ABOUT ME
Who is Lindsey?
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Lindsey Shepherd identifies as a queer, neurodivergent psychotherapist, Art Therapist and Mental Health Nurse who is passionate about human rights, social justice and advocacy. She comes from a working-class background in the Northeast of England and has always focused on supporting the voiceless to find their voice.
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Lindsey is an alternative, with a distinct style that doesn’t always align with what society assumes therapists should look like. Lindsey has always pushed against the grain and been fringe and this won’t change. Her authenticity is a core value for her. She loves her job and connection of all types gives her deep joy and this often radiates from her. She has deep gratitude for being given the privilege of being chosen to be given a cameo into people’s internal worlds. Her approach is one that privileges the notion that we all have inner healers within us. She sees her role within the therapeutic relationship as a midwife, gently providing support as needed, but ultimately trusting that the power to heal, lies within us all. She is very aware of power dynamics and attempts to always practice with this awareness.
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Although she was originally trained in psychiatric nursing 20 years ago, she does not work within a medical model and nor is she a psychologist, and therefore doesn’t work from a diagnostic lens either. Due to her psychiatric nurse training though, she can straddle both if needed and requested and has often collaborated with psychiatrists to provide therapy and medication monitoring. Her approach focuses on the healing that occurs within relationships.
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She’s a process-based artist and uses therapeutics arts daily to explore her life. She practices radical self-care, and this includes Open floor dance practices, expressive Art within rituals and ceremonies, a deep and regular connection to nature and pulls a lot from Jungian approaches with archetypes and symbolism.
About Lindsey clinically
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Lindsey’s mental health nursing and psychotherapy experience span two decades and she has worked across many sectors including NGOs, in-patient and community settings, and privately.
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She has worked clinically within child, adolescent, and adult psychiatric intensive care units (UK), female adult forensic psychiatry (AU), and as a counsellor/advocate for women and children who were survivors of torture (AU).
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Lindsey specialized for over a decade in PTSD following childbirth and her first master of Research was looking at the impacts of a traumatic birth on mother-infant attachment. Lindsey also supported women with psychological impacts of physiological conditions like vulvodynia, vaginismus incontinence, and the impacts of miscarriage, termination, and premature birth.
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Lindsey has led therapeutic teams within Melbourne’s east and south for ACF for the out-of-home care programs and has extensive experience working clinically with developmental trauma and working within complex systems like child protection and the foster care system and is a certified Synergetic Play therapist.
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Lindsey has a passion for forefront PTSD treatment and is a certified psychedelic-assisted psychotherapist. She is trained by MAPS in MDMA therapy for PTSD treatment. She is a clinical trials therapist with Monash University MDMA trials and provides psychedelic integration psychotherapy in private practice, with a focus on therapeutic arts and embodied movement as an integration tool.
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Lindsey has a passion for therapeutic arts, somatic processing, and embodied movement and has completed level one of Therapy in Motion with Open Floor Dance international which allows her to offer TIM-informed movement psychotherapy. She has completed a Grad Dip of Therapeutic Arts at MIECAT and is completing her second master's degree, at MIECAT in Therapeutics Arts.