About Joy, Registered Counsellor in Perth
I didn’t come to counselling through a textbook. I came through life.
Registered Counsellor · Perth, WA · Online counselling across Australia and New Zealand
My Story
Twenty Years of Listening Before I Called It Counselling
I’m Joy, a registered counsellor based in Perth, Western Australia. My path to this work started long before any formal training — in aged care in New Zealand from 1998, then in the disability sector after moving to Australia. For over two decades I sat with people during some of the hardest chapters of their lives. I learned to observe, to listen, and to understand what people need when words don’t come easily.
It was my own health that deepened everything. During COVID, I experienced a significant health event that stopped me in my tracks. In the aftermath, I found myself asking questions I hadn’t had the language for before — about how the body holds stress, fear, and trauma. That search led me to polyvagal theory and somatic work, and something clicked into place. I understood, from the inside, that the body and mind aren’t separate. They tell the same story in different languages.
As I deepened my somatic practice I noticed that bringing nervous system awareness to the surface often opened up layers that needed more than the body alone could process. That’s what led me to counselling — to hold the intellectual and emotional side of healing alongside the somatic. Not one or the other. Both, together.
“The body and mind aren’t separate. They tell the same story in different languages.”
— Joy, Embodied Therapy Services
Why I Do This Work
Because Body and Mind Heal Together
In over twenty years of sitting with people, and in my own recovery, I’ve seen how much the body carries when life gets hard. That’s why I offer counselling that works with both body and mind. Every session is a safe, unhurried space to be heard without judgement and to learn practical, nervous-system-informed tools for the moments that feel hardest, whether we meet in person in Perth or online.
What I Hope For
Support That Feels Within Reach
I hope for a time when reaching out for support feels as ordinary as seeing a GP, and caring for your nervous system is simply part of caring for your health. Until then, I want Embodied Therapy Services to be a welcoming place for whole-person counselling in Perth and online across Australia and New Zealand, where no one has to wait until things fall apart to ask for help.
Areas I Work With
You Don’t Need a Diagnosis to Deserve Support
I work with people at all stages of life, online and in person in Perth, who are navigating:
What It’s Like to Work With Me
Warm. Unhurried. Without Judgement.
People often say sessions feel like talking to a trusted friend — a space where you don’t have to perform, explain yourself, or have everything figured out before you arrive. I don’t have an agenda for who you should be. I’m here to understand who you are, and to help you understand that too.
My goal is simple: that you leave our work together more resilient, better equipped, and more at home in yourself than when you arrived.
Whether you’re a private client or an NDIS participant, my approach is the same — you are a whole person, not a presenting problem.
“You don’t have to have it figured out to reach out,”
