Are You a Parent Looking for Therapy?

Perinatal and trauma therapy, shaped by the needs that matter most.

Pregnancy, birth and parenthood can bring profound changes, new challenges and unexpected emotions. Sometimes these experiences bring our own histories and emotional needs to the surface. Sometimes we simply need someone to walk alongside us.

You May Be a Parent Who Is:

- Wanting to offer your child something different from what you experienced growing up, but unsure where to begin.
- Noticing that your own childhood experiences, relationships or unmet emotional needs are coming to the surface in parenting.
- Navigating parenthood as a neurodivergent parent and looking for ways to balance your own needs alongside those of your child.
- Experiencing difficulties with your mental health during pregnancy or after birth, including anxiety, depression or emotional overwhelm.
- Carrying experiences from pregnancy, birth or loss that continue to affect your wellbeing.
- Simply looking for a place to feel heard, understood and held as you navigate pregnancy and parenthood.

A Space to Understand Your Needs, Together

Therapy offers a supportive space to make sense of your experiences, understand your emotional needs and explore what might be getting in the way of meeting them.

Whether you are working through difficult experiences, hoping to create new patterns for your family, or simply needing support through this season of life, we can work together at a pace that feels right for you.

A space to feel heard, understood and held as we find a way forward together.

You may be:

• Experiencing anxiety, depression or emotional overwhelm.
• Noticing how childhood experiences or unmet needs continue to affect you.
• Navigating the impact of trauma or difficult relationships.
• A neurodivergent woman looking for a therapist who gets it.
• Looking for support to better understand and respond to your own needs.
• Struggling with a harsh Inner Critic, guilt or pressure to do more.
• Navigating life changes and needing somewhere to feel supported.

Therapy offers a collaborative space to understand your experiences, explore the needs beneath your difficulties and find ways forward with greater understanding and compassion.

Understanding your needs, making sense of your experiences and finding a way forward together.

Whether you're navigating pregnancy or parenthood, experiencing mental health difficulties, making sense of your past or simply looking for support, therapy offers a space to feel heard, understood and held.

My approach begins with understanding your core emotional needs, how your experiences may have shaped them and what might be getting in the way of meeting them.

Together, we can explore these experiences with curiosity and compassion, recognising that many of the ways we have learned to cope developed for a reason.

I draw on a range of therapeutic approaches, adapting our work to your individual needs and circumstances.

- Attachment-focused therapy: Exploring how early relationships and experiences can influence our sense of safety, connection and relationships with others.
- Schema Therapy: Understanding unmet emotional needs, longstanding patterns, Inner Critic messages and Protective Coping Responses.
- Trauma-focused and body-based approaches: Supporting you to make sense of difficult experiences and how they may affect your emotions, body and nervous system.
- CBT, ACT, DBT and Compassion-Focused Therapy: Supporting emotional wellbeing and developing practical ways to respond to difficult thoughts, feelings and everyday challenges.
- Parent–infant and relationship-focused approaches: Drawing on Circle of Security, Theraplay and other attachment-focused approaches to support connection and relationships between parents and children.

I am also the developer of the Integrated Core Needs Approach, which brings together attachment, schema and nervous system perspectives to support a shared understanding of core emotional needs.

My Experience

I'm Symon Oliveri, an Accredited Mental Health Social Worker, Perinatal and Trauma Therapist, and founder of Contigo Child and Family.

I have nearly 20 years of experience supporting women, children and families across perinatal mental health, infant and child mental health, trauma services and child protection, both in Australia and internationally.

I hold a Master of Social Work, a Bachelor of Social Science and extensive specialist training in perinatal mental health, attachment, schema therapy and trauma-focused interventions.

I'm also a mum of five, bringing both professional knowledge and lived experience to my understanding of the complexities of family life, relationships and emotional wellbeing.