Belinda Pacella

Belinda completed her Master of Clinical Psychology at the University of Melbourne, and has experience working with adults and adolescents experiencing a range of emotional difficulties. She values building an authentic therapeutic relationship where people feel safe to explore parts of their inner world in a non-judgemental and empathic space.

Belinda aims to work collaboratively with her clients to help them develop a deeper understanding of themselves and underlying patterns that may be causing emotional suffering. This includes cultivating compassionate awareness of how ways of coping learned early in life, which were once protective and adaptive, can over time contribute to emotional suffering in the present day. She is most passionate about working with her clients to achieve emotional wellbeing, with the aim of lasting change.

She adopts an integrative approach mainly informed by relational and emotion-focussed frameworks, particularly Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP). ISTDP is an evidence-based experiential therapy that understands emotional suffering as arising from the use of defensive mechanisms that work out of our awareness to create barriers to authentically connecting with ourselves and our core emotions. By bringing awareness to these underlying emotional processes, defensive patterns can be understood and let go of, to direct focus on building an individual’s capacity to tolerate their emotional experiences and use them as a compass for navigating life.

Belinda is also a Board-Approved Supervisor, and provides clinical supervision for provisional psychologists, general psychologists and clinical psychology registrars working towards practice endorsement