Kim

About Kim

Education and Training

Kim completed a Bachelor of Arts with double majors in journalism and psychology in 1992 and obtained her Bachelor of Psychology in 1994. From 1995 to 1997 she was able to complete 12 of the 16 units required for a Master of Forensic psychology but the break down of her marriage forced her to end her studies and take up full time employment.

In 1998 she began practising psychology under supervision and was registered two years later as a fully qualified psychologist.

Work Experience

Kim began her career as a psychologist working at a company that offered both telephone and face to face counselling. She counselled people over the phone and in person and assisted in the training of volunteer telephone counsellors. Three years after joining the company Kim was promoted to the position of Director of Counselling services. In this role she was responsible for training and supervising 60 volunteers and she represented the company at various functions and meetings.

During this time Kim worked with a wide range of issues including drug and alcohol problems, relationship counselling, family violence, depression, anxiety, grief and loss, parenting problems, anger management, post traumatic stress disorders, suicidal feelings and stress to name a few.

She also completed numerous workshops and training courses in many of the above mentioned areas including family violence, depression, suicide response, parenting, sexual counselling and crisis counselling.

Some of the additional therapeutic training Kim has done include brief therapy, EMDR and hypnotism.

Although she performed well in the role of director Kim felt she needed more experience and she resigned the position to take up a role as a drug and alcohol counsellor. In this role she worked with prisoners and parolee’s and gained skills in working with groups and facilitating substance abuse programmes.

Just one year later Kim decided to open a private practise and she began working with school children, unemployed people and mine employees. Seven months after opening her own practise Kim was attacked in her home by a group of youths who wanted to steal her car and she suffered post traumatic stress disorder. Kim was unable to recover from this due to the fact three of the five youths remained at large in the town so she moved away to begin all over again.

After getting treatment for her PTSD Kim took a position working as a counsellor and was in that role for almost 10 years before moving into a supervisory role which is what she is doing now.

Treatment Philosophy

Kim has a strong humanistic leaning in her treatment philosophy and she favours the Rogerian perspective on human development however she has an eclectic approach to treatment and is very much outcome focussed. She uses strengths based therapy, solution focussed therapy, narrative therapy, cognitive-behavioural therapy, role-modeling and behaviour management and is very much a believer in the power of life skills training.

Personal

In addition to her professional training Kim has a wealth of life experiences to draw on when addressing the problems people come to her for help with. Kim was molested as a child, ran away and lived on the streets as a teen. She has been raped and gang raped and she became a single parent at 19. She raised two children — one of each sex, was married for 13 years and went through the agony of divorce. She lost a sister to sudden death and a stepson to suicide and she has been suicidal herself. She has suffered poor self-esteem, depression, anxiety and, more recently, endured PTSD, a gambling addiction and cancer.

Kim firmly believes everything she has lived through is an additional qualification for her work with other people. She believes it is easier to understand the road someone else is walking when you have traveled that road yourself. This does not mean she considers herself better than other therapists. She has never, for example, had a drinking problem but she is fully competent to help someone who does. It is not necessary to have had a problem to know how to treat it but people often feel more comfortable accepting help from someone who has experienced the problem they are having.

Memberships And Registration

Kim is a registered Psychologist and is licensed to practise. She is not a member of the Australian Psychological Society (APS) due to a lack of funds. She was, however, a member of the APS and she continues to adhere to their principles, ethics and guidelines for the practise of psychology.