BARBARA CHURCHER, PTP
MELBOURNE , AUSTRALIA
I am a psychotherapist trained in New Zealand in psychodynamic and Gestalt approaches. I have a private practice here in Melbourne and, up until 5 years ago, also led a team working with those who experience severe and enduring mental illness.
Before turning to therapy, I trained and worked as an independent midwife, caring for women through the childbearing year, supporting them to birth their babies at home or in the hospital. All of this means I have a deep interest in attachment theory and how we create ourselves in the world. Sometimes this is through the writing of others, a vital mind-to-mind relationship, as it was for me.
My earliest memories are of reading – surrounded by my mother’s books, I had some strange companions as a child, characters who still people my imagination. Myths and legends then became my early loves and, with a sniff of that perfume called library, I am back crouching in the corner where my favourites were shelved.
I have found the way to poetry through PTP training. ‘Poetry’ seems a small word to encompass so much. It has become a deep passion for me, added to my love of words. My work with poetry therapy uses poetry, literature, art of all kinds, and nature (being in it as well as being closely focused on the wonder of our home) and, most importantly, on metabolic entanglement, the understanding that all aspects of this planet are in and of each other.
I encourage and foster opportunities for creative writing, but particularly love the opportunity poetry therapy offers for personal reflection and a deepening of the relationship with oneself. I offer individual and group work.
PROFESSIONAL QUALIFICATIONS
Poetry Therapy Practitioner
Bachelor of Midwifery
Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) (Practice and research)
Diploma of Gestalt Psychotherapy (NZ)
Theory of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (Ashburn Clinic, NZ)
SPECIAL INTERESTS
Reading, always reading
Extending my understanding of my work as a psychotherapist
A passionate love of and fear for the earth, our home
Zen Buddhism
Website: https://www.barbarachurcher.com.au/