Emma Ellis

We cannot change others, but we can change ourselves. Counselling and Psychotherapy is a relationship with a therapist who can assist you in exploring and developing new ways to be responsive to entrenched, destructive, stuck, and defensive patterns in your life that cause stagnation and suffering.

Areas of Special Interest

• depression
• anxiety
• cultural and racial issues
• gender identity
• sexual orientation and sexual identity issues
• grief and loss
• trauma
• sexual abuse
• interpersonal and relationship difficulties

Counselling/Therapy Services/Supervision 

We cannot change others, but we can change ourselves. Counselling and Psychotherapy is a relationship with a therapist who can assist you in exploring and developing new ways to be responsive to old, entrenched, destructive, stuck, and defensive patterns in your life that cause stagnation and suffering. We can all learn to be responsive rather than reactive.

Therapy is a supportive, warm, and non-judgmental space to learn about yourself and to create new ways of being. Growth and the creation of new ways of being are available to everyone. For some this takes a short time, others longer. My role is to support you to become more conscious and aware of these patterns and to facilitate the development of a more robust, compassionate, and awakened relationship with yourself and others.

Counselling/Therapy Approach

I provide short term and long-term counselling and psychotherapy from a mixed modality approach. My primary approach is a psychodynamic method which essentially is a way to become conscious of how your past experiences influence your current thinking, feeling, behaviour and relating to yourself and others. In addition, I employ a framework of understanding from trauma research, basic neuroscience, and Buddhist philosophic approach into the therapy which assists to build an understanding and strategies of responsiveness into daily life difficulties. My aim is to provide a warm, safe, supportive therapeutic space for you to gain insight, relief, freedom, and growth in your life. My practice is LGBTIQ+ friendly.

Background and Experience

I have trained and worked in the areas of Counselling and Psychotherapy since 2006, primary working with adults and young adults.

In addition to my private practice work, I have worked as a psychotherapist for HELP Auckland, a specialist support service to sexual abuse and sexual assault survivors and for Segar-House-Rauaroha, a psychotherapy service which specialises in treatment for individuals with complex, and significant psychological problems. I am currently a lecturer and the programme leader for the Master of psychotherapy at Auckland University of Technology. I provide supervision for psychotherapist and counsellors.