Charri Russell

I believe deeply in the healing potential of psychotherapy. It can help you safely explore your concerns, spark new insights, and build lasting pathways to better navigate your life. These fresh perspectives enable you to live with more confidence and meaning.

Working at your pace, I provide a confidential, open-hearted place to speak freely and to be heard.  I welcome working with people 18+ from all cultures, religious beliefs, and sexual and gender identities.

You may want to focus on a specific issue or to explore long-held concerns. It might be the right time to understand why relationship difficulties keep on repeating. Perhaps recent or historical trauma is interfering with your quality of life and your usual ways of coping aren’t enough.  Or you might hunger for change and acceptance, but your efforts don’t bring the results you seek.

Essentially, you no longer want to feel the way you do and are seeking safe, and meaningful change.

How I work

My therapeutic approach integrates psychodynamic psychotherapy with attachment, developmental, creative-expressive, and trauma-informed approaches.

This approach is founded on the understanding deep-rooted emotions and experiences (often traumatic or pre-verbal) lie unresolved in our unconscious mind. Throughout our lives, these unconscious elements invisibly shape how we make sense of relationship difficulties and challenging experiences.

These ways of ‘being you’ are formed early and added to over time. This means it can be hard to see other ways to relate to ourselves and others and respond to life’s challenges.

Like your fingerprint, our work together will be unique to you. Experiencing and knowing you have a safe, and reliable person in your corner is a crucial part of how psychotherapy works.

Together we’ll safely explore the fears, wishes, and fantasies linked to the concerns you want to address. This collaborative exploration emotionally reconnects you to unresolved emotions and experiences and leads you to a deeper sense of knowing yourself.

As your insights grow, putting your emotional experience into words may be hard. If this happens, I find it often helps to take a leap of faith and try making some art.  Re-igniting your creativity and imagination can gently bring your inner self into your awareness and research indicates this may accelerate the healing process.

About me

I grew up in Te Tai Tokerau/Northland and now call Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland home.

I currently work within a community practice. Before this I spent five years seeing clients within a sexual assault and domestic violence service, the AUT Allied Integrated Health Clinic, and AUT Psychotherapy Clinic.

I welcome your text or email to connect and make a time to meet in person or online.  From there I look forward to meeting and talking about how we might work together.