What is a Holistic Psychologist?

Hello dear soul, Arissa Brunelli here, founder of DIVE Healing ~ A Centre for Holistic Medicine.
You've most likely landed here because you're finally ready to get to the core of what's really happening with your health, or you're sick and tired of just being told "there's nothing you can do".

Deep down you know that there's far more to you than the prescription meds, diagnosis or label ...

You are an intelligent being who is capable of healing and living a meaningful and fulfilling life, or making the most of  whatever time you have left of this precious life.

You are capable of feeling lighter, more focused, relaxed, in flow, and at peace with yourself. YES, you are capable of learning to make decisions from a place of deeper trust in your intuition and true essence.

Before we move ahead, let's get a few things straight so that you feel more confident knowing what is meant by the term "holistic psychologist" and can go ahead and make an informed decision about the kind of health care you're looking for.

Over the last decade the term “holistic” has become increasingly recognised, which I believe is largely attributed to the fact that many people are realising the nature of our inter-connectedness and that our health and well-being is far more than just a static ‘thing’ based up on our inherited genetics ~ it’s more complex and fluctuates as a function of our relationships, childhood and generational behavioural patterns and beliefs, the environment in which we live, and the values of our community and wider society.
 
When I first started practicing psychology, “holistic” wasn’t even something you’d hear in any mainstream narrative ~ it was largely dismissed by medical communities in favour of the symptom-relief driven rhetoric. Even so much as mentioning the word “holistic” would be met with a defensive response or dismissed as “woo”.
 
Fortunately, I learned to trust my intuition (a story I can fill you in on another time!), and for as long as I can remember, I’ve had the mission and vision to educate and inspire others to learn what practicing holistically actually meant, and to pave the way for a new approach to helping people realise their potential, expand their quality of life and awareness, and to heal their body, mind and spirit from a place of integrity and CONSCIOUS choice. 
 
The term “holistic” is said to be derived from the Greek word “holos”, meaning “whole”. It was reportedly coined by a South African soldier (Jan Christian Smuts) in the 1920s who wrote the book ‘Holism and Evolution’.
 
However, the actual notion of holism has been a central theme and practice of our Australian Aboriginal ancestors, many Indigenous cultures around the world, and the Hermetics of Ancient Egypt, for centuries.
 
HOLISM refers to the understanding that the character of “wholeness” meets us everywhere and points to something fundamental in the universe ~ that the essence of nature is to form ‘wholes’ that are greater than the sum of the parts through creative evolution. In holistic health practice what this looks like is working with the WHOLE person and recognising the interconnected pieces that link to their presenting issue(s), not just their symptom(s).
 
PSYCHOLOGISTS help their clients develop awareness and understanding of the links between their behaviours, thoughts and emotions and ultimately aim to help people address whatever unhelpful conditioning or patterns may be present, and thereby develop more flexible adaptive coping strategies and perspectives in order to help improve their psychological well-being and relationships.
 
As a HOLISTIC PSYCHOLOGIST, I go a step further by helping people get to the root cause(s) of their issues or thought patterns by starting with re-wiring things at the spiritual, emotional and body level ~ because our spirit and body is what ultimately ‘keeps the score’, and most (if not all) of our decisions and thoughts are made from the place of our emotions.
 
Once we stretch the nervous system capacity and window of tolerance, and once the body feels safe and knows how to relax, we can then begin to grow our awareness and understanding of ourselves, and how exactly our ‘symptoms’ are linked with our thoughts and behaviours that may be interfering with us living the life we desire and dream of, or making meaningful change in our lives.
 
Ultimately, true change and an evolved awareness occurs when we understand and address the root cause of the effect, not just treat the effect (ie. the symptom) with another effect (ie. a drug or medication), which works only the surface level, and eventually leads to things either getting worse or repeating, or you have a host of new problems as a result of another effect - which can further complicate things and become yet another distraction from getting to the root cause(s) and ultimately discovering the lesson we're here to learn in this lifetime.
 
Furthermore, if we only change our mindset at a conscious level without addressing our underlying emotions and unconscious beliefs, or the chronically stressed state our body may be in (that we’re probably not yet aware of), we’re very unlikely to get any kind of meaningful, profound, or lasting change. 
 
So, whatever the issue being experienced, whether that be nail biting, panic attacks, feeling that you can’t sit still and always have to rush or be doing something more, out of control spending, smoking, drinking too much, depressed mood, sleep problems, fatigue, overwhelm, relationship discord, isolation, or suicidal thoughts and so forth ~ I believe a holistic practitioner’s ‘duty’ is to both educate and enable you see the “bigger picture” of which your ’symptoms’ are a part of, so that you can make an INFORMED DECISION and feel a sense of empowerment and responsibility for the ways in which YOU can positively improve your health, life and relationships ~ and thus feel greater CLARITY, EASE, FREEDOM, FLOW, better able to RELAX and TRUST, and feel PASSIONATE and CONNECTED to the life you’re living.
 
 
Ready to take the DIVE to discover your depths and healing potential?
 
Ready to heal those old wounds, access your strengths and manifest the life you’ve been longing for?
 
Ready to let go of old baggage so you can feel lighter, more focused and connected to your intuition and gifts?

LET'S WORK TOGETHER





Medicare MHCP’s accepted with a valid referral from your GP (rebates processed on the day of your appointment)

Private Health Claimable