attachment/relationship. Instead, she believes there are negotiated connections from early childhood till old age, as such, as a treating psychologist, my commitment is to prioritise this premise.

Most clients in crisis present with dysfunctional and self-sabotaging ways of understanding and negotiating their work and personal connections. My job is to:
(a) Firstly, facilitate a resolution to their crisis that is creative and safe for all parties. A psychological approach that assumes there is such a thing as a secure attachment/relationship and imposes that construct on a client is promoting more anxiety and depression and self-sabotaging because the approach is maladaptive to a dynamic crisis; and

(b) Secondly, understanding what to negotiate comes from deconstructed non-judgmental self- awareness of reactivity to options, not self-awareness derived from a construct. For example, a person may believe they have an inalienable right to say no to a proposal in a relationship. However, if a person acts out that belief or construct without a body/felt awareness of risk, they may be playing a game of chance with their relationship .

Marriage and Relationship Counselling Melbourne

Do opposites really attract?

Recent studies have found that people are more likely to be attracted to and pursue romantic relationships with individuals who are more like themselves across a broad range of personal characteristics, including age, religion, political orientation, and certain aspects of intelligence.
However it is also valid to say we fall in love with the person who has what we perceive to be deficient in ourselves. We seek to negotiate our needs in the world via the other and this is arousing.

Opposites may attract, but do they stick together?

Recently, psychologists at the University of Illinois wanted to know whether couples who are more similar in terms of personality are more satisfied in their relationships than those who are dissimilar.
They recruited couples in romantic relationships and over the course of a year had the participants complete a range of psychological tests every few months.
Couples who shared similar personalities in terms of agreeableness and moderately similar in terms of emotional stability were more satisfied in their relationships. Partners possessing similar traits of extraversion, conscientiousness, and openness did not result relationship satisfaction.
The psychologists concluded that having similar personality traits to your partner does not necessarily mean your relationship will be more satisfying.

What to do when opposites pull apart?

Like many relationship psychologists, John Bacash often hears couples complain about the very traits that attracted them to one another in the first place. Blaming the other for the very thing one finds attractive about them is very confusing. This sense of confusion can lead to increased frustration, fanning the flames of discord and unhappiness.

Phone John 0411 615 202 for a FREE initial chat

Using a variety of proven counselling and therapeutic techniques, John Bacash helps you to understand these complex and interwoven issues of attraction and compatibility. Over the course of your relationship counselling you will learn to remove blame, and to recognise and enjoy what attracted you to one another initially, and which draws you back together.

Extinguish the fires of discontent and fan the flames of passion, attraction and happiness. Find out what happens in couples counselling -