~Jacqui McCabe-Austin~
Hello and welcome. My name is Jacqui McCabe-Austin, and I am the principal psychologist at JMA Psychology Canberra.
Unfortunately we are currently at capacity and our books are closed to new clients only until further notice.
Apologies Jacqui.
I am a registered and practising psychologist with over 30 years experience, starting out originally in Brisbane where I was first qualified in 1987. In 1990 I moved to Canberra to work as an in-house psychologist for a government department, spending most of my time providing Employee Assistance Program (EAP) counselling to staff and their families, advising management on staff issues, and assessing applicants for employment. After fifteen years service to the country, during which I got married and, in 2002, gave birth to my daughter Odette, I took the opportunity to leave full-time employment in order to concentrate on my counselling practice and my family.
My approach to counselling has always been based on empathic support and practical advice - I'm afraid that if you're looking for leather couches, therapy which fixates on assigning blame (think toilet training being blamed for trolley rage!) or approaches which centre around asking you inane questions straight out of a textbook, then you should probably seek a different counsellor! By the same token, my work with clients draws upon both strong science (evidence-based practice) and many years of learning what works for the people I work with.
Thus I have experience in many different forms of counselling such as CBT (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy) EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) and hypnosis, but for several years now I have found that the newer approaches of ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), Mindsight (Interpersonal Neurobiology), Affective Neuroscience, Clinical Neuropsychotherapy, and (especially for couples) PACT (Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy) have provided my clients with much more robust, powerful, and more flexible skills and insight, just as they have achieved in my own life (click on What We Do for more information).
If you're looking for someone who's perfect and who has all the answers, then I'm afraid I can't help you. I'm a regular person just like you, who has experienced her fair share of problems, mistakes, and fears, and I can safely say that I will probably have more ahead of me as well. I believe in care, listening, humour, and being a 'real' person - the Jacqui you'll meet in my office is the same Jacqui you'll meet on the street (although both of those are probably in better shape than the Jacqui who first gets out of bed of a morning!) But, lucky for me (and my clients) I love my work - I learn more from every client that I work with, and quite a few have said that they've learnt a thing or two from me too.
I hope we can meet and have a chat some day.
